UK News

Letchworth Garden City Go Club met for the first time on Thursday April 18.

Nine people attended, including organizer Alison Bexfield 2d and husband Simon 1d. There was also a three-strong contingent, ranging in strength from 25k to 5k, from the Stone Free Go Friendly Association in nearby Stevenage and two other Letchworthians including a complete beginner, as well as two enthusiasts from further afield.

Ms Bexfield, who recently organised the very successful British Go Congress 2013, took on the three Stevenage players simultaneously as well as providing and checking teaching materials from the BGA for the new starter between moves!

She was pleased with the turnout and hopes, with further publicity, to attract more players in the future.

The club will meet at 8pm every Thursday during school term-time at the Central Methodist Church Hall, a couple of minutes drive from J9 of the A1(M).

Congratulations to Martha McGill on becoming the 200th player to be awarded a dan certificate by the BGA!

Congratulations also to Dylan Carter for becoming the 201st.

See our Dans list for a full list of all dan players with certificates awarded by us.

With great regret we have to announce that Norman Tobin died on 20th October 2012, after a long illness.

Norman was a long-time member of the British Go Association, starting in the 1970s, was Newsletter Editor in 1987-8, Honorary Secretary 1982-5 and President from 1985 to 1991. He was also a significant donor to the Association prior to his final illness.

His daughter writes "Playing Go was a big part of his life and I especially remember him going to Japan with the Go Association some years ago (Ed: the 1991 International Pairs Go Championship). As children we were taught to answer the phone and explain to visitors from Japan how to get to the Central London Go Club in Covent Garden, so that they could play while they were in England."

His funeral will be at 11:30am on Thursday 1st November at the Breakspear Crematorium, Ruislip. Further details c/o Wright Funeral Services 01494 863101.

Belated congratulations to Ingrid Jendrzejewski and Alex Selby on the birth of their daughter, Rosalind Margaret, on 1st October at 2:50pm, weighing in at 7.5 lbs.

Vanessa Wong has been awarded a 6 dan certificate by the BGA, following her excellent performance at the second World Mind Sports Games in Lille.

Congratulation to Vanessa Wong on her becoming No. 1 in the UK ratings, replacing Bei Ge who overtook long-time top player Matthew Macfadyen who had a bad tournament at the London Open 2011.

Just a small caution: only the Team event of the three WMSG events Vanessa took part it has so far been included in the rating list...

Congratulations to Andrew Kay on his success at the Challengers League and his promotion to 5 dan.

Also to Felix Wang for his promotion to 4 dan.

The BGA Council has decided to produce this update once a month for double digit kyu (DDK) players. If you are a DDK player, let us know what you like to hear about. And if you have any ideas about the sort of Go tournaments or events which are best for DDK players or which you would like to see in the future, please let us know. If you are a tournament organiser and you are keen to have DDK players taking part in your tournament, please let us know about that too.

Tournaments

Some tournaments have a particularly good record of attracting DDK players so you know that they are a likely place where you can find many other players around your grade. One of these is the Durham tournament, which takes place this year on Sat 16 June. Last year there were 11 DDK players at this event, ranging from 10k to 19k.

In recent tournament results, Daniel Peace 12k from Oxford won all his games at the Bracknell tournament.

The family of the late Allan Scarff has generously made publicly available a number of files of Allan's work in the area of Go-playing software and Artificial Intelligence, in the hope that others interested in these fields will find them useful.

Allan was a pioneer of computer Go, writing a number of award-winning programs for BBC Acorn microcomputers in the 1980s (see [his obituary](/node/357

With regret we report that Allan Scarff, pioneer Go programmer, died from cancer on 9th December 2011, aged 65.

Allan first came across Go in 1969, when working as a programmer with NCR in Dundee, from a Pure Science student friend, Phil Bristow. Go immediately captured his interest and he was soon teaching it to anybody and everybody, including his family, of whom son Christian still plays regularly.

In 1970, with a wife and three children to support, he got a job with ICL in Reading, and joined the existing Go club which he helped run for some years whilst reaching dan level. He left ICL in 1983 to work for himself, but stayed in Reading.

Allan had what he called a cellular automaton idea to produce a Go program which could run on a small PC like BBC Acorn. Microgo1 came on the market in 1984 and Microgo2 followed; it won places in various competitions between 1985 and 1989.