British Championship Title Match: 2004
The Players
The current British Go Champion was Matthew Macfadyen 6 dan.
He was defending his title against the Challenger, David Ward 4 dan.
The Score
Matthew Macfadyen won by three games to one, to be British Champion for the 20th time.
| game no. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Total |
| Matthew Macfadyen | b - | w + | b + | w + | 3 | |
| David Ward | w + | b - | w - | b - | 1 |
- Game 1 KGS broadcast, comments by Cornel Burzo 6d, Vit Brunner 3d, and others
- Game 1 commented by Li Ang 3p
- Game 2 KGS broadcast
- Game 2 with comments by Christian Pop
- Game 3 KGS broadcast
- Game 3 commented by Wang Hongjun 7p
- Game 4 KGS broadcast
- Game 4 as commented live by Alexandre Dinerchtein 1p
Some pictures from the first game.
The Rules
The full rules are given here. The interesting bits are:| Komi | 6½ |
|---|---|
| Time limits | Each player has three hours, plus Canadian overtime of ten moves in ten minutes. |
The games started at 10 a.m. BST (09:00 GMT). There was a break for lunch, using a sealed move.
The Schedule
The schedule for the games was as follows:
| Game | Date | Venue | Commentator | comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Saturday August 14th | International Students House, Euston Road, London | Ron Polak | helped by the Central London Go Club |
| 2 | Friday August 27th | Renolds Building, UMIST, Manchester | Cristian Pop, 7d | during the Mind Sports Olympiad |
| 3 | Sunday August 29th | Renolds Building, UMIST, Manchester | Wang Hongjun, 7p | during the Mind Sports Olympiad |
| 4 | Saturday October 9th | Wanstead, NE London | Alexandre Dinerchtein, 1p | during the Wanstead Go Tournament |
| 5 | (not needed) |
Broadcasting of the Games
The games were all broadcast, live, on the Kiseido Go Server, also known as KGS. This allowed them to be followed by anyone with a computer conencted to the internet and running Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, or some other Unix versions.
To follow any of the games, you could use the "Play Go Now" link from the KGS site; or you could download and install the KGS client program from their client download site. Either way, you would need a recent Java installation on your computer.
Once you had connected to KGS, you wnet to the "English Game Room", and looked for a game belonging to 'BGAadmin'. Anyone was able to join, and observe, the game. To avoid a lot of uninformed chat about the game (and about anything else) appearing in the game window and the game record, only players selected by 'BGAadmin' were able to chat.
The British Go Association pays the costs of the professional commentaries for these games. If you have enjoyed observing one, and are not a BGA member, you are invited to make a small donation.
If you have any comments, please email the webmaster on web-master AT britgo DOT org.