Edinburgh wins Online Team League Season 4

Congratulations to the Edinburgh team on winning the fourth season of the BGA Online League held during most of 2012.

The contest in Division 1 was extremely close, with each team winning and losing 9 games apiece. However Edinburgh won where it counted in terms of overall matches won with Central London Go Club A team and St Albans Go club sharing second place.

The winner of Division 2 was the Central London Go Club B team, who will now be playing against their colleagues from the CLGC A team in Division 1.

Division 3 winner was the Tiger's Mouth team from Leicester.

Commiserations to Belfast being relegated from Division 1 despite the closeness of the result, to Milton Keynes being relegated from Division 2, and to South London for bringing up the rear in Division 3.

We would like, if that is possible, to start Season 5 at the start of March, so please could all teams confirm as soon as they can that they will be playing again in the new season.

We would be very pleased to welcome new teams into the league and invite anyone who wishes to form a new team, whose members do not have to be from the same club or even from the same area of the UK. This is, of course, an excellent way of including players who are too remote from their nearest Go club to attend very often.

I believe having the possibility of two matches between each pair of teams has worked well without unduly pressurising teams who can only manage one match per season, and that this should be continued.

I should like to devote November and December to having additional "tie breaker" matches especially where, as in Division 1 this past season, the fight for top and to avoid the bottom places has been particularly intense.

We are sorry we had to end the Individual League earlier this year. I hope that at some future time we can revive it.

In the meantime we should be very pleased to welcome suggestions for enhancements to the league system, and having had a personal health "wakeup call", additional people to assist in running the league and league software would also be welcome.

John Collins