Big Attendance at MSO Go Events

The 20th Mind Sports Olympiad was held, like the previous two editions, at the JW3 centre in London's NW3 district. As usual hundreds of games enthusiasts came together to compete for medals in many different games, both ancient and modern, unusual and traditional, including Go. This year the Go prize money was increased, thanks to support of the MSO by Google DeepMind and other sponsors. This meant big increases in turnout for the Go events, and it was also good to see that about half the players were women and children. The two small-board Go events were played on Sunday 28th August, and the Open on Bank Holiday Monday, 29th August.

The 9x9 had a pleasing 17 players. Michael Webster was unbeaten to take the gold and the sixty pound first prize. Losing finalist Lucas Baker took the silver and Ngoc-Trang Cao took bronze, on sodos tie-break. These two shared the second and third prize money with Sai Sun and Jitka Bartova who also won three games. Winning two games and getting a junior gold award was George Han (see picture), aged six and recently moved to London; he has resolved to try for the actual gold next year! Results

The 13x13 event saw 18 players take part, the most since 2000. Sai Sun, the London Open and Arundel winner, won the final against Lucas Baker, to take the gold and sixty pounds. The Silver went to Jitka Bartova and the bronze to Joanne Leung, on mutual game and sodos tie-break. These two, Ngoc-Trang Cao and Lucas Baker shared the prize money for second and third. Results

20 players came together to play for the Open title on full-size boards, the biggest entry since 2007. The field was very strong with two Chinese 5-dan players, and two national champions (UK and Switzerland). Unfortunately for one of the favourites, a misunderstanding about overtime meant a loss on time (not helped by the DGT clocks not actually handling overtime despite claiming to), but fortunately in the last round one of the unbeaten players lost to a player who had already lost one, so there would be a unique winner. This was Sai Sun, taking the gold medal and two hundred pounds first prize. On sodos tie break the silver went to Daniel Hu and the bronze went to Andrew Simons. These two, and the other four players on three wins, each went away with a twenty five pound share of the prize money. The medalists are shown at the prize-giving ceremony. Results