UK Draws with Bulgaria

In the first match of the season, now in the C League, the UK team played Bulgaria. Des Cann's game ended quickly with a win and new captain Bruno Poltronieri also won. Unfortunately Jamie Taylor and Scott Cobbold both lost, leaving the match drawn and the team in third position out of 8.

However later the Bulgarian board 4 player's results were discounted in all matches so the UK gained an extra board win changing the match into a 3-1 win.

This season the UK is in the same division as Ireland. They beat Denmark three-one, with wins for Karl Irwin, Philippe Renaut and John Courtney, but a loss for Gavin Rooney. This made Ireland joint top with Spain (who beat Georgia). Norway against Slovenia was drawn.

League Page with game records

Bruno wrote: I won by resignation against Alexander Savchovsky. The game started very well for me as he ignored a forcing move against his corner and died early. I then destroyed his main potential territory but gave him a lot of influence in the process and destroyed a lot of my own potential, so I’m not sure it was that good. I didn’t feel too happy about the points situation so I poked at his shape and killed another small group, but again giving away some influence. He then started attacking my last unsettled group. I think I found a nice way to settle it, but we were still mid-fight when he resigned.

Des wrote: I won by resignation after half an hour. My opponent, Boyan Alexandrov, found himself more short of liberties than he realised.

Scott played a very complicated fighting game against Alexander Yakimov, with a large semeai fight. The end came when Scott's central group couldn't make two eyes.

Jamie had a game against Tsvetomir Varbanov where each player made a large area. Unfortunately the opponent's total was slightly more at the end of the game.