45 Players at Lancaster Go Tournament Despite Train Strikes

The second Lancaster Go Tournament was held on Saturday 3rd February, once again in Lancaster University’s maze-like Management School building. Despite the great travel difficulties caused by train strikes, the tournament still managed to host 45 players, only just shy of 49 the previous year. It was wonderful to see ranks from 4d to 37k represented and to welcome so many young faces, many coming from Cheadle Hulme School (CHS).

Thanks to the healthy turnout we were able to award many prizes. Peikai Xue (4d UCL) took first place thus scoring his 9th tournament win in the UK, with Zhan Shi (2d Manchester) following in second and Sam Bithell (2d Durham) in third. Prizes for winning all three games went to Alistair Burgess (30k CHS), Jeremi Grabas (15k Durham), John Armitage (10k Lancaster), Craig Maclean (9k Durham), Elliot Barlow (8k CHS), John O’Donnell (6k Glasgow) and Björn Eurenius (2k Lancaster). Results

A side 13x13 tournament was enthusiastically taken up, with 14 players playing 29 games. As last year, we awarded prizes to the top two scorers, with 3 points scored for each win and 1 point for each loss. These went to the same two winners of the recent Northern 13x13 side tournament, Olivia Jennison (24k) and James Zhao (13k), both from CHS. As all players headed to their third round, Olivia was narrowly in the lead with 6 wins out of 8 games, but in the last minutes, James swept in the final games to become the now two-time Lancaster 13x13 Champion with 6 wins from 12 games.

Many thanks go to Helen Harvey, Martin Harvey and David Barnett for bringing the contingent from CHS, refereeing the lower boards and reviewing games, and to Colin Williams for bringing the playing equipment. The organizers would also like to give a special thanks to Ai Guan who provided invaluable help both in advance and on the day of the tournament itself, even volunteering to ghost one round so that Marco could get a game (which he unfortunately lost).

The organisers look forward to seeing many players again next year.