Tight Finish for the Northern

One of the premier North-West annual Go tournaments was kindly hosted again by the prestigious Cheadle Hulme School (CHS). Welcoming the competitors was CHS teacher Dave Barnett (whose Go-playing son is now at Cambridge), Helen Harvey (main tournament) and Martin Harvey (13x13).

It was pleasing to have 51 players (including 14 at their first tournament). As well as the large groups from CHS and from Manchester, there was a team from a new local school club (Beech Hall) run by the CHS founder Zaheer Ahmed. Many players also travelled from distant clubs, including University College London (UCL), Leeds, Nottingham, Bristol and Lincoln.

Finishing as top two above the 3d bar were Yunfang Deng (5d Manchester) and Yifan Bao (5d No Club) who both won two but tied their mutual game. The tie-break set in the computer program seemed to make the wrong player win, so it was changed and Yunfang was later declared the winner, both players winning a trophy for their efforts (as shown here with Helen Harvey). Those on three wins also won trophies namely Brook Roberts (1k London City), Joe Violet (5k Nottingham), Jason Fisher (14k Manchester), Soorena Zarafshani (21k CHS) and Aryan Saggar (30k CHS). The Fai brothers from Leeds, Joshua (7k) and Caleb (11k), seen below, also both won all their games. Results

The side-event was played on 13x13 boards in spare time between rounds. The prize for winning the most games went to Leo Zhang (CHS), who did really well to win all his seven games, and that for playing the most games (ten) went to former CHS student Zarrar Ahmed.