BGA Newsletter 327 June 2025

FROM THE EDITOR

This issue, and previous newsletters, are available in the Newsletter Archive in the Members' Area. This is the most reliable way to view the Newsletters, as some email clients can corrupt the formatting of the pictures.

Contributions are always welcome, both from our members and others. We ask that they be Go-related and "newsy". The place for debate and general discussion is the BGA open mailing list Gotalk. However, an introduction to a new topic is fine in the Newsletter. A brief introduction to Gotalk, with a link for joining, is on the BGA page Go on the Internet.

Instructions for Contributors: Please use plain text not file-attachments. Keep it fairly brief, and give web-links and contact details. It's good to include pictures. If they are on the internet, send me the URL, otherwise attach the picture files to your email. Send your contribution to newsletter@britgo.org to arrive by the first day of the month.

Jil Segerman

NEWS

Pandanet Go European Team Championship

The final match of the B-League season, on 13th May, was a draw against Switzerland. The UK ended the season 5th.

UK win European Youth Go Team Competition

Alison Bexfield, UK youth team manager, writes:
The UK youth team has won the European Youth team Competition 2025 having won all four preliminary rounds, their semi final against Romania and this weekend the final match against Germany.

The Competition (see https://eygtc.org/2025/) is a team competion with teams of 5 (2 Under-12, 2 Under 16 and 1 Under 20); participants must be nationals or have been resident in the country for 2 years. A four-round league using an "accelerated Swiss" system (effectively the first round is seeded) is followed by a knock-out between the top four teams. The UK team came top of the League, then defeated Romania in the semi-final.

In the final against Germany, the teams were fairly evenly matched with the UK having a very slight edge on paper. Ryan played first on board 1, losing to the German 6 dan. Sung Hee Lim took a good win on board 4 against an opponent one grade weaker on paper. With the UK expected to win on board 5 where Lukasz outgraded his opponent (which he duly did) this left the UK needing to win one of two evenly matched boards. Alvina played well to take a win on board 2 while Daniel had an exciting game on board 3 with groups on both sides dying but lost his game leaving the UK the victors 3-2.

This was the UK youth team's first major win in this competition since it started and shows the strength in depth we have in the team. Compared with other countries we have strong female players and strong U12 players.

Of our squad of 14 players for this competition all but three were able to play at least one game. Those three, Michael, Andrew and Yanyi, did play games in the European youth team championship running parallel to this one.

Alvina was UK player of the event - always willing to turn out for the team and playing 5 of the 6 games and winning 3 of them. Special mention also to Sung Hee who was new to the team this year and won all three of the games he played, to Daniel, who has been a team member for many years and this year saw a good three wins out of the four games he played and to Blake Shamoon who won three of his four games in the U12 age group.

Our full team was: Ryan Zhang, Belinda Chen, Alvina Kwok, Daniel Yang, Lea Wong, Michael Mitcham-Harding, Sung Hee Lim Jun, Yanyi Xiong , Aidan Fung, Andrew Volovich, Audrey Fung, Lukasz Kudla, Blake Shamoonand Adam Siqi Chen.

BGA Tournament Winners

Full results here
Not the London Open - Yaoling Yang & Michael Cheung
Durham - Quan Wan
Pair Go - Ai Guan & Damon Woo

British Championship Match

This year's Title Match has concluded with Yaoling Yang as the 2025 British Go Champion.

After Yaoling’s win in Game 1, Game 2 was scheduled for the following day. Unfortunately, Lucretiu experienced a car breakdown on his way to the venue, causing a significant delay. As no contact was made ahead of the scheduled start time and Lucretiu would not arrive at the venue until after his clock would run out, referee Gerry Gavigan, fully backed by Ai Guan as Championships Organiser, made the difficult decision to award a default win to Yaoling for Game 2.

This was an unfortunate situation, and not an easy decision. We appreciate the understanding of everyone involved – in particular, Lucretiu, who was gracious in accepting the outcome despite the circumstances.

We hope you all nevertheless enjoyed the exciting first game. If you missed it, it is available to replay here on OGS, with live commentary by Damen Woo on the BGA YouTube channel. Damen will also be releasing a shorter video going over the highlights on the LGC YouTube channel, so look out for that soon.

Our thanks go to both players for their efforts and commitment throughout the Championship, and to Gerry and the London Go Centre for hosting. Congratulations once again to Yaoling on securing his second consecutive British Champion title!

British Go Journal 211, Spring 2025

The latest edition of the British Go Journal is now available as a pdf in the Members' Area on the BGA website.

CONTENTS
EDITORIAL
LETTERS
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE Colin Williams
FREE BOOK FOR TEACHING KIDS Leandro Soriano Marcolino
SAFEGUARDING AND GO Sue Paterson
WORLD NEWS Tony Atkins
FASCINATING TSUMEGO: PART TWO Richard Hunter
UK NEWS Tony Atkins
CHINESE-ENGLISH DICTIONARY OF WEIQI TERMS Jochen Fassbender
YOUTH NEWS Tony Atkins
TRIPLE KOS DO EXIST Damen Woo
TOURNAMENT HISTORIES XXIV: BELFAST AND ULSTER Tony Atkins
THE YOUTH GO TRUST Martin Harvey
SOLUTIONS TO THE JOURNAL PROBLEMS
ASSOCIATION CONTACT INFORMATION

Our International Representatives

BGA President Colin Williams writes: We now have a number of people assigned to represent us in various international events. For your information here is a current run down, not including the Pandanet tournament team members. We wish them all well in their endeavours.
45th World Amateur Go Championship, May 16th – 21st, Vancouver
Alistair Wall represented the UK at the WAGC. The IGF report is here, and player biographies are here. See also Alistair's personal report.
40th World Youth Go Championship – August 21st to 29th, Selangor, Malaysia
Following his excellent results at the European Youth Championship Lukasz Kudla has qualified to represent us at this event.
20th Korea Prime Ministers Cup – Nov 7th – 14th, Taebaek City
Toby Manning is our adult representative. Ryan Zhang is our player in the new U15 tournament. It is even possible they will play as a team in the new PairGo event …

Thomas Wolf RIP

From Charles Leedham-Green: "I have just received the sad news of the death of Thomas Wolf.
Thomas was only an occasional Go player, but he made his mark by writing a powerful tsumego program a long time ago, when go playing programs were very weak. We went to a tournament where there was a visiting professional who had a serious interest in tsumego problems. So Thomas asked for a problem. The pro gave him one, and was surprised when the program claimed to have solved it in a few seconds. The pro was suspicious. It is 11 moves deep.’ Thomas’s reply:My program says 15 moves; but it plays to the very end, so perhaps there is no disagreement. Give me another’. The pro produces a harder problem. Black to kill White. Thomas feeds it in. `My program suggests seki’.
So the pro takes on the program. B, W, B, W. ‘Ah so’. The program was right, which was to be expected as it proved correctness, or aspired to prove correctness.
Thomas updated and maintained the GoTools TsumeGo solving software hosted by Brock university.
I knew Thomas well when he was at Queen Mary. He always created a happy atmosphere. A good friend will be sorely missed."

From Harry Fearnley: "His contributions to the world of Go are various. Had he stopped with his Tsume Go Solver -- called "GoTools" -- it would have been substantial enough. But there was more.
I first met Thomas when he worked in London at QMC, and he contributed on GoTools at a small "Computers and Go" workshop that I organised in Oxford in the mid 80s. In connection with his work on GoTools, he created a massive "eyes database" of all "surrounded spaces" of up to 11[?] points, together with their status (life/ death/ etc) -- unfortunately, this was not published, and is no longer accessible. He used GoTools to produce a very large collection of problems -- this was unusual in having a large proportion for which the answer was Ko. The problems were also unusual in that they did not have the "natural" look-and-feel that most Go problem creators, and solvers, like. GoTools was let loose on a Go professional's collection of "5 Dan problems" and -- unsurprisingly -- found several errors, and necessary improvements.
Thomas also wrote approximately 30 high quality articles on computers and Go -- mostly in academic publications. Check out the Go-related publications here. My favourites are those on Seki, in which he adopted a pleasingly thorough formal/ mathematical approach.
Thomas encouraged his son, Oliver, to play Go. This -- perhaps partly with the help of a Korean Pro -- meant that Oliver overtook his dad to play at 4 dan, despite devoting much time to hockey."

Francis Golding RIP

Peter Fisher (membership secretary) has been informed that Francis Golding has died recently of natural causes. He renewed his 5 year membership in 2023, so he was still interested in go. He lived in Lancaster and is registered. Do any older members remember him?

Neil Sandford RIP

Neil's wife to Toby Manning:
"Hello Toby, this is Dianne Murray here, wife of Neil Sandford. We haven’t been in touch for a while but I have some sad news for you and other members of the Go Association. I’m afraid that Neil died at the end of May, just a short time ago. He had an inoperable brain tumour and died within 3 months of diagnosis. We are all so very sad as it happened so quickly. He had a very peaceful death in a very caring hospice so please pass on the news to those who knew him."

Links for Niel's friends:
* A recording of the funeral which took place in Edinburgh on June 9th. This should shortly be available, Username jara4913 and Password 416507
* Neil's Virtual Pinboard, created for his 70th birthday, which you can still view and add material to. Password Memories
* Tribute to Neil

ADMIN

2025 AGM

President's message:

"The 2025 AGM was held on May 22nd by ZOOM video-conferencing. There was a reasonable turnout. Full minutes will be posted here when available.

The main decisions were:
* An increase in the BGA Tournament Levy from 1st January 2026, but still below the pre-Covid levels
* A membership fee increase from 1st July 2025, for those taking a hard-copy journal. This is the first increase in well over a decade. All existing memberships, including multi-year memberships, will remain unaffected until their renewal date.

A presentation was given by the working party who had been looking into whether we can host a European Go Congress, and this will be considered by the Board before the EGF AGM in Warsaw in July.

The meeting lasted exactly three hours."

BGA Logo Competition

The BGA's logo competition shortlist has been decided, with 6 possibilities (including the current logo). All relevant details can be found here and the link to the voting form is here. All of the entries can be found both through Google Drive or through Dropbox

You do not need an account, or sign in to anything, or to provide any details to view the entries on Dropbox.
Voting will remain open until 31st July but please note that only BGA members are eligible to vote. You can join the BGA here
For any queries please email Sam Bithell at bithell.sam@gmail.com

EVENTS COMING SOON

This Month: Tonbridge, Welsh Open (Barmouth)
July European Go Congress (Warsaw, Poland)
August Youth Go Camp (Caythorpe, Lincolnshire), Mind Sports Olympiad (London), Newcastle
September Nottingham, Confucius Cup (Dublin), Swindon
October Sheffield, Wessex
November Three Peaks (Yorkshire), British Youth (Leicester), Northern