Ziyi Zhang wins the British Open
The British Go Congress was held over three days the first weekend in April at the Royal Victoria Hotel in Sheffield. Andrew Kay started the event with a teaching session on Friday afternoon, followed by a well attended presentation by Lucas Baker from Google DeepMind who explained a bit about the recent successes of AlphaGo and showed us its 9 dan diploma (pictured).
In the evening, 26 players took part in the British Lightning tournament which was eventually won by Andrew Kay followed by Alison Bexfield as the runner up.
On Saturday and Sunday the British Open tournament took place with a good attendance of 84 players, including a large contingent from Cheadle Hulme School who brought 15 of their pupils. Ziyi Zhang (5d), visiting from China (and not the famous actress), was the eventual winner, with six wins, to claim his first British Open title. Wenshi Chen (5d) of Warwick University was second, only losing to the winner.
Others doing well with five wins were: Andrew Russell (4k), David Cantrell (5k), Roella Smith (8k), Jason Brown (14k), Matthew Benton (19k) and William Poizer (23k).
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