Go In Britain 2022

Summary

2022 was a year of recovery from the pandemic with nearly a full calendar of physical events. One exception was the AGM, which will continue to be held online and was held on Zoom on Thursday 26th May. At this it was voted the BGA should transfer its assets to a Company Limited by Guarantee (also called the British Go Association) and it was expected this would be complete by year end.

As in recent years, again the UK tournament scene was dominated by Chinese students and indeed one of these, Gaoge Wang, became the first female British Go Champion.

Sadly both Ian Marsh and Bob Bagot died early in the year.

British Go Congress

The British Go Congress was held at Lancaster University, back in its usual weekend near Easter slot. 48 players took part in the British Open, which was won by Leshan Feng of Liverpool. The Lightning was won by Changhao Huang, with Zherui Xu runner-up.

Regional Tournaments

In 2022 nearly all the tournaments were won by Chinese students or players of Chinese ancestry. Yaoling Yang of Bristol won three (Trigantius, Not the London Open and Mind Sports Olympiad). Double event winners were Peikai Xue (Welsh and T Mark Hall Rapid), Runyi Wu (Cheshire and Sheffield University), Guodong Cao (Durham and Swindon) and Junlin Lei (Three Peaks and Northern). Changhao Huang won the MSO 13x13, Zeyu Qiu the Edinburgh and Yue Matt Xi the Wessex. Notably two youngsters won events with Alvina Kwok winning Sheffield and Lea Wong the Bar Low.

In Ireland the April Rip-Off was won by Gong Cheng, Ulster by James Hutchinson and Stanislaw Frejlak 1p won the Confucius Cup.

The DDK Grand Prix was won by Florian Pein from Lancaster with 518 points, ahead of James Zhao on 330 who was the best player below 20 kyu.

Pair Go

The British Pair Go Championship was held again in June, this time at the London Go Centre. The champions were Gaoge Wang and Peikai Xue. The six-pair handicap section was won by Lea Wong and Gene Wong.

British Championship

The Candidates' Tournament was held in Letchworth and attracted 16 players. This was the only event to select the players for the title match with Gaoge Wang (6 wins) and Bruno Poltronieri (5 wins) being selected. Noteworthy was that the British Youth Champion, Scott Cobbold, was third.

The title match was won two games to nil by Gaoge Wang, with the games played on 20th and 21st August at the London Go Centre and streamed online with Matthew Macfadyen commentaries. This gave the UK its first female British Go Champion - congratulations to her.

International

The World Amateur was held online, but our representative, Scott Cobbold, struggled to fit the games in to his school schedule and he ended unplaced after one win out of three. Our player in the Korea Prime Minister Cup in Gwangju was Bruno Poltronieri who won three games to come 28th.

The UK online team sadly ended the 2021-2022 season of the European B-League in last place and was relegated to the C-League. At the start of the 2022-2023 season things were going well, ending the year in second place behind Ireland.

Youth Events

The youth events in 2022 were largely played online, the exception being a new London Youth in December won by Scott Cobbold, with Natalie Hung taking the Handicap Section and Clarence Qin the Novices’ Section. Lea Wong won the online tournament held in February, Andrew Volovich won those held in June and November, and the Squad selection tournament was won by Scott Cobbold.

The finals of the UK Go Challenge were held online in October and Cyrus Shek from Ayrshire was the best of the 40 players, with runners up Claire Chen, Lea Wong and Isabella Qiu. The Youth Championship was scheduled for January 2023. The best school team in an online championship was James Gillespie High School from Edinburgh.

The Youth Grand Prix was won by Andrew Volovich with 1008 points. Second was Scott Cobbold withg 748 and third was Caleb Monk with 740; Lea Wong with 735 just missed out the prizes.

The European Youth Go Team Championship for 2021-2022 ended with the UK youth team an excellent third, behind Russia and France. At the start of the 2022-2023 season they lost to Germany, but beat Hungary. An online last-team-standing match against Hong Kong ended 17-16 to them despite Lea Wong winning 11 games in a row.

Eight young players were in the team that went to the European Youth in Prague in March and 17 young players joined the annual BGA Youth Residential, again held at Caythorpe Court, an adventure holiday centre in Lincolnshire, at the end of August.

London Open

The London Open ended the year as usual held at the London Go Centre with a entry of 70. The large number of strong Chinese players meant it was the strongest event ever and also it was claimed had players from the most countries. The professional player Stanislaw Frejlak 1p gave lectures and analysed games too. The winner of the Lightning was Scott Cobbold and the Open was jointly won by Minseong Kim from Korea and Yaoling Yang from Bristol, winning 6 out 7 games. Daniel Hu took the David Ward Trophy for the best British player.

More BGA history