49 Players at Inaugural Lancaster Go Tournament

The inaugural Lancaster Go Tournament was held at Lancaster University on Saturday 18th February, writes organiser Marco Praderio. At 49 players, with players ranging all the way from 5d to 30k, it ended up being the largest tournament “in the North” since at least 2016 (British Opens not included). We were especially pleased to welcome 16 players attending their very first tournament!

Thanks both to the healthy turnout and to generous sponsorship from Go Magic, we were able to award many prizes. Tianyi Chen (5d Liverpool) took first place and his first UK tournament win, with second place going to Junlin Lei (5d Lancaster) and third place being awarded to Zhan Shi (3d Cambridge University). Additional prizes for three out of three wins went to Clinton Yu (25k no club), Hopkins Cheung (20k Lancaster), Elliot Barlow (16k CHS) and Florian Pein (9k Lancaster). The prize for strongest SDK went to George Zhou (1k, Sheffield). Cash prizes were awarded to all of these players. Finally, Go Magic vouchers were awarded to strongest DDK John Armitage (10k Lancaster) and strongest TPK – 20 plus kyu – Hopkins Cheung. Results

A side 13x13 tournament proved popular, with 15 players taking part. To encourage both participation and performance, we decided to award 3 points for each win and 1 point for each loss, with prizes awarded for most points accumulated. In the end, top places all went to the youngsters from Cheadle Hulme School:(CHS) coming second was Alex Theodosiou (27k), scoring 15 points with an incredible 9 games, but the ultimate glory went to James Zhao (17k), who scored 18 points with a clean sweep of 6 wins out of 6. Both were awarded chocolates. Honourable mention goes to Morgan Pittaway (18k) who, coming 3rd with 9 points from 3 out of 3 wins, still came far ahead of the rest of the field.

Special thanks go to Helen Harvey, Martin Harvey and David Barnett for bringing the contingent from CHS. As usual, Helen and Martin worked tirelessly to help the tournament run well, helping with the draw, equipment, clocks, and refereeing. Martin is particularly thanked for stepping to ghost the last round after a last-minute drop-out. With the (welcome but also unexpected!) high number of entries, the tournament could also not have run smoothly without the help of Florian Pein, Ai Guan and Vasiliki Makri who provided invaluable help with registration, snacks and beverages, and maybe most importantly, making the labyrinthic building where the tournament took place easier to navigate.

We expect to run the tournament again next year and hope to see you all again then!