The UK team lost to Germany 0-4 in the Pandanet Go European Team Championship on 3rd May. The cemented Germany in second place in the B League behind Austria. The UK stayed bottom behind South Africa in 9th and Croatia in 8th, the opponents in the last match on 24th May.

League Page with game records

Details of the 2022 Candidates Tournament, including the entry criteria, have been published at www.britgo.org/candidates2022

Due to some generous private sponsorship for the British Championship there are a number of cash prizes available.

If anyone has any questions please contact tournaments-chair at britgo.org

As previously announced, the 2022 AGM will take place on May 26th by the use of ZOOM online meeting technology. A meeting invite will be created and published on the website a week or so before the meeting.

The Agenda, and accompanying papers, can be found in the members section of the website at https://www.britgo.org/history/accounts

The British Go Congress was held the weekend before Easter in the Welcome Centre on the campus of the University of Lancaster and the local club was thanked for their help in the organisation. The Congress was generously sponsored by SmartGo and the prizes included vouchers for SmartGo products.

The Friday evening British Lightning had groups of four players playing all-play-all leagues, the winners going on to the knock-out stage. As planned the final was played next day; it was won by Changhao Huang (5d Liverpool), with Zherui Xu (4d Cambridge) runner-up.

The seventh match of the season was against Finland. At their request Bruno played board one on the previous Saturday and the games on the Tuesday were at staggered times. In the end Bruno was the only winner and the loss put the team in bottom place of the B League, on tie-break behind South Africa.

Because Russia and Belarus have been removed from the leagues, there is only one relegation place now this season.

League Page with game records

After skipping two years, the Cheshire Go Tournament was back and held at the community centre in Frodsham as usual. Saturday 19th March proved that spring was approaching, as it was a beautiful, warm and sunny day.

As the Candidates event for this year will take place in early June the Council have decided to extend the period during which a player can achieve a qualifying grade. For this year only players are considered to have qualified if they have finished an EGF rated tournament with a GoR of 1900 or more in the period April 1st 2019 to 9th May 2022.

This means that both the British Open in Lancaster, and the Not the London Open will count as qualifying tournaments for the 2022 championship.

Cambridge’s Trigantius Tournament returned after a year’s Covid break to the excellent new venue of St Philip's Church in Mill Road; this was appreciated for closeness to local shops, cafés and station. Bristol’s Yaoling Yang took top spot from Cambridge University’s Zherui Xu, both on 3 wins out of 3, on SOS tie-break. Other Chinese players took the next five places. The bar was set at an unprecedented 5 dan and higher rated 4 dans were promoted to get eight players above the bar, but then unfortunately two were then drawn down in round one leading to the split tie.

The BGA AGM will be held online by ZOOM at 19:30 on Thursday 26th May 2022. An invite will be created and published a week or so before the meeting.

Any member’s resolutions are to be submitted to the BGA Secretary (secretary @ britgo.org) not later than Thursday 14th April 2022. Each such item will require the support of two BGA members.

The agenda will be published to members via the website no later than Thursday 28th April 2022.

The UK team lost to Austria 3-1 in the Pandanet Go European Team Championship on 8th March; congratulations to Jamie Taylor who provided our win. We are now 9th (out of 10) in league B and in the potential relegation zone: everything now probably depends on our last match against Croatia who are just above us in the Table unless we can beat one of the higher teams.

League Page with game records