There was an emergency online meeting of EGF members on Thursday 3 March. Most European Countries were present.

The meeting agreed to suspend Russia and Belarus from the EGF, but not to expel them.

All EGF events currently scheduled for Russia and Belarus were to be re-allocated.

Russian and Belarusian players will be allowed to participate in EGF events under a neutral banner.

The UK Youth Go Team won against Russia B team to finish third overall in the European Youth Go Team Championship. This is an excellent result especially since our team this year had so many new faces. Russia was again champion, with France (who had beaten UK in round one) in second.

Details of the 2022 British Congress are now available on its web page Congress Info.

Entries are open.

For the February match the UK was against Italy who are in the top half of the league table. All our team lost to give Italy a win. The teams below (Croatia and South Africa) both lost, so the team stayed eighth.

League Page with game records

The Winter 2021-2022 edition of the BGJ is now available for members to read in the Members' Area, with printed copies being sent out around the middle of February.

Some time ago the traditional Candidates / Challengers structure of the British Championship was changed to reduce it to just one qualifying tournament, the 'Candidates'. Sadly Covid and lockdown has meant we have not managed to use this new approach until this year. In 2021 the qualifying event was the hastily arranged British Congress at Leicester.

The eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed a recent change made to the eligibility conditions for the British Championships.

The new eligibility criteria are shown in section A5 of the Championship rules, and for the Youth Championship in section F5 on the same Eligibility Rules page.

The intent behind the changes is to:

1. Clarify the rules on eligibility, by defining it in terms of either holding a British passport, or being a resident of the UK. Exactly how we measure those criteria has also been clarified.

In their January meeting the BGA Council agreed to a significant change to the Levy system.

The new scheme has the benefit of extreme simplicity for TDs to administer, and involves them asking only
• Are you a member (or youth member) of the BGA or any other national association?
• Is this your first tournament?

One impact of Covid has been disruption to the Terry Stacey Grand Prix, which is an annual event that runs across tournaments between the British Go Congresses. The following have been agreed by the BGA Council to cover this situation, both now and in the future.

Following the abandonment of a game in the match against Switzerland in December causing the team to lose the match, the team was hoping to do better against South Africa. Indeed when Bruno Poltronieri played the first board on the Saturday before and beat the very strong Victor Chow, a win looked possible. On the match Tuesday, in the other games, Des Cann won his game, but Jon Diamond and Alison Bexfield lost making the match drawn; the team stayed in eighth place, just above the relegation zone.

League Page with game records