On a fine autumn day, 41 players attended this year's Northern tournament, including players from as far away as Dundee. Helen Harvey was on hand, selling items from the N-W's BGA stock of Go equipment and books. Cheadle Hulme School (CHS) once more kindly hosted the event, providing an excellent venue.

The overall winner, whose name will complete the array of mini-shields on the face of the Red Rose trophy, was Honghao Lu (2d 'Jason' from Manchester), pictured collecting the trophy and top prize of £50 from MC of the main event, Chris Kirkham. Last year's winner Yangran Zhang (3d 'Eric' from Manchester) was runner-up.

On Saturday 13th October the second game of the British Championship, between Andrew Simons and Sam Aitken, took place at Andrew's house in Cambridge. After a fighting game, Sam Aitken won by 4.5 points to level the match. The game relay and a commentary by Matthew Macfadyen are available. The deciding game will be announced on the BGA events page, with again live online relay in the British Room on KGS.

22 players came to the London Go Centre to take part in the first T Mark Hall Rapid Play. Before the prize ceremony, Francis Roads said a few words to inform or remind the players who T Mark Hall was, how he liked fast games and how the London Go Centre was a consequence of his bequest to Go.

Winner of the tournament was Tunyang Xie (4d China) who won all five games. Second was Peikai Xue (1k London) on four wins and Zhanqi Kang (2d Winchester) was third.

The London International Teams Autumn edition was held at the London Go Centre on the same weekend as the new T Mark Hall Rapid. 18 players in six teams came together on the Sunday to battle in reduced handicap games for the trophy and a cash prize. Two strong teams of Chinese dominated the event. It was Team China (shown right) that won two matches to come first, their Tunyang Xie (5d) winning all three games. Team Mango was second with one win and six games won, with their Peikai Xue (1k) winning all three. The team London Organisers was third, ahead of Nippon Club and Cambridge; Epsom came sixth.

Results Photos

In the first round of the new season of the Pandanet Go European Team Championship B League, the UK team ended with a draw against Denmark, which was a fine start. The next match will be against Serbia, on 30th October.

Alex Kent wrote: I lost by resignation to Jannik Rasmussen. I got into trouble fairly early on when I played the moves of a joseki in the wrong order. The corner ended up in a tricky fight where I decided to push and cut - I've subsequently done a quick review with Leela Zero and it judged that had I continued along on the second line the game would have been roughly equal (as opposed to a 90% win rate in my opponent's favour!). I tried to complicate the game using some of the remaining corner aji, but my opponent handled the situation well. The position then stabilised a bit and I felt that I had a chance to come back if I could solidify a chunk of my large potential on the lower and right-hand sides.

Although spanning 25 years, the Swindon Tournament reached its 20th edition. Despite other events on the same day, a clutch of late entries pushed the attendance up to 27. As in recent years the venue was the back room of the Conservative Club in Swindon's old town, with the weather bright and sunny if players wanted to wander to the Town Gardens between games.

Winner was London's Chao Zhang (6d), pictured right against Christian Scarff. Chao then beat Simon Shiu (3d) in round two and then Alistair Wall (1d) in the final. The only other player to win three games was Jil Segerman (10k Arundel). The third trophy awarded went to young Ryan Zhang who won the 13x13 and the Fighting Spirit Prize.

Results

A new university society has been launched based in Queen Mary University of London's Mile End Campus. Thanks to the loan of boards by the BGA, Yuqiao Liu has been able to start a club for both learning and playing Go at their campus. They even offer the students who join complementary snacks and drinks at their weekly sessions.

For more info see QMUL Go Facebook Group or BGA Club Listing.

All was sweet at the Sheffield tournament, held as before in Greenhill Library. The entry of 39 was dominated by a minibus from Cheadle Hulme School, and the organiser recognised their contribution by giving all the juniors Pringles and their choice of chocolate. Winning all three games, Robin Dews (7k Nottingham) was rewarded with Ferrero Rocher, as were Adam Sharland (20k Nottingham) for playing some tough handicap games at his first event and Italy's Tommaso Pardi (4k Sheffield) for winning two out of two.

The top player was London's Chao Zhang (6d) who won £75 and a large box of chocolates.
Prathan Jarupoonphol (1d Sheffield) and Peikai Xue (1k London) were second to win cash and more chocolates. The top DDK - Kathryn Ball (11k Manchester) - also received £25.

Results

It was two students from London who dominated the 19th Cornwall Tournaments. Held in Penzance in The Lugger, as usual, the event proved attractive for those seeking a weekend away and the weather did not disappoint. However only 14 players took part in the Cornish Handicap on the Saturday afternoon, and 15 in the Open on the Sunday.

As usual the Saturday started with a teaching session in which Toby Manning, Paul Massey and Tony Atkins gave a game review, taught joseki and some of what was taught at the recent youth camp on shape. Winner of the four-round Cornish Lightning Handicap was Peikai Xue (1k), one of the students. He beat Elinor Brooks (9k Swindon) in the final, despite the handicap being the usual plus two.

Andrew Simons wrote:

I have been playing in the 13th Korean Prime Minister's Cup. This year many game records are available online as the system is automated: every board has a camera above it recording which then has some image recognition software that converts it into a game record. The time difference meant it was hard to watch them live in the UK, but the games are saved on YouTube (and Oro server), and results and records are available on the KPMC website.

It's a 6 round Swiss, with the first round pairing being split and slide based on each country's position last year. That did lead to an unfortunate initial 7d battle with Dusan Mitic of Serbia (who sent a much weaker player last year) vs Taiwan.