The British Go Association has introduced a series of badges, available for juniors, to reward their progression through the Go grades. Guidelines are available to organisers of youth clubs who issue badges so that youngsters with the same badge should be about the same ability. They cover grade bands of players from those who just learnt the rules through to those in the single kyu grades. The ultimate badge to collect, with the flame motif extra, is the one for making it to the Dan grades.

For more information contact Alison Bexfield (Youth Squad Coordinator) at ynews at britgo.org

The second BGA Youth Residential Training was held like in 2017 at the PGL youth adventure centre at Caythorpe Court, not far from Grantham in Lincolnshire. The BGA group was made up of 10 boys and 10 girls aged 10 to 17 from Manchester, Letchworth, Cambridge, Lincoln and London areas, and five resident adults and two visiting teachers.

Wednesday 29th August had started wet in most areas, but by the time everyone had arrived at lunchtime the weather was fair, so the outside activities could be enjoyed. The two activities were the High Swing and Survivor (bushcraft training). After dinner the youngsters assembled in the three rooms of the classroom block for the first two rounds of a Go tournament, but also to enjoy some other games (such as Battle Sheep).

It was all Go on the first two days of the 22nd Mind Sports Olympiad (MSO). As in recent years, it was held at JW3, the modern Jewish community centre in London's NW3 district. Many games enthusiasts had travelled from around the world, to play the many traditional and proprietary board games on offer, such as Boku, Othello, Gomoku, Poker and Memory Tests, Countdown, Marco Polo, Settlers of Catan and Colour Chess.

24 players, mostly from London but also visitors from France, Germany and New Zealand, entered the MSO Go Open, a four-round McMahon tournament. Gaoge Wang 5d, shown in the picture playing the final, won all her games to take the Gold medal and the £200. Sharing the second place prize and also each getting Silver were Yousun Yang and Gong Cheng, with 3/4.

Marcus Bennett died recently after a short illness caused by cancer. Marcus was one of the main players of the Bournemouth Club for over 30 years. He was the club secretary from 1994 and ran the Bournemouth Tournament, being the main contact between 1990 and 1998. He was also on BGA Council from 1997 to 1999 and earned his shodan diploma (1d) in 1994. He is shown here receiving a prize at the 1990 Coventry Tournament.

The new club contact is Kevin Drake who said their dear friend will be sadly missed.

Despite some having troubles with flights nearly 30 players from the UK enjoyed the sun in Pisa for this year's European Go Congress. The event itself had a record turn-out with over 1400 players having pre-registered; the main tournament had around 850 players.

Leading the way for the British players were teenagers Tom Bradbury (5k) and Edmund Smith (5k). In the main tournament, after a barnstorming start, Edmund ended up with 7/10, and Tom with 6/10. In the Weekend tournament Edmund got 4/5 while Tom got 3/4. The rest of the players had a mixture of results.

While not playing Go the participants attended lectures and had game reviews, or explored Tuscany, including the cities of Florence, Siena and Lucca as well as Pisa itself.

Here is a full set of results.

Attention Go Club members: We are currently updating the Club Directory (see Find a Club on the menu at the top of each page). If you are our primary contact for your club then the recent mail message from us may be languishing in your spam folder. Please review your entry in the Directory and notify us of anything that is out of date by email to club-chair@britgo.org. If you are not the primary contact, please take time to review the entry anyway.

The Summer 2018 edition of the BGJ is now available for members to read.

On Saturday 21st July the first game of the British Championship, between Andrew Simons and Sam Aitken, took place. After more than 6 hours of play, Andrew Simons won by 2.5 points after Sam failed to successfully invade a large corner of Andrew's.

The title match is best-of-three.

Matthew Macfadyen gave a commentary on KGS. Both the raw game record, and the version with Matthew's commentary, are available here.

A commentary by Andrew Simons is available here.

During the 5th Annual World Collegiate Weichi Championship in Cambridge BGA reporter Andrew Simons had a chat with some of the players.

Interview 1

AS: Hi. What's your name and where do you come from?

YW: Hi. My name is Yuzhang Wu and I'm from China originally but studying at Manchester University in England.

AS: What are you studying?

YW: Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering.

AS: Did you learn Go here or in China?

YW: I learnt in China, but now Eric Zhang in Manchester is my teacher, maybe you know him?

AS: Ah, Yangran, yes I know him well, we often meet at the London Open tournament. So what group are you playing in and how was your first game?

After the AWCC had ended, the following day the BGA used one of the two playing rooms, the Hicks Room in Cambridge's University Centre, to organise the UK Go Challenge Finals. Thanks to the Ing foundation of Shanghai, the Go equipment used by the AWCC has been donated to the BGA and it was used by the 28 children attending the Finals.

Battled over 7 rounds on 13x13 boards, the finals ended up in a three-way tie based on number of wins, as the top three players each won six games and lost to one of the other two. The places were determined by the knock-out system used, as there were three prize certificates, but prize money was shared. The top three were Charlotte Bexfield, Edmund Smith and Yue Wen. These won U18 Girls, U14 Boys and U8 Boys respectively.

The other age-group winners were: U16 Boys David Baldwin, U12 Boys Alexander Hsieh, U10 Boys Theodore Chui, U14 Girls Hilary Bexfield, U12 Girls Julia Volovich, U10 Girls Zoe Walters, U8 Girls Auden Oliviere.