Skye had beautiful weather while the rest of the northern Europe got snowed under. As a result just 19 of the 33 who'd registered for the fifth Isle of Skye Go Tournament got through. Juliusz "Julko" Pruszynski tried to travel from Lodz to Skye by bus but only got as far as London; he was sorely missed.

Either Edwin Brady or Donald MacLeod were to have done the draw but both were snowed in. Nick Wedd started writing names and drawing lines on index cards but John Collins turned out to have the program on his laptop and did sterling service in spite of computer crashes forcing him to type it all out again on the Sunday morning. He got a prize and a cheer for his efforts.

John Collins and Carel Goodheir won leagues C and B of the Friday evening 9X9 contests with 5 and 4 out of 6 games respectively.

Freezing national temperatures nonetheless, this year saw the South Manchester day retain its attendance from last year's inaugural day. Cheadle Hulme School (CHS) again kindly allowed use of their fine premises and, as in 2017, two events (Main and Fast) were held at the same time. The Main event, run by Chris Kirkham, attracted 20 players, while the Fast (run by Helen Harvey) featured 13 players. CHS was represented by 13 of its students (better than last year), while the Head of Physics, Mike Winslow, had given up his day to be on hand in case any issues arose.

The worst snow in Ireland for 36 years struck during the week leading up to the Irish Open weekend. Helped on by Storm Emma, snow drifts stopped all public transport and flights for about two days and many of the 49 possible entrants were unable to arrive. The Irish Rapidplay, scheduled for the Friday evening, was cancelled and the Confucius Cup (Irish Open) was cut from a five-round European Grand Prix event with 1000 euro prize to a three round rapid play event all on the Saturday afternoon. It was held as in recent years in a top hotel, The Gresham Hotel, on O'Connell Street (shown here after most snow had melted).

The only top player whose flights arrived okay was Lukas Podpera, 7d Czechia. He won the event easily, with America's Yisheng Wang (5d) in second.

29 players enjoyed teaching and a rapid tournament at the Dice Cup board game cafe in the centre of Nottingham for the first Kyu Player Teaching and mini-tournament. Teaching in the morning was given in three ability groups, by Chris Bryant (Sheffield), Toby Manning (Leicester) and Alison Bexfield (Letchworth); it was very much appreciated.

A 3 round McMahon tournament was held in the afternoon, with only 30 minutes per player and no overtime, which caught out a few (including one of the organisers!). Winning the tournament was Jonathan Green (4k Leamington) who is shown receiving his prize from Toby Manning.

The new London Go Centre was launched on the weekend of 17th and 18th February with an event that featured teaching, a tournament and more.

The previous London Go Centre was in Lambolle Place in London's NW3 between 1975 and 1978, when it closed as it was not financially viable. It had long been a dream of several London players to have a centre again, and when T Mark Hall left his estate to fulfill this aim a rebirth seemed a possibility. Various options were investigated by the trust set up in his name. These included acquiring a building for use as a Mind Sports Centre in conjunction with others such as Chess.

The sixth round of the B-League on 20th February saw the UK playing and beating Austria, to stay at the top of the B-League.

Daniel Hu wrote about his game against Viktor Lin: I lost by resignation. I played quite calmly in the opening, aiming for a long game. He had an interesting tesuji to settle the top right, and it worked well with his thickness from attacking my weak group. It was probably proper for me to make two eyes with my weak group earlier on, but he ambitiously fought in my area of influence. I got an extremely good result and he lost most of his territory on the right, while his centre group was still hanging. Probably I played too slowly as usual and soon entered overtime.

He then came to attack my weak group and I got out pretty comfortably. I tried to live actively while capturing a tail of his centre group and succeeded for the most part, until a sudden misread meant my capture turned round to capture me.

On Saturday 27th January 2018, the UK youth team played their third match, against Romania. The latter were 'on a roll', having won 5-0 in their previous match. We also lost by 0 boards to 5. This was in the European Youth Go Team Championship 2017/18 (EYGTC). Please follow that link for names of the complete UK youth team squad.

After two rounds, the UK were sitting in fifth place out of 12 teams, and so faced a strong team in the third round.
Some of our strongest players were not available but, even if they had been, it would have been an uphill battle to defeat Romania.

Charlotte Bexfield, Josh Gorman and Wenzhou Mei fought hard on boards 1-3, against much stronger opponents, but were unable to achieve an upset, with all losing their games as expected.

On boards 4 and 5, things were much tighter on paper, but we know from experience that Romanian youth grades are 'stronger' than UK ones.

Starting on Saturday 10th February 2018, the UK youth team played their fourth (& final) match, against Hungary. We lost by 2 boards to 3. This was in the European Youth Go Team Championship 2017/18 (EYGTC). Please follow that link for details of all countries' youth team squads.
So, the final Top 3 countries this year are as follows.
Winners = Russia;
Second = Germany;

Yangran Zhang (3d Manchester), seen seated on the left, won the 20th Cheshire Tournament. A record 46 players took part, thanks to a large group from Cheadle Hulme School, as well as players from Liverpool, Manchester and other local clubs.

Yangran beat Gong Cheng, Mark Zhang and Alistair Wall to take the title.

Also winning three games were Ai Guan (7k Lancaster), Chun Yin Wong (11k Lancaster), Andrew Boyd (13k Liverpool), Gordon Hall (20k Whaley Bridge) and Elliott Barlow (30k CHS).

Hugo Ryan (35k CHS) won the Fighting Spirit prize, Ben Howe (27k CHS) won 6/10 in the 13x13 and Elliott also won a prize for 9/9 in the 13x13.

Results

The Winter 2017-2018 edition of the BGJ is now available for members to read.