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.

The fifth round of the B-League on 23rd January saw the UK playing Finland. Yet again our team did extremely well, winning the match 4-0. As top placed team Netherlands lost to Germany 3-1, the UK team returned to the top spot, on boards-won tie break from Germany (18-16); Netherlands dropped to third.

Bruno Poltronieri wrote about his game against Javier-Aleksi Savolainen: I won by resignation. Not much happened until I decided to start poking at his floating group in the top right which seemed a bit over extended. I started with a peep, which he didn't really answer, so I was able to cut off a chunk of the group and kill it. In exchange he got a ponnuki in the centre, but since I had strong centre stones nearby it wasn't really worth much. After that I had a big lead.

Tim Hunt, 2d Milton Keynes, led his team to victory in the 27th Maidenhead-Hitachi Tournament. He beat Jim Clare in the final to win the tournament and he led the winning Milton Keynes team in the team competition. All players on three wins got an envelope and the choice of a game or a bottle, and those on two wins got a choice of one out of the three. The prizes, the great location and the free buffet lunch are all thanks to long term event sponsor Hitachi Europe. However rumours that Brexit is making the company consider moving to Europe proper mean this might be the last such event.

Those on three wins were Geoff Kaniuk (5k Cambridge), Joel Barrett (6k Manchester) and Robert Scantlebury (8k Sheffield). The 13x13 side event prize was not awarded.

Results Press Photos