I am sure that you will be as shocked as I am to hear that Roger Huyshe, President of the BGA, died on Sunday, Nov 12.

Apparently he was cycling in Derbyshire when he collapsed - we do not think it was a traffic accident - and although the air ambulance was called, they could not save him.

The coroner has requested a post-mortem, so it may be some time before funeral arrangements can be made, but I will let you know as soon as I have more information.

Toby Manning

+++ Update as below +++

Please see here for the funeral details which have now been announced.

On Saturday 11th November 2017, the UK youth team played their opening match, against one of their hardest adversaries, Germany. We lost by 4 boards to 1. This was in the first round of the new season of the European Youth Go Team Championship 2017/18 (EYGTC). Please follow that link for names of the complete UK youth team squad.

  Post-match comments (see below for comments prior to the games): 

The UK Youth Go Team played Germany in the first round of the European Youth Go Team Championship yesterday (11 November). Due to a strong performance in the previous season, the UK were seeded into the top half of the draw, so this first match was always going to be tough.

We were outranked by at least 5 grades on boards 1, 3 and 5. Although our players - Tom Bradbury, Josh Gorman and Alexander Hsieh - fought hard, these 3 games ended as predicted with losses.

The first edition of a new monthly newsletter, Youth Go News, has been produced by the BGA and is available in the Junior section of the website as a PDF file. Please print or pass on electronically to any juniors who might not be on the BGA youth mailing list.

Toby Manning (1d Leicester) won this year's Three Peaks Tournament. Held, as last year, at the Wheatsheaf in the centre of Ingleton in Yorkshire, the two-day event attracted 28 players, a couple down on 2016.

Toby's only loss was to Eetu Erkkila (1d) from Helsinki. Eetu had lost to Matt Reid (1k Cambridge) and so ended second on SOS tie-break. Matt was third with three wins and a noteworthy fourth was James Richards (3k Edinburgh) whose only loss was to Toby in the last round.

Others winning four out of five were Ai Guan (7k) from Lancaster and Alan Stokes (9k) from Manchester. Despite no longer being DDKs, Alan increased his lead in the DDK Grand Prix and Tom Bradbury (5k Cheadle Hulme) moved up to second in both the DDK Grand Prix and Youth Grand Prix.

Results

The Autumn 2017 edition of the BGJ is now available for members to read. Sorry, only the cover was there until 2nd November!

The winner of the 33-player Wessex Tournament was Czech player Bronislav Snidal (3d). He beat the previous winner, Alex Kent, in the final. He is pictured on the left receiving the Wessex Trophy and a cash prize.

The only other player taking part at St Marks Community Centre in Bath who won all three games, a trophy and cash prize was Scott Griffiths (6k) from Bristol.

Results

The UK team won again in the European Teams to stay top of the B-League (equal with Germany). They beat Switzerland by four games to nil.

Andrew Simons wrote:

I was playing John Walch 4d again, who always gives me a tough game. As we are both slow players who struggle in overtime, my plan was to play faster than him, but that plan soon evaporated! We did a mini-Chinese plus not-avalanche opening that was popular in pro games a few years ago, but quickly went into uncharted territory and I spent a lot of time and ended up loosely connecting on top and capturing a stone in a ladder whilst he got some big territory with bad aji, seemed so-so.

After his double approach I tried out a 2nd line hanging connection pros like that's supposed to give my group more eyeshape (spoiler alert, it died).

The Northern Go Tournament was honoured to host Romanian-born professional Go player Catalin Taranu (5p). He commented on some of the games, gave a talk at lunchtime, and handed out the prizes. He stayed over to attend a meal and on the following day taught at a workshop in Stockport.

Unfortunately the organiser, Chris Kirkham, committed the first blunder of the day, messing up the registration and therefore starting an hour late! Not making blunders was the overall winner, Eetu Erkkila (1d) from Finland. He beat Yangran Zhang (3d) from Manchester in the final round.

Also winning prizes for winning all their three games were Andrew Russell (4k) from Birmingham, Adrian Abrahams (7k) from Lancaster, Brent Cutts (8k) from Nottingham and Amy Upton (22k) from Cheadle Hulme School. 42 players took part.

As in 2016, Cheadle Hulme School provided an excellent venue for which the organiser was very thankful.

Results

On Saturday 7th October 2017, 15 children from half a dozen schools in South Manchester attended a Go workshop at Greenbank Preparatory School (GPS). Following the same format as in the previous year, GPS had contacted the local Educational 'Gifted and Talented' scheme, who then sponsored the day and selected the children. British Go Association (BGA) members Martin Harvey, building on his connection with Cheadle Hulme School (CHS), plus wife Helen Harvey, Roger Huyshe and Tom Bradbury (Y12, CHS) were kept busy throughout, from 10:00 to 15:30, supervising the games.

While the children were just from years 4 and 5, their attention was good, they learned the basics in the morning starting with Capture Go, and progressed immediately to territory Go.

The UK team started the new season of the European B League by beating Denmark by four games to nil. This put the team in first place, equal with Germany. Congratulations to them for this result!

Daniel Hu wrote:

I won by 16.5 points in a very intense game of 160 minutes against Jannik Rasmussen (4d). I played pretty well, certainly better than on Saturday, but it took me around 20 minutes to get my reading and shape feeling up to scratch. I think my opening was slightly better, playing an AlphaGo joseki, but it was an unfamiliar fight, and it used up a lot of my time. He was left to cut with an empty triangle, while I got sente.

In the middle game, I played an invasion that got slightly messy, as my top side got reduced, and I spent several moves playing dumb second line kosumis on the right side not worth much territory, but reducing his eye space.