The European Go Congress in Liberec, Czechia, ended on Saturday 8th August. It was one of the biggest ever with 762 players in the European Open. Wang Zheming, 8d China, was unbeaten after 10 rounds to be European Open Champion.

The best 24 European players competed for the European Championship. In the semi-finals Ali Jabarin beat Ilja Shikshin and Fan Hui beat Thomas Debarre. Fan Hui beat Ali Jabarin by resignation in the final to retain the title.

Kim Young-Sam, 7d Korea, won the Weekend Tournament and Chan Yi-Tien, 7d Taiwan, won the Rapid by tie-break from Wang Zheming, 8d China.

There were the usual selection of side events, including Pair Go and a veterans tournament.

The top game-winner of the large contingent of British players was Matt Marsh, 7k, who won 7/10 in the Open and 7/9 in the Rapid.

Results

Leo sadly passed away peacefully yesterday, 28th July, with her husband David by her side.

As she would have wanted, the Isle of Man Go Festival will go ahead as planned as a commemoration of all the work that she did to make it such a success over the last 24 years.

Celia Marshall

The European Go Congress is under way in Liberec in the Czech Republic.

The event got underway with the finals of the Pandanet Go European Teams. This was won by France on league-position tie-break from Ukraine. The home team and Romania took the other two places.

The European Championship and Open Championship are under way - news reports can be seen via the Congress Website.

On the evening of the 28th July, the EGF AGM was held. Toby Manning was the UK representative. It was possible to watch the meeting, whilst the various issues were discussed, via streaming from the Congress website.

We are very sorry to report the death of Brian Timmins. The day after attending the Barmouth tournament he went into hospital for a scheduled operation, which although successful led to other problems and he died on 2nd July.

Not only was Brian a regular tournament attendee with his wife Kathleen, both here and in the European Congress, but he put in a very large amount of effort supporting British Go for which he was awarded Life Membership. Brian was already the membership secretary in 1988 when he stepped up to take on the editorship of the BGJ and as the website states "for a while fulfilled both responsibilities with unparalleled conscientiousness".

35 players gathered in the sunny Open University Sports Pavilion for the 27th Milton Keynes Go Tournament. The main tournament was another win for Alistair Wall (2d Wanstead). Second place went to Nyoshi (Ngoc-Trang Cao 2d), who beat the tournament organiser (Tim Hunt 2d) by half a point in a hard-fought game in round 2, but, as previously announced, she had to leave a round early. The excuse was quite good. She and her friend Jitka Bartova wanted to get back to Leamington to hear Matthew Macfadyen and Kirsty Healey singing in a concert.

Also on 3 wins were another organiser Ben Ellis (3k), Andrew Russell (4k Birmingham), Edwina Lee (6k Maidenhead) and Joey Capper (10k)

Results

Perhaps more importantly the Milton Keynes Go side event was won with a perfect and persistent eight out of eight by Edmund Smith. Special mention should also go to Steve Bailey with seven out of nine.

The 23rd Welsh Open was held at the Min-Y-Mor Hotel in Barmouth again, but organised by Martin and Helen Harvey this year, having been staged for many preceding years by stalwarts Tony and Sue Pitchford and helpers. Over the two days, 26 players took part, with the bar at 1 kyu. Encouragingly, all but two players chose to play in the extra (6th) round. This year the playing areas were in two very nice rooms within the hotel (Bistro Room & Family Room) - a change which, whilst forced, was well received.

The weather was overcast most of Saturday, but brightened up on Sunday afternoon. The traditional evening meal on the Saturday was again arranged, and attracted 20 people. The organisers were grateful for this support, which helps keep the hotel management sweet!

Both the London City Go Club and the Central London Go Club have returned this week to their normal pub venue after the pub's refurbishment.

However the Melton Mowbray is now known as the Inn of Court.

For those who do not know it is located at 18 Holborn near to Chancery Lane tube station. Details on the pub website.

City club meets Friday evenings and Central London on Saturday afternoons.

Durham Go Tournament 2015 started with a fascinating two hour teaching event on the Friday night from Chi-Min Oh (7d), who talked for an hour about trick plays and then logged into KGS to analyse and review some people's games at random while they were playing them - demonstrating in some cases that it's not just kyu players who make silly mistakes! It was especially good of Chi-Min to run this, as it was his last day in Durham before travelling back to Korea.

The tournament itself had 29 entrants, ranging in strength from 3d to 22k, and was held again in the Pemberton Rooms.

The 36th WAGC took place in the Montien Riverside Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand. Unbeaten winner was Kim Changhun of Korea. China's Hu Aohua was second and twelve-year-old Lai Jyun-Fu of Chinese Taipei was third.

The UK’s player Des Cann lost to France, Malaysia and Sweden. He won his fourth game against Spain, but then lost to Finland and Cyprus. He beat New Zealand in round 7, before losing to Norway in round 8.

James Hutchinson, representing Ireland, beat Azerbaijan and Belarus, before losses to Switzerland and Cyprus. He then beat Portugal and Costa Rica, before losing to Mongolia and Lithuania.

Results

The silver jubilee edition of the British Pair Go Championships was held, like last year, at the Red Lion in Hatfield. In order to make the top group up to eight, a non-qualifying pair was added as ghosts, but then another all male pair had to be added as further ghosts as one pair failed to arrive. This did not affect the results as the winners, like last year, were Natasha Regan and Matthew Cocke. The next three places were the same pairs as last too (but slightly different order) and the Fighting Spirit Prize was won this time by Anna Griffiths and Tony Atkins.

In the Handicap Section the new winners were youngsters Charlotte Bexfield and Alex Terry, second and third were as last year and the fighting spirit prize went to the youngest pair: Sophie Ellis and Oscar Selby.