The UK's match against Spain on 18th November was split so that board 1 was played a day later.

Des Cann on board 2 wrote: My opponent started our game with the wrong overtime and I didn't notice causing a flurry of emails and abortive attempts to restart. On the board things were much calmer and I was able to plan the yose fairly early. My opponent got a ko in my corner but just using big yose as ko threats was good enough for me. He lived but I won the game quite safely.

Toby Manning on board 3 wrote: We had a fairly quiet game, with no major fights. I played a simple fuseki, ending up ahead and by the early middle game I simply had to avoid a major disaster – either losing a group or letting him get a large central territory. He failed to start a fight on the left hand side which could have been problematic and then I started a small semeai to gain some aji on the lower side.

The UK youth team played Romania on KGS on the afternoon of Saturday 15th November, in the first round of the European Youth Go Team Championship. The team played well against some very strong competition. They were hugely outranked on the first 4 boards, but had an even match on board 5, where Edmund did well to turn his game around from a difficult position into a convincing win by resignation. They lost the other four games, although post game analysis on board 3 revealed a slightly early resignation by our player (Dylan), who had played some excellent middle game moves and actually had the slightly better position.

All in all a good start against one of the strongest teams – the next matches should be easier. The second match is against Italy on 29th November.

Well done to everyone who played.

Alison Bexfield
BGA UK Youth Squad Manager

Romania 4 - 1 UK
U20

After a year gap Matthew Cocke regained the Three Peaks title. He won all five games, at the event at the Commodore Inn in Grange-over-Sands, to take the title for the fifth time. Winning four games were Roger Huyshe (4k Shropshire) and David Cantrell (6k South London). 31 players, including organiser Bob Bagot, took part.

A new venture this year was a team event with a small engraved toast rack as the prize. This was kindly donated by Graham Blackmore (one of the regulars). The first winners were a team from Shropshire -The Wollerton Wanderers - Brian Timmins, Kath Timmins and Roger Huyshe.

Results

Organiser Alison Bexfield wished that all the 26 players at the first Letchworth Rapid Play had fun, and the thirty minute time limits saw most games ending in fun battles and not reaching their natural end. The venue was the Central Methodist Church in Letchworth Garden City which allowed the main group of players to be in the hall, but also a group of junior novices to be able to play 13x13 games in a side room.

Prizes were awarded by sections. The Open section winner was Tim Hunt (2d Milton Keynes) with six wins. Major Section (3k-9k) was won by Ben Ellis (3k Milton Keynes) randomly picked from the group on two wins by his daughter Sophie. Minor Section (10k-20k) winner was John Collins (10k St Albans).

I am pleased to announce that the UK is fielding a national youth team in the first European Youth Go Team Championship (which is being held online for logistical reasons).

We have a squad of 12 players from which we select 5 players for each match of which one must be U20, two U16 and two U12. Well done to the 12 players who have been selected for the national youth squad:

• U20 Melchior Chui
• U20 Thomas Meehan
• U16 Hasan Nisar
• U16 Dylan Zhu
• U16 Charlotte Bexfield
• U16 Roella Smith
• U16 Kelda Smith
• U16 Alex Terry
• U12 Oscar Selby
• U12 Edmund Smith
• U12 Anthony Ghica
• U12 Hilary Bexfield

Our first match will be a tough one against Romania on 15 November. We will be updating the junior news pages with the team’s progress in this five round competition.

Alison Bexfield
BGA UK Youth Squad Manager

The 25th International Amateur Pair Go Championships was held in Tokyo at the end of October. To celebrate the silver jubilee, in addition to the usual 32 pairs from Japan and around the world an extra 30 guests were invited, people who have proved keen to promote Pair Go over the last quarter century. From the UK the extra invites went to Tony Atkins, Francis Roads, Alison and Simon Bexfield.

As the pair from Turkey dropped out at short notice, Alison and Simon were promoted to the status of players. They won two of their five games, losing to Singapore, Hungary and Germany, but beating Mexico and Italy to end in 26th place.

The 45th Wessex Tournament was held at St Mark’s Community Centre once again, as usual taking place on the day the clocks go back. 34 players competed for trophies.

Tongzhou Cai, a 3-dan student from Glasgow, travelled furthest and took victory as overall winner. Other winners were Martin Harvey (5k) and Dick Norton (8k), both from Manchester. Saving face for the southerners was Peter Collins (2k, Bristol). All these four won three games.

Thanks go to the organisers, including Ian Sharpe and David King.

Results

We won our second game of this year against Lithuania 3-1, but are only third in the league on games won. Nevertheless a promising start. Links to the games are available on our main PGETC page

Andrew Simons writes about his game on Board 1:

"My game started with a strange joseki mistake in the Kobayashi opening where my opponent forgot to pincer, but the real fun started when he played a fighting variation in the top right corner. His descent of q18 should have been r18 hane then n16 jump, but taking advantage of that was not easy and we ended up with two eyeless groups of his surrounding my ko-to-capture corner as a ticking time bomb.

He took a big point and I forced the ko, and he resisted one of my threats in a way which meant he captured some of my stones to settle his big group but I killed a nearby group of his in exchange.

There were 12 players in this year's tournament, held in Robinson College in Cambridge. As usual there were some excellent cakes.

The overall winner was determined by even games with double elimination. Most other games were handicap games. Games played with handicaps are shown in red. A couple of games in the first round were affected by dodgy clocks, but thankfully nobody complained too much and the problem was then sorted with the help of Andrew's phone.

Paul Smith (pictured) was the organiser, and also winner for the second time. He celebrated by going to watch the American singer-songwriter Dean Friedman performing in St Ives.

The junior winner was Melchior Chui.

Photos by Tom Coulthard, Alice Ambrose-Thurman and Chizu Kobayashi

On Saturday 11th October Durham Go Club ran a teaching event at Durham Oriental Museum, as part of their Festival of Japan - celebrating the teaching of Japanese at the University of Durham. The Japanese Embassy kindly sponsored Chizu Kobayashi-san, a 5d Japanese professional, to come to Durham to assist with this.

Kobayashi-san taught a range of people, from some of our stronger club dan players to complete beginners. We had around 20 club members turn out for the event to teach members of the public - most of whom had never come across Go before.