The Shropshire Tournament took place in the countryside again. Numbers were somewhat down, with several cancellations on health grounds, but there was more competition this year at the top end. The overall winner was Bruno Poltronieri (3d) with Alistair Wall (2d) in second place. Jonathan Green (4k) also scored three wins.

The side event was a quiz to mark up, at leisure between rounds, the value of a yose move in 16 positions on boards set out on the bar. As it is not realistic to aim for perfect answers, the scoring process removed one mark for each point in error. While the dan players were consistently in the right ballpark, it was striking to see by how much even good SDK players underestimated the value of moves. This led to a lively half-hour review and theory session. The winning performance was from Bruno Poltronieri and Brent Cutts received a prize for the best grade-adjusted performance.

After much delay we have finally found some dates when we have (a) two players, (b) a venue and (c) at least one relayer/referee for the title match of the British Go Championship 2014. Apologies for how long it's taken; on the whole, it might count as a shame that we have fairly busy participants this year ...

Should anyone not know and be curious, said busy participants are the incumbent champion Andrew Kay (aka warfreak2 on KGS right) and challenger Alex Kent (aka saraneth on KGS and far right).

Game one will take place in Milton Keynes (specifically at Tim Hunt's flat - many, many thanks to Tim) on Saturday 27th September.

National Youth Squad members will have received invitations to join the junior online club which will meet on Sunday evenings 8:00 - 9:00 pm. This will use a private room on the KGS server. The aim is for junior squad members who live a long way from other players to be able to meet and play with other juniors in a dedicated online club room. Members will also be able to ask Alison Bexfield (squad leader) and Roger Huyshe (BGA online coach) for analysis and advice to help improve their play. To join this club you will need parents permission to play on KGS and a KGS name. You will need to contact Alison to be given permission to join the private club room as access is restricted to members only.

On Sunday 14th the Chester Go Club showed Go to a number of passers by in the centre of Chester. As Chester is a popular city for tourists, we were spotted by a large party of Chinese visitors who instantly recognised the game and shortly afterwards by a similar party of Japanese who stopped to chat and record us on their cameras.

A number of local people were encouraged to learn about the game and we look forward to seeing some of them at either the local club or the online sessions.

Roger Huyshe

The Learn Go Week event in Stevenage went pretty smoothly, with some great support from Letchworth Go Club and the BGA. Phil Smeaton, manager of Costa's in Stevenage High Street, kindly allowed us to take over part of the café for four hours on the Sunday afternoon, as well as generously covering printing costs and issuing a flyer with invitation to learn Go to every customer during the event.

However, despite the flyers and the posters which went up in many places around town, and coverage in the largest local paper (Stevenage Comet), only three people actually asked to be taught. They were a resident Italian family, who saw the item in the Comet.

Martin Harvey took up the kind offer from the Japan Society North-West (JSNW), to arrange the manning a stall at this year's Manchester Japan Day, this last Bank Holiday Monday. Eight local players gave free demos to the public, over seven hours, with only short breaks to see the drummers, cosplay, kendo, kimono dressing, sushi bars and much more.

Aslo this year's Japan Day was honoured by being opened by a minister from the Japanese Embassy - his first trip to Manchester.

We estimate we gave about 150 demos, from the 2120 members of the public who had free entry on the day, most of whom would have seen our stall, well placed next to the stage. We also handed out say 250 tri-folds and sold 10 boxed wooden starter sets and 5 TYGo books.

The first of the three events during a very sunny weekend in Penzance was a teaching session on the Saturday morning. Toby Manning led a review of a pro game and set the students a yose problem, whilst Tony Atkins reviewed the status of the J-Group based on the lyrics of a Go song by Neil Symes.

The first of the tournaments, on the Saturday afternoon, saw 20 players taking part. The rapid-play Handicap Tournament was won by local player Paul Massey (1k) who beat visitor Chris Volk (1k) in the final. Steve Ashton (14k Devon) was the lowest graded player to win 3 out of 4. Results

On the Sunday the number of players rose to 22. The Open was played as usual over three rounds and the venue, The Queen's Hotel, provided an excellent buffet lunch as ever.

Registration is now open for the London Open Go Congress.

The dates and location are the traditional ones; from 28th to 31st December at the International Students House.

It's a level B Bonus Points tournament for the European Go Federation Grand Prix with 12 Bonus Points for the winner, down to 1 point for fifth place. Bonus Points benefit players in terms of priority for selection as European representatives in international events and qualification for the Grand Slam tournaments.

Like some other sports organisations we have decided to initiate some British Go Association awards in order to encourage players and organisers. We have selected the following categories for this year:

• Player of the year
• Club of the year
• Loss of the year (of a game)
• President’s award for services to Go.

Your nominations in each category are solicited by 31st December 2014 with a citation of a maximum of 150 words supporting the nomination.

Following this there will then be a vote for Player of the Year amongst the membership to determine the winner. If there are more than three nominations in this category Council will choose three to participate in the subsequent voting.

The winner in the second and third categories will be determined by Council from the nominations received.

The President’s award may be given to someone who has given many years or service or to someone who has done something special this year.

We are please to announce that the following young players have been selected for this visit to Japan:

• Ben Murphy, age 24
• Charlotte Bexfield, age 13
• Edmund Smith, age 9

They will be accompanied by Alison Bexfield and Andrea Smith.

Thanks to the Nihon Kiin and the Sasakawa Foundation for their support for this visit.