Chan of Chinese Taipei was the winner of the 35th WAGC on SOS tie-break from China and Korea, all on 7 wins. This is the first time since 1986 that the WAGC was won by a country ouside the big three - China, Japan and Korea. On six wins were Hong Kong, Bogdan Zhurakovskyi of the Ukraine and Lukas Podpera ofthe Czech Republic. The other places went to Russia, Sweden, Japan and USA.

UK's Francis Roads was 44th with three wins, beating Argentina and Switzerland on day 3, but losing to Belarus and Turkey on the final day. Ireland's John Gibson won two games, against Brazil and Argentina.

Results Ranka Reports

The World Amateur Go Championship has reached halfway. It is being held in Gyeongju, Korea, and being competed for by 54 players from around the world. China, Chinese Taipei and Lukas Podpera of the Czech Republic are the only ones on four wins, as Korea lost to Chinese Taipei and Japan lost twice. Notable among the players on three wins is Suzanne D'Bel Low from Malasia who played for a while in the UK.

The UK representative, Francis Roads, lost to Slovakia, Australia and Poland, and then beat Azerbaijan in round four.

Results Ranka Reports

The promised sunshine took a long time to arrive, but 25 players enjoyed themselves at the Milton Keynes tournament overlooking the Open University cricket pitch. The overall winner was Alistair Wall, who beat French player Ngoc-Trang Cao (Nyoshi) in the final. The only other player on thee wins was young Spike Shamoon (20k London City).

St Albans (Alistair Wall as guest member, Peter Harold-Barry and Alan Thornton) won the team prize, and Tim Hunt was the best of ten in the Milton Keynes Go side event with 5 wins out of 6. Paul Barnard was awarded a special prize for taking all the sets away with him back to Swindon.

Results

23 Go players and their friends descended on Barmouth in mid-Wales for the Welsh Open last weekend. In a gloriously sunny weekend, the 5 round tournament was won narrowly (on tie break) by Alastair Wall from Toby Manning, both of whom had 4/5.

The players all thanked Tony and Sue Pitchford, who between them had run the tournament for many years, and who were handing over to Martin and Helen Harvey.

Results

This year the Durham Tournament was held in the Pemberton Rooms on Palace Green, between the historic Cathedral and Castle. There were 25 entrants ranging from 28k to 4d, including eight who had never played in a tournament before, and with the youngest player being 8 years old. On the Saturday night there was an all-you-can-eat Go BBQ, which had almost 30 people eating, drinking, and playing Go - some until gone midnight.

Durham alumnus Alex Kent (3d) won the Go Tournament, winning a Goat Ornament, and a 6 month subscription to Baduk TV English, kindly donated by Go Game Guru, retaining the title he won in 2013. Lightning and Small Board side events were won by Silas Maughan and Jonathan Teddy McManus. Prizes were also given for 4 or more wins, including James Milne, who won all 6 of his games.

Results

As you were informed of the Summer Go School, we will host and organise it from 26th August till 4th September 2014.

Thanks to your posting on the Summer Go Camp in your website, we have got a few applicants from Britain so far.

1) Daily Schedule the latest daily schedule of the Nihon Ki-in Summer Go Camp 2014 is at the following website: http://www.summer-go-school.info/#/planning

2) Online Registration Please be informed that now you can make online registration from the following website as well: http://www.summer-go-school.info/#/apply

We still want to seek more participants from UK.

We thank you very much in advance for your kindness.

Best regards,

Tom Urasoe

Overseas Dept.

The Challengers' League was held again at ISH in London over the bank holiday weekend, but this time it started a day later, on the Saturday, and ran to the Tuesday. Eight of the top players from the Candidates' Tournament, who were both available and managed to confirm their attendance, took part under the watchful eye of Jenny Radcliffe.

Reigning British Champion Andrew Kay won all his seven games to win the League. Alex Kent won five games, losing to Andrew and also to Harry Fearnley, to become the other player in the forthcoming title match. Third were Des Cann and Boris Mitrovic with 4 wins, fifth were Harry Fearnley and Alistair Wall with 3, Alex Rix was seventh with 2 and Kiyohiko Tanaka was eighth.

Results

In advance of the Commonwealth Games, a total of 25 players came to Glasgow for the 2014 Scottish Open, the same number as the previous year.

This year’s Scottish Open champion was David Lee (3d Dundee) on a perfect 6 wins. Bob Scantlebury (8k Sheffield) claimed 5 wins, and 4 wins were recorded by Joseff Thomas (10k Glasgow), Carel Goodheir (9k Skye) and runner-up Francis Roads (1d Wanstead).

A big difference this year was the generous sponsorship from the local branch of the Confucius Institute, which meant that fourteen players (all those on 3 wins or above) were able to select a book from the BGA bookstall.

With the oldest players of recent years moved on to University the way was open for the new generation to take over at the British Youth Go Championships in Aston, Birmingham. Everybody expected Oscar Selby to triumph, at 6k being 3 grades above the rest of the field, but he made a mistake in a fight to lose by less than 10 points to Leamington Go Club's Dylan Zhu-Dong. Dylan beat the other top players too and ended up collecting the Under-14 and Youth Champion titles. Oscar won the Under-12 and was runner up in the overall championship. Runners up in those age groups were Hasan Nisar from Aston and Kelda Smith from Cambridge. Melchior Chui from Cambridge won again in the Under-16 section, with Thomas Meehan from Solihull the runner up.

The British Pair Go Championship settled into a new home for the 24th edition, as the old venue had closed down. The event was held in the Red Lion in Hatfield, less than five minutes walk from both the station and the historic old town area. This is now also the venue for the Welwyn Garden City Tournament.

Due to the busy calendar and some illness, there were only 10 pairs taking part and so they were split into six for the open section and four for the handicap section. Winning the top section and returning to the champions position were Natasha Regan and Matthew Cocke and winning the handicap section were Jil Segerman and Patrick Ridley.

The Fighting Spirit prizes went to Edwina Lee and Charles Leedham-Green and to Roella and Edmund Smith.