Alex Rix (3d London) won the Bracknell Tournament. He beat Chris Bryant (1d St Albans) in the last round to claim the Clive Hendrie Trophy for a year. The number of players was down at 24, but nearly everyone got closely matched games due to a gap between 1k and 5k, and exactly 8 players 1k and above. Best of the 5k players was Steve Bailey (Arundel) who won all 3, but close behind was Eric Hall, also 5k (Swindon), who won two with a second round jigo. Daniel Peace (8k Oxford) also won three games.

The team prize was won by "SwinMaid" on a close decision from St Albans. Bruce Tinton (11k South London) won the problem solving contest, playing at his first tournament. The caption contest was won by popular acclaim by Shawn Hearn's "And this move is the Incy Wincy Spider Pincer."

Results

24 qualified players made it to the Midlands venue of the University of Warwick for the first stage of the 2014 British Championship, the Candidate's Tournament. They played over six rounds on the three days of the May Bank Holiday weekend. The only player to win all his games was Bei Ge. Only losing to Bei was defending champion Andrew Kay. Alex Kent, Boris Mitrovic and Sandy Taylor all tied for third at the top of the group on four wins. Sixth was Des Cann, seventh was Tim Hunt and eighth was local organiser Bruno Poltronieri. Alistair Wall was the final player on four wins and so becomes reserve for the Challengers' League, which is held the next bank holiday in London.

Results

The Bar-Low tournament was moved to Warwick University this year in order to regain its usual place alongside the Candidates' Tournament.

Chris Volk won four games, only losing to the dan level ghost player. Ben Ellis also won four, only losing to Chris. Those two agreed to have a blitz play-off game. This was won by Chris, so he took home the £30 top prize, while Ben took the second prize.

The tournament was generously sponsored, although the turnout was still low, so most of the players won cash prizes, including Peter Fisher who also won four out of five games, and everyone took home chocolate prizes.

Results

22 players attended the fourth Welwyn Garden City Tournament which this year was held at the Red Lion Public House in Hatfield.

The winner after a showdown on the top board was Paul Taylor (2d St Albans). Also winning 3 games out of 3 was Colin Maclennan (10k Twickenham). A prize for best young player was given to Edmund Smith (13k Cambridge) who won 2 games out of 3. Some smaller prizes were given at the organisers' whim to other winners of 2 games out of 3, including to Mark Baoliang Zhang (1k no club).

Results (Photo from Tony Collman)

We have just received the announcement of a very interesting tournament for students, organized by the Shanghai branch of the Ing Chang-ki Foundation. The tournament is open to any individual who is, has, or will attend University (both at the graduate and undergraduate level) in the 2014 calendar year. Exceptions can be made if the individual is taking time off from school, but is planning on continuing in the foreseeable future.

The Ing Foundation will pay for every student's: Room, board, travel within Hong Kong, tours and events planned by the Shanghai Ing foundation. The student will be responsible for their airfare to and from Hong Kong, as well as any nightlife, entertainment or souvenirs outside of the preplanned events.

The new season of the Online Study Group (formerly Shodan Challenge) is about to start! If you wish to improve your Go skills, or help others to improve theirs, please sign up via the link below:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/10VUfH9F0qfNKHyo2gOYYHKD6TzV7zre4zuIDSo3S1I0/viewform

The Online Study Group will start on 22nd April and run for about 12 weeks. It is designed to allow you to arrange games with players of similar strengths, request help from stronger players and give help to weaker players.

If you have any questions about the study group, please feel free to get in touch by replying to billywoods@gmail.com (Finally, apologies for leaving it so late to arrange this - life got in the way for a little while...)

Best wishes

Billy

The European Go Federation is proud to announce the start of the certification of European professional Go players. This is in cooperation with CEGO, the EGF's main sponsor, and only possible thanks to their initiative and generosity.

For full details see http://www.eurogofed.org/proqualification/

The Spring edition of the London International Teams moved from its usual Sunday to a Saturday to fit in with its new venue, the Melton Mowbray in Holborn.

This time a strong team of French players took part, but they lost out on the tie-break of Captain's results (match result would have been the same) to the North London Club. So North London was first (2 wins 5 games), France was second (2 wins 5 games) and Central London A was third (1 win 5 games). Wanstead took fourth place (1 win 2 games) with Alistair Wall bravely playing simultaneous games as they were a player short.

Following on from the success of the European Youth Go Championship 2014 held in the UK, the British Go Association is forming a youth squad which is aiming to send a UK national team to the 2015 youth championships to be held in the Netherlands.

The Leader of the Youth Squad will be Alison Bexfield, 2 dan.

The youth squad is for any junior who will be under 16 on 31 August 2014 and who has progressed past the beginner stage (40 kyu -31 kyu) to reach at least novice stage (30 kyu and stronger). We will be running coaching events and encouraging participation at youth tournaments in the UK to develop the playing ability of squad members in a fun environment.

To reach the standard required to play for the UK in the European championships players will need to reach a minimum of 20 kyu or stronger for those aged up to 16. We will recommend which players we believe have made this standard in advance of the event.

Depite being the UK's oldest ally, the BGA team fought and beat Portugal in the Pandanet C-League on 1st April. However it was not the expected four-nil victory, with one game being lost by half a point.

Switzerland and Spain are now tied with the UK on points, but 3 and 2 board points respectively ahead. As both Switzerland and UK have two easy matches left, it seems unlikely the UK can get into the second place for a promotion play-off, unlikely unless Switzerland suicide one of theirs. Our next match is Cyprus on 6th May.

Andrew Simons on board 1 writes:

My game was fairly easy as my opponent misread a ladder in the opening, which incidentally started the same as my 2nd British Championship game with Andrew Kay.