In case you have not noticed it the inaugural UCL tournament on April 15th now has an entry form ready - access it from the events calendar.

Please support this new event if you possibly can.

We are now under a month away from the British Congress in Belfast, and I am pleased to say that so far we have 43 entries, including 8 double-digit kyu players. As a result we have just expanded our playing space in the hotel by booking two more rooms. This should ensure we have adequate space to play in comfort, as well as giving us room to accommodate plenty of further entrants before the Congress.

After holding the Mind Sports Olympiad (MSO) online in 2020 and 2021, it was decided to continue with an online games festival each winter to balance the actual MSO each August. The second such MSO Grand Prix, as it is called, started in February 2023 and features two Go events. The first of these was the 19x19 which attracted 45 players. Because of the large increase in players, up from 11 to 45, it was run as a McMahon not a Swiss. It was nice to see a lot of juniors taking part, including a large group from Turkey, and indeed one of the juniors nearly won one of the medals.

A draft agenda for the 2023 AGM has been published and can be found on https://www.britgo.org/history/accounts.

This year as part of the transfer to incorporated status, two AGMs will be held on the same evening, using the same ZOOM session. The structure is explained in the joint agenda for the evening.

Some little time ago it was realised that the way our current policies are presented is far from optimal. There was not a lot of consistency across them, and in many cases it was quite hard to separate the key policy statements from the descriptions of processes used.

An initiative was started to revamp the presentation of our policies, with the objectives of:

The inaugural Lancaster Go Tournament was held at Lancaster University on Saturday 18th February, writes organiser Marco Praderio. At 49 players, with players ranging all the way from 5d to 30k, it ended up being the largest tournament “in the North” since at least 2016 (British Opens not included). We were especially pleased to welcome 16 players attending their very first tournament!

There were 38 players including 17 juniors at the delayed 2022 British Small Board (13x13) Championship in The Old library of Pembroke College, Cambridge. More players wanted to enter, but they were restricted by the room capacity!

The first Tournament to be held by the UCL Go Club will be on April 15th. Details are on the events calendar and the associated info link. As usual with new tournaments please give them your support.

The Winter 2022-23 edition of the BGJ is now available for members to read in the Members' Area, with printed copies having being sent out to those that receive them.

The UK team was matched against Ireland, the other top C-League team, in round four. The teams agreed to play three of the games early, on the Monday, to avoid playing on Saint Valentine’s Day. Unfortunately the Irish team won all three and this left Tim Hunt to try and salvage a single game on the day itself. He kept the crowd entertained for a couple of hours until finally the massacre was complete. This put Ireland back on top and moved UK down to second or third on tie-break. [See here for League Page with game records.]