There was much fun and many games at the Isle of Man Go Festival. The 11th Go Week on the Isle of Man was held as before in Port Erin and attracted a good crowd from the UK, Ireland and even as far as Japan.

The 42 player Open was won for the first time by Matthew Macfadyen. Often in the past he had acted as teacher and not played in the Open. This time he did play and won all five games, beating Matthew Cocke into second place. Oscar Selby, 9k, also won all 5 games. Results

The second main tournament was the Afternoon Tournament, which had 30 players. The winner this time was the same as in 1999 being Shigehiko Uno from Japan. He beat Belfast's James Hutchinson into second place in the last of three rounds. Brian Timmins, 9k, also won all three games. Results

The Handicap Tournament was won by Edmund Smith, 15k. Results

A Sino-British Weiqi Cultural Exchange event is being held on 7th September 2013, starting at 1pm in the British Museum, London in the Hugh and Catherine Stevenson Lecture Theatre.

The European Go Championship was won by Fan Hui, 7d, who had recently gained French nationality. He beat Slovakia's Pavol Lisy in the final to take the title. Fan Hui also took the Open title as there were not lots of strong Korean players there. He was also second in the Weekend Tournament, behind Russia's Ilja Shikshin.

Best placed British player in the Open was Andrew Simons who won 6/10 to take 38th place. Andrew Kay was 58th with 5/10. Pleasingly most British players won half their games, but Boris Mitrovic, 1d, won 7 games and Brian Timmins, 9k, won 6.

Results/Reports

As previously announced in the British Go Journal and elsewhere we are pleased to launch the new Members' Section for our website.

This will contain

• electronic versions of the British Go Journals for the last year - PDFs, SGFs and Problems/Solutions
• Council Meetings and Annual General Meeting Minutes
• Annual Accounts
• Policies
• Archive contents

In addition there is a document approved by Council about the initial version of this Members Area.

The Ratings List and Organisers Handbooks will continue to be publicly available, together with some of the Policies which may be clearly relevant to non-members (such as Child Protection).

Council will review the operation and contents of this area, probably initially in 3-4 months time, so if you have any comments please let us know.

In order to minimise the effort expended in managing usernames/passwords, and given that the security level needed is fairly low, there will be initially a single account for all member

The Czech Republic won the finals of the Pandanet Go European Team Championship, held at the European Go Congress in Olsztyn, Poland. The top four teams from the A-League played each other over three rounds to determine the winner. Unfortunately a clock problem on board two of Czechia v Ukraine in round one meant that game having to be replayed. As Russia beat Hungary but drew with the Czechs and the Ukrainians, the Czech Republic could win if they won this last game (having also beaten Hungary). If the game went Ukraine's way they would be second to Russia on tie-break. So Jan Hora and Bohdan Zhurakovskyj were the focus of everyone's attention, in Poland and on Pandanet, with Hora winning the game by resignation and hence the Championship for his team.

Results

The two Russia women dominated the eight player all-play-all European Women's Go Championship. Natalia Kovaleva was the unbeaten winner, Dina Burdakova second. The UK's Alison Bexfield won one game to come 7th. Results

Natalia and Dina also qualified for the European team to the SportAccord World Mind Games. They will join the winners of the SportAccord Mind Games European Qualifier, Fan Hui and Pavol Lisy. This event was also part of the Leksand Summer Go Camp and was held from 20th to 22nd July with 12 invited men players.

The other two members of the European team are Svetlana Shikshina and Ilya Shikshin who previously qualified by winning the 2013 European Pair Go Championship.

The London Go Picnic held on Sunday 21st July was very successful. Despite the heatwave the sun was not too bright and there were plenty of trees in St James' Park to hide under and there was always the trip to the pub, for more games afterwards, to allow players to quench their thirsts.

Congratulations to youngsters Rebecca Margetts and Oscar Selby, who finished top of the handicap section at this year's British Pair Go Championship, above 14 players (nearly all adults). This meant that they got their hands on the trophies (pairs go-bowls), which just eluded them when they lost in the final in 2012. There's clearly proof in the old adage "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.". Well done, Rebecca and Oscar, especially as their combined average grade of 22.5 kyu was 7 whole grades stronger than the year before. Could anybody beat them in 2014?

The 25th Milton Keynes Tournament was held at the Open University's sports pavilion. The 34 players were able to enjoy the heat wave by sitting on the balcony between matches.

Bruno Poltronieri (2d) from Warwick University won the event. He beat Toby Manning in the last round, who thus came second. Mike Cockburn (1k) was third. Graham Blackmore (13k) and Brent Cutts (8k) also won all three games.

The East Midlands team - Toby Manning, Peter Fisher, Andre Cockburn and Brent Cutts - won the team prize with an highly respectable score of 8 wins out of 12.

The winner of the infamous Milton Keynes Board Tournament was one of the event organisers, Tim Hunt with 4.5 wins out of 6.

Results

Go featured on part 4 of "Child Genius" on Channel 4 on 2nd July. Oscar Selby was shown visiting the Oxford Tournament and playing in the British Youth go Championships at Aston, against various young players and receiving a prize from Tony Atkins.