Our poor run of form continues, but this time we have a really tough match against the table-topping Finns.

Vanessa again had problems with connecting to Pandanet-IGS and dropped out at the last minute, leaving Jon Diamond on top board to face Antti Törmänen (7 dan on Pandanet), who's just had a fantastic result in the World Students Oza, coming third.

Despite the venue having staffing problems that caused a change from the Sunday to the Saturday, 40 players attended the Cambridge Trigantius at Parkside Community College. Andrew Simons (3d) was again the winner. This time he beat the new organiser, David Ward (2d) in the last round. Equal second with David was local student Jamie Taylor (1d), a former under-18 champion. Tim Hunt (2d) also won two to come fourth. Two local students, Tom Eccles (5k) and Joe He (9k) won all three games and they, and all those on two wins, were rewarded with prizes.

Results

38 players attended the 2013 Irish Go Congress, held in Dublin. Csaba Mero, 6d Hungary, won the main tournament, The Confucius Cup, for the second time with a perfect 5/5 score. In second place was Zebin Du, 4d China, and third was Antoine Fenech, 5d France.

Roger Daniel, 6k UK, and Mikulas Kubita, 15k Czech Republic, won all five of their games, while Thomas Shanahan won four. Results

The Friday evening Rapid tournament was won by Yuanbo Zhang, 4d China, with five straight wins, while Roman Pszonka, 3d Poland, came second and Thomas Shanahan, 7k Cork, came third, both with four. Results

Full PDFs for issues 157 and 158 are now available online

26 players attended the 3rd Welwyn Garden City Go Tournament, held in the Bridge room of the Gosling Stadium.

With a surprise win over Andrew Simons in round 3, the tournament winner was Michael Webster (1D London). Also on three wins was Michael Charles (1K St Albans).

Prizes were also given to those winning two games; these were Andrew Simons (4D Cambridge), David Ward (2D Cambridge), Francis Roads (1D Wanstead), Chris Hodge (1K from St Albans), Simon Bexfield (1K Letchworth), Stephen Bailey (4K West Surrey), Geoff Kaniuk (4K Cambridge), Richard Mullens (5K London City Go Club), Patrick Batty (6K London) and David Lorking (6K Billericay).

Prizes were again awarded by Barbara Kime from the Bridge Club (who protested at the lack of female players!) and afterwards several of the players joined Derrick and Barbara Kime at the Chinese Buffet in the centre of town.

Results

The 2013 Oxford-Cambridge Match was held in St Edmund Hall, Oxford, on Sunday 17th February, the day after the Oxford Tournament.

The Match consisted of two rounds, 50 mins each, with 30/5 Canadian overtime, and 7.5 komi for even games.

All games were played using handicaps - one less than the normal correct handicap, so giving the advantage to the stronger player/team. 14 of the 21 games were played even.

There were 11 players on each side. Cambridge had the strongest player (Li Shen), and Oxford the weakest. The playing strengths ranged from 5 dan to 12 kyu, with a majority of the players being dan level, and an average of about 1 kyu. On average, Oxford was 1/2 a stone stronger than Cambridge.

Between March 31 and April 7 Michael Redmond, professional 9 dan, will be visiting the UK. Michael was born in the USA. but has been living in Japan for several years.

Michael will be hosting several events during that week.

More details

Congratulations to the top three players in the 2012 Youth Grand Prix, who receive cash prizes thanks to the family of the late John Rickard. First was Edmund Smith, 19k Milton, with 748 points. Second was Adan Mordcovich, 1d Wanstead, with 611 points, and third was Oscar Selby, 14k Epsom, with 590 points. The 2013 Grand Prix is already under way.

Final Points 2012     Youth Grand Prix description

The winners of the first Grand Prix for Double Digit Kyu players has been announced. Top player who started in the 10k - 19k range was Colin Maclennan and the top player who started in the range 20k-40k was Edmund Smith. They receive vouchers to Guo Juan's Internet Go School as prizes. The 2013 event is well under way with many poeple scoring points at Oxford.

Grand Prix details     2012 Top 20 places     2013 points to date

Li Shen (5d), now a student at Cambridge, returned to tournament Go at Oxford and won the event for the third time (previous wins were in 2003 and 2005). He was top of a list of 92 players which included a lot of fellow Cambridge students for the varsity match arranged for the following day, and a large number of novices who could also battle for their own prizes at the bottom end of the draw. Prize vouchers were again supplied by Hoyles who had a bookshop there as usual, and also there were software vouchers. Others winning all three games were Paul Smith (1d Cambridge), Jonathan Reece (2k Oxford), Philip Smith (5k), Andrew Russell (6k Birmingham) and Daniel Peace (11k Oxford).