We followed up last month's first victory of the season with a 4-0 win against Slovenia.

Chong Han on board 1 was again the first to finish, beating Leon Matoh. Chong captured some key stones early on after cutting a 2-space jump, though Leon did get some compensation. Unperturbed, Leon made the same 2-space jump soon after and Chong cut it in the same way again to build yet more thickness. He extended his lead through a series of attacks (though at one point attacked without first defending a weakness, but was lucky Leon missed the empty triangle tesuji which exploited it) and won by resignation once two desperate invasions of his territory were cleanly killed.

Des Cann also played a thick game and although he failed to kill a rather wobbly group the resulting wall was enough to turn large parts of Gregor Butala's moyo into Des's territory.

Matthew Macfadyen (6d Leamington) was the best of the 30 players at the second Skye Tournament in Portree. He again won all six games to win the tournament. Second with four wins was Francis Roads (2d Wanstead) and third was Edwin Brady (1k St Andrews) with three wins. Colin Maclennan (11k Twickenham) won five games, and winning four were Ludan Fang (4k London), Quintin Connell and Wilf Dell (both 9k Glasgow). A large cheer went up at prize giving when it was announced the event would hopefully be run again in two years time.

Results

The 2012 Youth Championships had 13 competitors aged from 6 to 18, with strengths from 2 dan to 30 kyu. The library block at Bloxham School, Oxfordshire, served again as a great venue. Tian-Ren Chen from Loughborough regained the youth title, the previous year's winner not contesting it this year.

The Trigantius Tournament was won by Andrew Simons (3d Cambridge), beating Alex Rix (3d London) in his last game. Also on 3 out of 3 were Sue Paterson (4k, Brighton), Roger Daniel (5k, CLGC) and Richard Mullens (6k, St Albans).

Csaba Mero, 6d Hungary, won the European Cup event in Dublin. This year the Irish Open was the Confucius Cup, because of a new sponsor. Second with four wins out of five was Guochen Xie, 6d China. Kim Ouweleen, 3d Amsterdam, was third and Chu Lu, 4d Warwick, was fourth, both on 3 wins. Taken the fifth place and final grand prix place was Vit Brunner, 4d Brno. Winning four games were Diana Blaszczyk, 4k Warsaw, Frank Tan, 9k Dublin, Marek Gutkowski, 9k Warsaw, and Paul Kelly, 11k Belfast. The British player with most wins, three, was Patrick Ridley, 10k Chester. Prior to the event on the Friday evening was the Irish Rapid won this time by Julien Renaud, 1d France.

Results Rapid Results

Sin Voon Chin, 3d Birmingham, won the 9th Nottingham Tournament. The student from Brunei beat Toby Manning in an exciting game in the last round. Out of the 34 players the others winning all three were Laurence Ogden, 4k Manchester, David Wildgoose, 11k Sheffield, and local players Carl Roll, 5k, and Brent Cutts, 8k. Jonathan Green got a special mention for entering the quiz.

Results Photos

It's round 6; we're still seeking a win and now we're playing the second team in the League, Finland, relegated from Division 1 last year, so it's going to be tough.

Chong Han leads off with a quickish victory on Board 1. He's always in control and, despite missing several opportunities in the middle game to force a resignation, wins by the large margin of 17.5 points.

Des Cann had a tough game and let a few stones too many die in the middle game, losing by 8.5 in the end.

Jon Diamond on Board 3 was always in charge, squeezing a weak group leading to cutting off some other stones that he'd had his eyes on from early on in the game. His opponent ran into time troubles and eventually resigned.

The final game, and also last to finish, was the team captain's, Andrew Simons. Despite, as he says, "making what must have been 50 points of mistakes in byo yomi", he won narrowly, by 1.5 points.

So we rounded up with a close win and our first this season.

Since the 1960s Oxford has not done very well in its Go matches against Cambridge. Even by normal standards, 2011 was a particularly bad year -- Oxford lost 6-0. However, in the run-up to this year's match, Oxford's spirits were high. Their line-up included a 5 dan undergraduate, and a 4 dan chef, from China, as well as a 4 dan visiting professor from Korea. To combat this, Cambridge's team included one visiting Chinese 4 dan. On paper, therefore, Oxford were the clear favourites.

Victory did not come easy, however. The first round saw a game between an Oxford 2 dan (name withheld, to protect the guilty) and Sam Rodrigues (3 kyu) from Cambridge. It was a game of two ladders -- one was in the mind of the Oxford 2 dan, and the other was on the all-too-real Go board. After they had played 15 moves each in the ladder, it became apparent, even to the 2 dan, that Sam's mind had also contained the correct image of the real world.

This year's Oxford was the largest UK tournament apart from the London Open for 4 years. 87 players of all strengths took part, including a large contingent from Cambridge who would play the varsity match the following day and many young players encouraged by the included novices' event. Winner in a Cambridge-Oxford final was Lingjun Miao (4d) who beat Korean player Yousang Baik (4d). Players on 3 wins receiving book token prizes thanks to sponsor Hoyle's Games were: Paul Barnard (1k Swindon), Bogdan Ghica (3k Newmarket), Julia Woewodskaya (8k London), David Crabtree (9k Chester), Yvonne Margetts (15k Epsom), Pauline Bailey (16k West Surrey) and Edmund Smith (28k Milton). Junior prizes were awarded, thanks to GoGoD who donated 3 CDs, to Adan Mordcovich and Roella Smith in the U18 section, Anthony Ghica, Kelda Smith and Hammod Munir in the U15, Edmund Smith, and Rebecca Margetts in U12 and Isabelle Margetts in U9.

Kath Timmins, 13k, became the oldest winner of a Cheshire tournament when she won the 8-player Cheshire Handicap with 4/5. Best of the 8 players in the top group was event organiser, Tony Atkins 2d, winning the Open title.

Results