In a nail-biting game in Camden Town, Matthew Macfadyen beat Nick Krempel to take the title of British Go Champion for - if your administrator can count after 8 hours of relaying a game - the twenty-fifth time.

The records of all three games are available in the championship section. Guo Juan has kindly commentated on all three games and has created free audio lectures about the first two; she will release a third about this game and that link, too, will be posted soon.

Thanks are due to Nick Wedd and Francis Roads for refereeing, and Kirsty Healey, Sally Prime and Laura Krempel for feeding everyone involved and general organisation (and also to Geoff Kaniuk and Alistair Wall for administering the earlier sections of the championship).

Richard Moulds won this year's Northern tournament. Although there were only 21 players, there were four other prize winners on maximum wins, namely: Ron Bell, Roger Huyshe, James Brownrigg and Brian Timmins. Also noteworthy is the fact that Adan Mordcovich from Wanstead, the youngest player to attend, was placed second overall.

Results

Sue Paterson won the Cornish Rapid Handicap on the Saturday and Ian Marsh won the Cornish Open on the Sunday. 20 people took part in all over the weekend that included a teaching session as well as the two tournaments.

Open Results and Lightning Handicap Results

Andrew Simons was unbeaten winner at this year's 22-player Belfast Tournament. Matthew Crosby was second with 4 wins, only losing to Andrew. Also winning 4 were Poland's Justyna Kleczar and Marek Gutkowski. Winning 3 to come third was local player James Hutchinson.

Results

Vanessa Wong beat Svetlana Shikshina in the last round of the SportAccord Qualifier in Prague to get the women's place on the European Union team for Beijing in December. She will play Pair Go with Catalin Taranu. The other team members will be Cornel Burzo, Christian Pop and Ilya Shikshin.

Vanessa won three games in all including a win over Matthew Macfadyen who ended on two wins.

Results

Matthew Cocke picked up his second MSO Gold in two days by winning the 16-player Open at the Mind Sports Olympiad in London. Silver went to Adam Pirani who lost to Matthew in the last round. Equal Bronzes were Francis Roads and Chu Lu from China. Paco Garcia from Spain was fifth.

Results

Matthew Hathrell ignored Go this year to concentrate on other games winning Bronzes in Settlers and Oware and a Silver in Blokus.

Matthew Cocke proved the best of the 8 players to take the 13x13 title at the Mind Sports Olympiad in London. Silver place went to Francis Roads winning 6 but losing to Matthew. Bronze place went to Henry Manners with 4 wins on tie-break from Xinyi Lu and event arbiter Tony Atkins.

Results

Russian 7 dan Ilya Shikshin retained the European Championship by beating Catalin Taranu in the final. This year the top 8 placed Europeans played knockout after round 7 which gave to an exciting final on the last day. Winning the play-off for third was Ukraine's Artem Kachanovskyi, who beat Alexandr Dinerchtein. Top British player was Vanessa Wong who won seven games to place 22nd, including beating Israeli 6 dan Ali Jabarin in the last round. Michael Webster (1 kyu) and Patrick Ridley (10 kyu) both won 6 games out of 10. Korea's Young-Sam Kim was the Open champion. 757 players took part.

Sang-Youn Jeon, 7 dan Korea, won the 435-player weekend tournament. Rita Pocsai / Jan Simara won the Pair Go and Russia won the finals of the Pandanet European Team Go Championships.

Results

The second game in the best-of-three British Go Championship was won by Nick Krempel by a narrow 2.5 points after an epic 6hr30 (plus lunchtime) battle. As Matthew Macfadyen, the incumbent Champion, had won the first game, there would be a winner-takes-all final to take place in London on a date then to be determined.

Players who are interested can see the game record, with kibitzers' comments, courtesy the KGS Archives.

Andrew Simons, 3 dan from Cambridge, increased the territory of his titles by adding Milton Keynes to Oxford, Maidenhead and the Small Board. The only other person out of the 26 at this year's MK to win all three was local player Richard Scholefield, 9 kyu.

The team prize was rather inhospitably won by the 'Concrete Cows' team with 7/9, and Alex Selby won the MK Go competition with a modest, though perfect, 2/2.

Results