No weather problems this year, unlike in in 2010 which delayed that edition until February. Yunlong Liu (3d Stirling) was the best of the 24 players attending, with Boris Mitrovic (1k Edinburgh) the runner-up on 3 wins.

Ten years after previously winning, Malcolm Hagan won the West Surrey Handicap Tournament. This was probably the last ever such event, with only the support of 13 players meaning it is not worth continuing. Malcolm (7k Winchester) beat Roger Daniel (6k London) in the final to win all 4 games. Also winning 3 were Ed Blockley (5k Worcester) and Colin Maclennan (10k Twickenham). Pauline Bailey (16k West Surrey) won the 13x13 competition with 8 wins, Tony Atkins won the lunch time Pits and Sue Paterson won the competition for writing 26-word passages where each word starts with a different letter.

Results

There is some nice publicity for go in this week’s edition of Ariel (the BBC staff magazine which also goes outside the BBC to some people in the wider media industry).

The article is about Alison Bexfield's participation in the World Amateur Pair Go Tournament, made the top half of page 4 and included a nice picture of her by a goban.

23 players graced Cork with their presence this year. The tournament took place in the rather beautiful main campus of University College Cork. Top of the bunch was Kim Ouweleen, 3d, from Amsterdam, with a perfect 5/5. In second place was Ian Davis, 1d, who edged out Spain's Matei Garcia, 4k, on tiebreak, despite his 5/5 score. Also scoring 5/5 was Thomas Shanahan, 15k, from Galway. With 4/5 were Arthur Cater, 9k, Marek Gutkoswki, 10k, and Kevin Doherty 15k.

Results

The British Pair of Alison and Simon Bexfield topped the group on 2 wins to come 17th in the 22nd IAPGC. They beat pairs from Philippines and Spain, but lost to Korea and two Japanese pairs. For the 6th time in a row Korea won, with Chinese Taipei in second this time. The top European pairs were Hungary in 9th and Czechia in 12th, both with 3 wins.

Results

Andrew Kay stopped Matthew Macfadyen's run of three titles in a row at the Coventry Tournament at the University of Warwick. Andrew beat Matthew in their third-round game to allow Andrew to increase his current titles to five. Matthew Macfadyen got the prize for second and Chu Lu, from the University club, was third. Other players getting prizes for winning all three were David Killen (5k Cheltenham), James Brownrigg (6k Chester), Brent Cutts (9k Nottingham) and Reg Sayer (13k Stafford). Local University club members Anees Ahee (18k) and Ross Woodruff (25k) also won all three games. 47 players took part.

Results

17th November 2011 marked a historic moment for UK Mind Sports with the first festival of all the games who are members of the International Mind Sports Association.

The International Federation of Poker had booked the entire EDF Energy London Eye for the evening for their first international team championship for Duplicate Poker and invited the other UK games organisations to demonstrate their games to the UK and World media.

The BGA participated, occupying 2 capsules (pods) with players varying in age from 8 to 73 for most of the evening. In one capsule players Michael Culver, Natasha Regan and Oscar Selby were joined by Jon Diamond, Thomas Hsiang (Vice President of the International Go Federation and Executive Director of IMSA) as well as other members of the US Mind Sports Association.

Matthew Macfadyen had lost to Dusan Mitic, one of the undefeated Mitic brothers, by resignation the previous Wednesday, so we knew that we were up against it - the team we were able to put out against the Serbians was nominally slightly weaker than our opponents.

Despite some Serbian confusion as to the start time, sadly Nikola remained undefeated also, edging Bei Ge by just 0.5 points! So we were saved by Des Cann and Jon Diamond’s close victories on boards 3 and 4. (Jon was especially lucky having 'lost' the game several times, finally living with an L group and then killing one of the surrounding groups!)

Phew - the closest result in the round, perhaps the closest ever?

We're still near the bottom of the table, but a win in our next round could lift us to 3rd place as only two teams have won more than one match.

League Results 2011-12

It is with great sadness that we have to report that Gerry died on Monday 14 November after a year battling cancer.

As you all know his grade was 1 dan, achieved in 1986, but much more importantly he was our Bookseller for more than 10 years. On his retirement from this role in 2010 he had been appointed a Life Member of the BGA, at which occasion this picture was taken.

The funeral will be at the Shrewsbury crematorium at 2.00 on Friday November 25, followed by a light buffet at a local hotel - venue yet to be decided.

Donations will be collected at the service and will be for the Severn Hospice where Gerry spent his final days. According to Simon Mills it is a truly wonderful place.

The BGA will be represented there by our Treasurer, Toby Manning.

Andrew Kay stopped Matthew Cocke's run of three titles in a row at the Three Peaks Tournament in Grange-Over-Sands. Andrew beat Matthew in their fourth-round game to allow Andrew to increase his current titles to four. Andrew Simons also won four wins to come third, only losing to Matthew. Other players winning four out of five were Chris Kirkham (4k Manchester), Ron Bell (4k Borders), Adrian Abrahams (10k Lancaster) and Eggert Fruchtenicht (13k Lancaster). Tony Pitchford was given a sepcial prize for helping out on day 1 when organiser Bob Bagot was not there. 38 players took part.

Results