Wins on boards 2 and 4 for the UK ensured the honours were split evenly between the UK and Austria.

Captain Will Brooks finally broke his duck, and Jon Diamond did his duty as president, while misfortune befell Matthew Macfadyen and Andrew Simons.

The season is nearing its end with only 2 more matches to be played (vs. Slovenia and Spain). For more details, see the BGA Euroteams page

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p> The 2011 Youth Championships had 24 competitors aged from 7 to 18, with strengths from 2 dan to 30 kyu. The new library block at Bloxham School in Oxfordshire served as a great venue. Mazhar Warraich from Aston won the youth championship with 4 straight wins including beating Tian-Ren Chen from Loughborough.

David Ward (3 dan) won his local tournament, the Cambridge Trigantius, without having to share the title as he did in 2000. 36 players took part at St Columba's Church in the centre of the city. Other players winning all three games were Michael Charles (1kyu St Albans), Brook Roberts (4kyu Cambridge) and Jan Poslusny (6kyu Prague). The 13x13 was won by Juan Leonardo Martínez-Hurtado (15 kyu Cambridge) and the animal puzzles were solved by Patrick Batty (South London).

Nine novices, including four complete beginners, attended the parallel novices' event. No prize was awarded, because the tournament turned into another teaching session instead, but special commendations must go to Jack Chen, Sam Austin and Mark Slatter for their progress during the day.

Results

Vanessa Wong was second at the EYGC for a second year running. She lost, as last year, to Mateusz Surma from Poland who retained the under-16 title. Also travelling to the beautiful setting of the lakeside Santon Hotel in Brno, Czechia, were sisters Kelda and Roella Smith from Cambridge. In the under-12s Roella won 2 games at 11k to place 13th and Kelda won 3 at 20k to place 41st. Vladsylav Verteleckyi from the Ukraine was the under-12 champion.

Results

Finland's Antti Tormanen (6 dan) tied with Wei Wang (6dan) in the 62 player Irish Open. This was Antti's fourth tournament win of the Pandanet Go European Cup, which put him top in the points table with 57. Wei Wang, studying in London but being Chinese, is ineligible for Pandanet points, so the next points went to Slovakia's Lisy Pavol (5 dan) and Czechia's Ondrej Silt (6 dan) in equal third. This put Csaba Mero and Ondrej Silt equal second in the Pandanet points table on 51.
The other point places went to Willem-Koen Pomstra from the Netherlands, Juri Kuronen from Finland, Quentin Mills from the UK, Gavin Rooney from Ireland and Germany's Bernd Sambale.

Patrik Macek (6 kyu Slovakia) won all five and the following each won four: Jan Reichelt (1 kyu Germany), Martin Klemsa (2 kyu Czechia), Marek Fulle (4 kyu Slovakia), Peter Kollarik (9 kyu Slovakia) and Marek Gutowski (13 kyu Poland).

Results

As usual, many of the players in Dublin for the Irish Open congregated in the Teachers' Club on the Friday night for the Irish Rapid handicap tournament. The 26 players had to cope with the decreasing time limits and the handicap-plus-one games. Best at coping was Ian Davis (1 dan) from Belfast. Second, losing to Ian in the fifth round, was Jan Reichelt (1 kyu) from Germany. Also winning 4 were Cork's Gavin Rooney (2 dan) and France's Jean-Philippe Leduc (1 dan).

Results

Team leader Will Brooks lost again, but the team still beat Croatia thanks to wins from Matthew Madfadyen, Andrew Simons and Nick Krempel.

The 3-1 win puts the UK in a much safer position for avoiding relegation, nearing the end of the season.

BGA Euroteams page

"The Ring of Water" is the fifth book in the Young Samurai series of teenage novels by Chirs Bradford. It was published by Puffin on 3rd March 2011. Its hero is an English boy stranded in 17th Century Japan who has learnt to be a Samurai in order to survive. In this book he has to play a game of Go against a Japanese lord in order to gain freedom for him and his friends.

Chong Han (5 dan Loughborough) won his first UK tournament by taking with ease the 8th Nottingham. Also winning 3 were Roger Daniel (5 kyu London), Maria Tabor (6 kyu Nottingham), David Crabtree (9 kyu Chester) and Andrew Russell (12 kyu Birmingham). Mike Charles won the 9x9 prize and Toby Manning the quiz prize.

Results

A pretty bad disaster today: we had major troubles trying to get a team together on the Tuesday night that the Swedes insisted that we play on. (The rules entitle them to do so.)

So we came up one board light and to avoid deduction of two Board Points rather than one, Jon played as Board 1 and we left Board 2 empty: Swedes 1:GB 0 before we started.

It's Paul's first match and he had major troubles with getting in and finding the Playing Room, but he eventually got going.

Then Jon got in an unfortunate fight, lost quite a few critical stones (probably with a number of misplays) and couldn't recover by killing another group. So Sweden 2:0.

Sadly, the other two games weren't very favourable either, with the Swedes cruising to easy wins in both, so a comprehensive defeat 4:0.