The postponed Edinburgh Christmas Open saw a slightly reduced turnout at 33 players.

Having earlier been presented with the 2010 Scottish Championship trophy, David Lee (2 dan Dundee) also triumphed on the day. Runners up on 3/4 were Andrew Kay (4 dan Durham) and Matthew Scott (2 dan Newcastle). Also receiving prizes for 3 wins were Jenny Radcliffe (4 kyu Durham), Eevi Korhonen (7 kyu Tampere), Rob Payne (9 kyu Edinburgh), Andrew Bate (10 kyu Durham) and William Grayson (12 kyu Edinburgh), who was 3/3 as a ghost.

The Scottish championship 2011 semi-finals were decided to be David Lee v Martha McGill and Piotr Wisthal v Glynn Forsythe.

Results

After some struggle with dates we were given permission to bend the rules and play this match over two days.

On day 1 (Tuesday) Des Cann lost, as he described it, an unloseable game and Andrew Simons won a lost one, so the score was 1:1.

Day 2 (Wednesday) didn't go according to plan, with Matthew Macfadyen having some shape problems and then losing after a ko struggle. Jon Diamond was doing nicely, but allowed a group to be cut off and could only manage a ko without sufficient ko threats...

So a 3:1 loss in the end - must try harder!

Full details and game records at BGA Euroteams page

Andrew Simons (3 dan) from Cambridge won the tie-break that separated the top players at the 56-player Maidenhead-Hitachi Tournament. Second was Tom Brand (3 dan) from Reading and third was Nick Krempel (3 dan) from London. Winning 3/3 were David Ward (2 dan), Baron Allday (1 kyu), David Hall (8 kyu), Pat Ridley (11 kyu) and Jan Poslusny (9 kyu) from Prague.

On Sunday 16th January, Matthew Macfadyen beat Vanessa Wong in the fourth game of the 2010 British Championship match. This put Matthew 3-1 ahead in the 5-game match. Matthew is therefore the 2010 British Champion.

Congratulations to Roella Smith who held on to her lead to win the 2010 Youth Grand Prix. Jamie Taylor held on to second, and Roella's younger sister Kelda managed to get third place, just beating Barney Shiu.

Final results

Britain (Represented by Matthew Macfadyen, Jon Diamond, Des Cann and Andrew Simons) drew with Denmark in the third round, with Jon blotting his copy book (badly) this time.

Full details and game records at BGA Euroteams page

The team score is now one win, one loss and one draw.

There was a meeting of BGA Council on 28th November 2010. Here are the highlights:

The London Open was again sponsored by the Nippon Club, Pandanet and Winton Capital Management, but attendance was a little down this year, no doubt due to the extremely cold weather and snow-related travel difficulties that immediately preceded Christmas. Luckily this had disappeared by the time the London Open started and 99 players turned up to play in this, by now traditional 4 day event, finishing on New Year's Eve.

Wang Wei (6 dan), who had just moved from Cork to London (but is originally from China) was thought to be the favourite for the Open being the previous year's runner up. Indeed after four rounds only Wang Wei and Antti Tormanen (6 dan) from Oulu in Finland were unbeaten at the top - they played in round 5; Antti won after an epic battle. Annti then won his last two games to be unbeaten and take first place.

The second season of the online team league has now been concluded.

Congratulations to Dundee on winning the Championship - the eventual outcome depended on a game between Yohei Negi and Yangran Zhang played on 15th December, won by Yohei for Dundee over CLGC A who came a close second with Edinburgh not far behind.

In Division 2 Billericay Dickies just clinched the title on "goal difference" (one more game won) over St Albans to take the lead and win promotion.

In Division 3 CLGC B convincingly took the lead and the promotion spot. Second place were Cambridge B.

In Division 4 Edinburgh 2 convincingly won promotion to division 3.

Britain (Represented by Matthew Macfadyen, Jon Diamond, Des Cann and Andrew Simons) scored an excellent 3-1 victory against Belgium in the second round, with Jon maintaining his perfect record.

Full details and game records at BGA Euroteams page