UK Tournament Report

The 49th London Open was dominated by two Chinese boys who between themselves won all three tournaments. Some may remember Yue Wen from when he lived in London about five years ago and was 7k. He is shown here playing Charlie Akerblom on the top board. His brother Qi Wen was too young to compete then.

Because the 2022 edition of the British Small Board Championship was delayed until February, the 2023 edition on the afternoon of Saturday 18th November became the second of the year. Both were held in Pembroke College Old Library in Cambridge, but the second attracted four fewer players with 34. There was an overall winner prize of £25 provided by the BGA and this went to local student Tunyang Xie (5d).

It was a rainy November Sunday in Greater Manchester, writes organiser Chris Kirkham, but the atmosphere in the Go tournament was even better than usual. The attendance, at 56 players, was the largest it has been for many years, and the location, in the underpass of Cheadle Hulme School, even better than in recent years, when it was in the dining room above.

There were 32 kyu-graded players in this year's Bar Low. The event was hosted as before at the London Go Centre thanks to their organising team of Gerry, Richard and Peter. Thanks to the event's continuing ongoing anonymous sponsor all the prize winners, shown in the photo left, were able to order a Go book of their choice up to £25.

The event took place as usual at St Marks Community Centre in Bath. Turnout was good, after a few late withdrawals and some on the day entrants they had 36 players and one unnecessary ‘ghost’. It was especially pleasing to see a number of new faces. Possibly the main downside of the day was the parking; Bath Council seems to be making a good job of deterring all traffic from the city centre. The organisers will look into what can be done for next year.

The Sheffield Tournament had 38 entrants, reports organiser David Wildgoose. The bar was set at 1k providing six players above the bar and was eventually won by Peikai Xue (4d UCL). Five players gained prizes for winning all three of their games. Other than Peikai they were all from Cheadle Hulme: Megan Upton (14k), James Zhao (16k), Claude Robinson (27k) and Pip Hawkes (34k). Results

The Edinburgh Open was again held at the "St Columba's by the Castle" Episcopal Church Hall. This year, nice weather meant they could use the garden of the church hall as a review space. Overall turnout was up on last year with 29 players and pleasingly included three first-time tournament players.

The bar was set at 2k, which made for a very competitive field of seven players who could win the competition. Local player Grzegorz Kudla (2k) won the tournament with three wins from three games, following a tense final game with Ai Guan (Birmingham 1k).

The 27th Mind Sports Olympiad (MSO) took place in its regular venue of the JW3 centre in London. As usual a large number of games fans from around the world, including this time a large team of Koreans, assembled to play a long and varied list of games. Some Go players competed in several games: Ai Guan, Paul Smith and Caleb Monk; Natasha Regan was the Women's Pentamind champion. Details of all MSO results are on the MSO Database.

On 24-25 June, the switch back to Barmouth's Dragon Theatre proved popular with the 30 attendees, who took advantage of a rare whole-weekend tournament on the BGA calendar. The theatre was the tournament's very first venue in the seaside town, back in 1993. It felt good for the event to be supporting a fine, renovated community amenity, for this 29th edition.

The weather was mixed, but there were chances to climb the cliffs for views of the town, its wide bay and the start of Snowdonia national park's scenic mountainous region.

The Cheshire, which had been postponed from March because of a train strike, took place on Saturday 1st July at Frodsham Community Centre. North-west clubs were well represented: Liverpool club provided five of the 32 players, Manchester eight players, Lancaster four players and Chester four players.