UK Tournament Report

The 42nd London Open has got underway at ISH in London. 74 players took part in the first round, lower than expected thanks to Bank Holiday travel problems.

On hand to do game analysis and lectures is the professional from Romania, Catalin Taranu (5p).

Results

Despite being very near to Christmas and at a new venue near Edinburgh Castle, St Columba's by the Castle Episcopal Church Hall, 16 players managed to take part.

Tied at the top on three wins out of four and equal SOS were "Henry" Hongyi Chen (2d) from Glasgow and Polish player Jakub Ziomko (1d) from Aberdeen.

Two further prizes for three wins were awarded to Ben Lloyd (3k Edinburgh) and Ron Bell (5k Borders).

Results

Local club player Ruizhu Wu (5d) won the Coventry Tournament at Warwick University. He beat Guoqiang Sun (5d Warwick Uni) into second place by winning their game in the final round. Former club organiser Bruno Poltronieri (4d Cambridge) took third place. Andre Cockburn (6k Nottingham) won all three games, as did Simon Andre (8k Leicester). Edmund Smith (8k Cambridge) took the junior prize.

Despite a late start thanks to the car delivering sets getting stuck in traffic on what was a rather windy day, the 38 players were able to leave by 19:00 even if they stayed for the prize-giving.

Results

The Bexfield family managed to have the winner in each of the two sections at the South London Tournament. Alison (1d) won the four-player teachers' section and Charlotte (10k) won the 16-player handicap section. Both wins were awarded by the lowest grade tie-break, Alison from Alex Rix and Tim Hunt, and Charlotte from Paolo Capriotti (5k Nottingham). The lowest graded players on two wins, who also won prizes, were David Siegwart, Ben Murphy, Francesco Chiarini, and Ryan Nguyen.

Results

In the morning before the tournament the 16 students were taught by four teachers - Nick Krempel, Alex Rix, Tim Hunt and Alison Bexfield. Nick was replaced by the strongest student, Bruce Tinton, for the tournament.

The 2015 British Youth Go Championships (BYGC) featured 34 competitors, aged from 6 to 17 (including two foreign players currently resident in the UK), with strengths from 2 dan to 35 kyu.
King Edward VI (Aston) School, Birmingham, was again the venue, thanks to Andrew Russell.
All games were played on full-sized (19 by 19) boards.

To determine the overall winner, Oscar Selby had to play and beat Alex Terry in a rapid play-off game.

Section Winners (Runners Up)

Youth Champion: Oscar Selby (Alex Terry)
U18: Alex Benton (Kapriel Chiarini)
U16: Alex Terry (Hasan Nisar)
U14: Oscar Selby (Jack Nolan)
U12: Edmund Smith (Aidan Wong)
U10: Alexander Hsieh
U8: Jianzhou Mei (Andreas Ghica)

The Three Peaks went very well at its current location of the Commodore in Grange-over-Sands, though it was a very wet and windy weekend. 32 players took part.

As organiser Bob Bagot is moving away from the town, next year will either have a new organiser or a new venue. Any volunteers contact Bob.

Jitka Bartova (2d Leamington) won the tournament with five wins out of five. Richard Hunter (2d Bristol) came second with four wins. Other prizes to Eggert Fruchtenicht (10k) for 5/5, Dave Horan (7k Chester) for 4/5 and Anthony Pitchford (10k Chester) for 3/4.

Roger Daniel gallantly declined the wine or chocolates offered to him for being the first to enter.

Results

Ngoc-Trang Cao (3d), the strong French player from Leamington Club, won the 2015 Wessex. She beat Jim Clare, Sandy Taylor and Richard Hunter to take the title. The only other player of the 34 entrants to win all three games was Roella Smith (9k) from Cambridge Juniors.

As before the venue was St Mark's Community Centre in Bath and the day was very sunny with a chance to explore the city centre or watch the marathon runners at lunch time.

Results

The twice-yearly London International Teams match was back after a break in the spring. This time it was held at the venue of the new West London Go Club, the Young Chelsea Bridge Club, near to Goldhawk Road underground station in Shepherd's Bush.

North London Go Club was run-away winner, their A-team only dropping one game. This means they have now won the last three such team tournaments. Cambridge was second by virtue of their team captain having more wins than that of the North London B-team, whilst a fierce battle for last place was won by Nippon.

The first Sheffield Go Tournament was surprisingly well attended (by 39), which meant they could afford to make modest cash prizes to the winner and runner-up. The winner was Alistair Wall (2d) and the runner up was Paul Smith (1d). On three wins were Matt Marsh (5k), Colin Maclennan (9k) and youth player Zaki Betesh (15k). The youth players were also awarded prizes for two wins (Jacob Haynes (15k), Daniel Gascoyne (18k), Tom Bradbury (19k) and Adam Powell (22k)). Lily Danson won a prize for being the youngest female player in the tournament. In a 13 by 13 side tournament, the overall winner was 10-year-old Edmund Smith (8k) and 10-year-old Yusuf Hussain (22k) played the most games – both won small cash prizes.

Results

There was a very exciting start to the British Go Championship Title Match on Saturday 26th September. It was between the top two players from the Challengers' League: Andrew Kay (5d) who is current Champion and Andrew Simons (4d). It was held in Cambridge, thanks to Geoff Kaniuk, with help of others from Cambridge Go Club, and was broadcast live on KGS.

By lunchtime, most people watching felt that Andrew Simons (playing black after winning nigiri) was comfortably ahead. However it was a quite remarkable game, with big exchanges and ko fights continuing right up to move 300.