UK Tournament Report

Organiser Alison Bexfield wished that all the 26 players at the first Letchworth Rapid Play had fun, and the thirty minute time limits saw most games ending in fun battles and not reaching their natural end. The venue was the Central Methodist Church in Letchworth Garden City which allowed the main group of players to be in the hall, but also a group of junior novices to be able to play 13x13 games in a side room.

Prizes were awarded by sections. The Open section winner was Tim Hunt (2d Milton Keynes) with six wins. Major Section (3k-9k) was won by Ben Ellis (3k Milton Keynes) randomly picked from the group on two wins by his daughter Sophie. Minor Section (10k-20k) winner was John Collins (10k St Albans).

The 45th Wessex Tournament was held at St Mark’s Community Centre once again, as usual taking place on the day the clocks go back. 34 players competed for trophies.

Tongzhou Cai, a 3-dan student from Glasgow, travelled furthest and took victory as overall winner. Other winners were Martin Harvey (5k) and Dick Norton (8k), both from Manchester. Saving face for the southerners was Peter Collins (2k, Bristol). All these four won three games.

Thanks go to the organisers, including Ian Sharpe and David King.

Results

There were 12 players in this year's tournament, held in Robinson College in Cambridge. As usual there were some excellent cakes.

The overall winner was determined by even games with double elimination. Most other games were handicap games. Games played with handicaps are shown in red. A couple of games in the first round were affected by dodgy clocks, but thankfully nobody complained too much and the problem was then sorted with the help of Andrew's phone.

Paul Smith (pictured) was the organiser, and also winner for the second time. He celebrated by going to watch the American singer-songwriter Dean Friedman performing in St Ives.

The junior winner was Melchior Chui.

Jon Diamond seems to only win the East Midlands in even years, so having won in 2010 and 2012, he was back as champion in 2014. He was one of several BGA council members in the Leicester area for the weekend, as there was a council meeting on the Sunday.

The only other player on three wins was Edwina Lee (Maidenhead).

32 players took part.

As the main organiser fell ill, the full results were delayed.

Results

Game 2 of the best of five title match for the British Championship was played on Sunday 12th October in Milton Keynes, the day after game 1.

Current champion Andrew Kay played white against Alex Kent and won by resignation at about 15:30 to give him a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five match.

The game was again broadcast in the British Room of KGS (gokgs.com) by BGAadmin.

Photos

Details of British Go Championship

Game 1 of the best of five title match for the British Championship was played on Saturday 11th October in Milton Keynes. Current champion Andrew Kay from Birmingham played black against Alex Kent from Chepstow, starting at 10:00 with a break for lunch (at a ramen restaurant).

The game was broadcast in the British Room of KGS (gokgs.com). Andrew won by resignation at about 15:30

Photos

Details of British Go Championship

The autumn edition of the London International Teams stayed at the Melton Mowbray pub and again on a Saturday, but this time the teams had five players.

A North London Go Club player raised a team of players from around London to defend the title. They managed to win all three matches, by three boards to two, to retain the trophy.

The other three teams each won a match and the order on games won was second Wanstead, third Nippon and fourth SLGC from South London.

As usual all players won a prize but those especially noted for winning all three games were Aja Huang (6d), Shunsuke Sakairi (3d) and Roger Daniel (5k).

Jitka Bartova (1d) was visiting the UK from Prague for a weekend with her friend Ngoc-Trang Cao who is a current member of Leamington Club. Luckily John Green could give them both a lift to the Swindon Tournament, so Jitka could promote the 2015 European Go Congress in Liberec and also win the tournament, to make a perfect weekend away.

Simon Shiu had stopped Ngoc-Trang from winning another event in round one, but Simon lost to Jitka in round two. This lead to a final-round clash with Bristol's Richard Hunter (2d), the only other top player on two wins. The game was the last to finish and ended equal on the board, but Jitka held the white stones to win by the komi. Her win, plus two wins by her friend and two wins by her driver, meant that Leamington was the best club.

The Shropshire Tournament took place in the countryside again. Numbers were somewhat down, with several cancellations on health grounds, but there was more competition this year at the top end. The overall winner was Bruno Poltronieri (3d) with Alistair Wall (2d) in second place. Jonathan Green (4k) also scored three wins.

The side event was a quiz to mark up, at leisure between rounds, the value of a yose move in 16 positions on boards set out on the bar. As it is not realistic to aim for perfect answers, the scoring process removed one mark for each point in error. While the dan players were consistently in the right ballpark, it was striking to see by how much even good SDK players underestimated the value of moves. This led to a lively half-hour review and theory session. The winning performance was from Bruno Poltronieri and Brent Cutts received a prize for the best grade-adjusted performance.

The first of the three events during a very sunny weekend in Penzance was a teaching session on the Saturday morning. Toby Manning led a review of a pro game and set the students a yose problem, whilst Tony Atkins reviewed the status of the J-Group based on the lyrics of a Go song by Neil Symes.

The first of the tournaments, on the Saturday afternoon, saw 20 players taking part. The rapid-play Handicap Tournament was won by local player Paul Massey (1k) who beat visitor Chris Volk (1k) in the final. Steve Ashton (14k Devon) was the lowest graded player to win 3 out of 4. Results

On the Sunday the number of players rose to 22. The Open was played as usual over three rounds and the venue, The Queen's Hotel, provided an excellent buffet lunch as ever.