UK Tournament Report

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.

The Bank of East Asia (BEA) generously provided the central Manchester venue for the 2014 Northern. The tournament-winner was Ngoc-Trang Cao (1d), from France, enjoying a purple patch after her win in Belfast just a few days beforehand. The runner-up was also female, Ewa Mos (1d) from Poland who lives here and is a regular attendee at Manchester Go Club. 'Girl Power' thus ruled the roost, with three male players losing out on SOS.

Also winning prizes were Tony Pitchford (10k Chester) for 2.5 wins, and the organiser and club secretary Chris Kirkham (3k Manchester) for 3 wins.

The reduced entry fee probably was a major cause for the increase in numbers to 34, and substantial sponsorship of the prize fund by Sam Properties led to seven of these players being dans - a significantly better proportion than in recent Northerns.

The Belfast Tournament moved back to its usual end of summer slot, but stayed at its usual venue of the Belfast Boat Club. 14 players took part, but some of the locals were not able to play in every round.

The winner was Ngoc-Trang Cao (1d France), who some people would have seen at some English tournaments earlier in the year. She won all her games, beating the organiser, James Hutchinson (1d), in the final round. Piotr Gawron (6k Poland), James Aitken (13k Belfast) and Sheena Walsh (16k Dublin) won three games out of five.

Results Photos

London player Aja Huang (5d), originally from Taiwan, won all three Go Gold medals at the 2014 MSO.

On the Sunday morning he won all four of his games in the seven-player 9x9 tournament. Chris Bryant won the Silver medal for three wins and a Bronze went to each of Francis Roads and Martyn Hamer who were tied in third on two wins. Results

On the Sunday afternoon Aja won all four of his games in the eight-player 13x13 tournament. Paul Smith won the Silver medal for three wins and a Bronze went to Chris Bryant on tie break from Francis Roads and Ben Lloyd on two wins. Results

The main 19x19 tournament was held on a very wet Bank Holiday Monday; it attracted 12 players.

The promised sunshine took a long time to arrive, but 25 players enjoyed themselves at the Milton Keynes tournament overlooking the Open University cricket pitch. The overall winner was Alistair Wall, who beat French player Ngoc-Trang Cao (Nyoshi) in the final. The only other player on thee wins was young Spike Shamoon (20k London City).

St Albans (Alistair Wall as guest member, Peter Harold-Barry and Alan Thornton) won the team prize, and Tim Hunt was the best of ten in the Milton Keynes Go side event with 5 wins out of 6. Paul Barnard was awarded a special prize for taking all the sets away with him back to Swindon.

Results

23 Go players and their friends descended on Barmouth in mid-Wales for the Welsh Open last weekend. In a gloriously sunny weekend, the 5 round tournament was won narrowly (on tie break) by Alastair Wall from Toby Manning, both of whom had 4/5.

The players all thanked Tony and Sue Pitchford, who between them had run the tournament for many years, and who were handing over to Martin and Helen Harvey.

Results

This year the Durham Tournament was held in the Pemberton Rooms on Palace Green, between the historic Cathedral and Castle. There were 25 entrants ranging from 28k to 4d, including eight who had never played in a tournament before, and with the youngest player being 8 years old. On the Saturday night there was an all-you-can-eat Go BBQ, which had almost 30 people eating, drinking, and playing Go - some until gone midnight.

Durham alumnus Alex Kent (3d) won the Go Tournament, winning a Goat Ornament, and a 6 month subscription to Baduk TV English, kindly donated by Go Game Guru, retaining the title he won in 2013. Lightning and Small Board side events were won by Silas Maughan and Jonathan Teddy McManus. Prizes were also given for 4 or more wins, including James Milne, who won all 6 of his games.

Results

The Challengers' League was held again at ISH in London over the bank holiday weekend, but this time it started a day later, on the Saturday, and ran to the Tuesday. Eight of the top players from the Candidates' Tournament, who were both available and managed to confirm their attendance, took part under the watchful eye of Jenny Radcliffe.

Reigning British Champion Andrew Kay won all his seven games to win the League. Alex Kent won five games, losing to Andrew and also to Harry Fearnley, to become the other player in the forthcoming title match. Third were Des Cann and Boris Mitrovic with 4 wins, fifth were Harry Fearnley and Alistair Wall with 3, Alex Rix was seventh with 2 and Kiyohiko Tanaka was eighth.

Results

In advance of the Commonwealth Games, a total of 25 players came to Glasgow for the 2014 Scottish Open, the same number as the previous year.

This year’s Scottish Open champion was David Lee (3d Dundee) on a perfect 6 wins. Bob Scantlebury (8k Sheffield) claimed 5 wins, and 4 wins were recorded by Joseff Thomas (10k Glasgow), Carel Goodheir (9k Skye) and runner-up Francis Roads (1d Wanstead).

A big difference this year was the generous sponsorship from the local branch of the Confucius Institute, which meant that fourteen players (all those on 3 wins or above) were able to select a book from the BGA bookstall.