UK Tournament Report

The British Pair Go Championship settled into a new home for the 24th edition, as the old venue had closed down. The event was held in the Red Lion in Hatfield, less than five minutes walk from both the station and the historic old town area. This is now also the venue for the Welwyn Garden City Tournament.

Due to the busy calendar and some illness, there were only 10 pairs taking part and so they were split into six for the open section and four for the handicap section. Winning the top section and returning to the champions position were Natasha Regan and Matthew Cocke and winning the handicap section were Jil Segerman and Patrick Ridley.

The Fighting Spirit prizes went to Edwina Lee and Charles Leedham-Green and to Roella and Edmund Smith.

Alex Rix (3d London) won the Bracknell Tournament. He beat Chris Bryant (1d St Albans) in the last round to claim the Clive Hendrie Trophy for a year. The number of players was down at 24, but nearly everyone got closely matched games due to a gap between 1k and 5k, and exactly 8 players 1k and above. Best of the 5k players was Steve Bailey (Arundel) who won all 3, but close behind was Eric Hall, also 5k (Swindon), who won two with a second round jigo. Daniel Peace (8k Oxford) also won three games.

The team prize was won by "SwinMaid" on a close decision from St Albans. Bruce Tinton (11k South London) won the problem solving contest, playing at his first tournament. The caption contest was won by popular acclaim by Shawn Hearn's "And this move is the Incy Wincy Spider Pincer."

Results

24 qualified players made it to the Midlands venue of the University of Warwick for the first stage of the 2014 British Championship, the Candidate's Tournament. They played over six rounds on the three days of the May Bank Holiday weekend. The only player to win all his games was Bei Ge. Only losing to Bei was defending champion Andrew Kay. Alex Kent, Boris Mitrovic and Sandy Taylor all tied for third at the top of the group on four wins. Sixth was Des Cann, seventh was Tim Hunt and eighth was local organiser Bruno Poltronieri. Alistair Wall was the final player on four wins and so becomes reserve for the Challengers' League, which is held the next bank holiday in London.

Results

The Bar-Low tournament was moved to Warwick University this year in order to regain its usual place alongside the Candidates' Tournament.

Chris Volk won four games, only losing to the dan level ghost player. Ben Ellis also won four, only losing to Chris. Those two agreed to have a blitz play-off game. This was won by Chris, so he took home the £30 top prize, while Ben took the second prize.

The tournament was generously sponsored, although the turnout was still low, so most of the players won cash prizes, including Peter Fisher who also won four out of five games, and everyone took home chocolate prizes.

Results

22 players attended the fourth Welwyn Garden City Tournament which this year was held at the Red Lion Public House in Hatfield.

The winner after a showdown on the top board was Paul Taylor (2d St Albans). Also winning 3 games out of 3 was Colin Maclennan (10k Twickenham). A prize for best young player was given to Edmund Smith (13k Cambridge) who won 2 games out of 3. Some smaller prizes were given at the organisers' whim to other winners of 2 games out of 3, including to Mark Baoliang Zhang (1k no club).

Results (Photo from Tony Collman)

The Spring edition of the London International Teams moved from its usual Sunday to a Saturday to fit in with its new venue, the Melton Mowbray in Holborn.

This time a strong team of French players took part, but they lost out on the tie-break of Captain's results (match result would have been the same) to the North London Club. So North London was first (2 wins 5 games), France was second (2 wins 5 games) and Central London A was third (1 win 5 games). Wanstead took fourth place (1 win 2 games) with Alistair Wall bravely playing simultaneous games as they were a player short.

18 people from 4d to 8k attended the 2014 Birmingham Tournament. Several players won two games, but only local player Andrew Kay won 3 games. He was the tournament winner beating Alex Kent in the last round.

The weather was amazing and there was a particularly enjoyable game review in the garden of the venue, Newman House (the University of Birmingham Catholic Chaplaincy).

Results

The third Skye tournament attracted thirty-six players, four more than the previous best. Four dan players, six kyu players and five late arrivals from Glasgow played in 9X9 leagues on the Friday evening; these were won by Matthew Macfadyen (6d Leamington), Nick Wedd (3k Oxford City) and Donald MacLeod (4k Glasgow) respectively.

Matthew Macfadyen also won the main tournament, with six wins. Ulf Olsson (3d Gothenburg) was second with five wins. Joseff Thomas (13k Glasgow University) and Gediminas Sarpis (20k Glasgow University) also won five games. On four wins each were Matthew Reid (1d Cambridge), Sue Paterson (4k Arundel), Rob Payne (7k Edinburgh) and Alasdair Clarke (11k Edinburgh).

The prizes again included bottles of "Skye Monkey Jump Ale", with Go quotes on the back labels replacing the Go proverbs of two years ago; those quoted range from Confucius to Captain James T Kirk. Local firms and craftspeople donated prizes, Diageo again gave a bottle of Talisker single malt.

Jon Diamond (4d) won the Trigantius Tournament in Cambridge for the first time. He beat ex-Cambridge student Will Brooks (3d) in the last round, to end top of the list of 35 players.

Jonathan Richman (5k) and Simon Mader (6k) were the two local players who won all 3 games. Tor Gillberg (11k) from the London City Club and local player Geoff Kaniuk (4k) both won 2 games out of 2.

Results

Photos by Kiyohiko Tanaka

On the Sunday evening of the European Youth Go championship at Bognor Regis an informal Pair Go tournament was held for both the children and adults.

There were ten mixed pairs in the main group and after three rounds the unbeaten winners were the young Polish children Marianna Szychowiak (aged 9) and Wojceich Malkiewicz (aged 10). They beat Germany's mother and son pairing of Manja and Ferdinand Marz (aged 7) in the final.

In the same sex doubles section two of the 16 teams ended with three wins: French teenagers Matthias Mangin and Sylvain Bousquet and Czech girls Adriana Tomsu and Dita Vasova.

Results Photos