UK Tournament Report

The Candidates' Tournament, the first stage in the British Championship, was held for the first time in Edinburgh, to allow more Scottish players to take part.

The British Champion, Andrew Kay, requested to take part, despite being guaranteed a place in the Challengers' League by the rules, and convincingly won the event, for the third year running.

14 players attended the 2013 Cambridge Bar-Low, Mike Cockburn, 1 kyu from St Albans, won the tournament again, 12 years after he last won it. He scored an unbeaten 5 wins out of 5.

Prizes were also awarded to Roger Daniel, 5 kyu from London, with 4 wins, and Richard Mullens, 5 kyu from London City, third by tie-break, with 3 wins.

Results

The Stacey Grand Prix for 2013 ended with the British Open recently and although it was close right up to the end Toby Manning needed to win at least two more games in Stevenage than Andrew Simons to take the title.

He didn't, so Andrew went one place better than 2012 and won with a total of 29 wins. Toby came second with 26 wins, with Richard Hunter third on 17 wins.

Francis Roads, who has been the most consistent player over the years and winner eight times, only managed to come 7th this year.

Full details are here

In the first Birmingham Tournament since 2002, there were 38 entrants from all across the UK. Andrew Simons won the tournament. Other notable performances were Patrick Batty (6k London) and Anthony Pitchford (11k Chester) who both won all 3 games and Oscar Selby (10k Epsom) and Fassal Mahmood (5k Birmingham) who jointly won the 13x13 side event.

Results

Cambridge ran away with the Open Division at the Spring London International Teams. All three members of the team (Andrew Simons, David Ward and Jonathan Chin) won all three games.

The South London Go Club won a very closely contested Handicap Division by their match result against second placed Twickenham. Ryohei Oda came within a point of winning all three games, leaving match organiser Jonathan Turner to overcome handicaps of 6, 7 and 8 stones to be the only player in that division to win all his games.

Results

Zebin Du, a Chinese 4d from Nottingham University, won the British Open winning all 6 games. Second was Yuanbo Zhang, also 4d, with 5 wins. A group of 4d came next with 4 wins: Andrew Kay, T Mark Hall, and Andrew Simons. Winning 5 games lower down were Alan Thornton (1k St Albans), Peter Collins (3k Bristol), Peter Harold-Barry (5k St Albans), Andrew Russell (6k Birmingham), Pat Ridley (10k Chester) and Oscar Selby (12k Epsom). Prizes were awarded by divisions:

Division 1 (1-3d) : First Christian Scarff (4 wins), Second Harry Fearnley (3 wins)
Division 2 (1-4k): First Alan Thornton (5 wins), Second Peter Collins (5 wins)
Division 3 (5-8k): First Peter Harold-Barry (5 wins), Second Andrew Russell (5 wins)
Division 4 (9-12k): First Patrick Ridley (5 wins), Second Oscar Selby (5 wins)

The 2013 British Youth Go Championship attracted 27 competitors aged from 7 to 18, with strengths from 37 kyu to 1 dan. The kind hosts this year were King Edward VI School at Aston, Birmingham. The organisers would also like to note their gratitude to the Castledine-Barnes Trust, for facilitating the entry of certain players.

Tian-Ren Chen (1d) from Loughborough retained the youth title beating school mate Matei Mandache (5k) into second.

Prizes and places went to:

U18: Tian-Ren Chen, 2nd: Matei Mandache
U16: Melchior Chui (Cambridge Chess-Go), 2nd: Peran Truscott (Cambridge Chess-Go)
U14: Hasan Nisar (Aston), 2nd: Hugh Banes (Bloxham)
U12: Dylan Zhu-Dong (Leamington), 2nd: Max Kirkham (Bloxham)
U10: Oscar Selby (Epsom), 2nd: Anthony Ghica (Newmarket)

Despite the venue having staffing problems that caused a change from the Sunday to the Saturday, 40 players attended the Cambridge Trigantius at Parkside Community College. Andrew Simons (3d) was again the winner. This time he beat the new organiser, David Ward (2d) in the last round. Equal second with David was local student Jamie Taylor (1d), a former under-18 champion. Tim Hunt (2d) also won two to come fourth. Two local students, Tom Eccles (5k) and Joe He (9k) won all three games and they, and all those on two wins, were rewarded with prizes.

Results

26 players attended the 3rd Welwyn Garden City Go Tournament, held in the Bridge room of the Gosling Stadium.

With a surprise win over Andrew Simons in round 3, the tournament winner was Michael Webster (1D London). Also on three wins was Michael Charles (1K St Albans).

Prizes were also given to those winning two games; these were Andrew Simons (4D Cambridge), David Ward (2D Cambridge), Francis Roads (1D Wanstead), Chris Hodge (1K from St Albans), Simon Bexfield (1K Letchworth), Stephen Bailey (4K West Surrey), Geoff Kaniuk (4K Cambridge), Richard Mullens (5K London City Go Club), Patrick Batty (6K London) and David Lorking (6K Billericay).

Prizes were again awarded by Barbara Kime from the Bridge Club (who protested at the lack of female players!) and afterwards several of the players joined Derrick and Barbara Kime at the Chinese Buffet in the centre of town.

Results

The 2013 Oxford-Cambridge Match was held in St Edmund Hall, Oxford, on Sunday 17th February, the day after the Oxford Tournament.

The Match consisted of two rounds, 50 mins each, with 30/5 Canadian overtime, and 7.5 komi for even games.

All games were played using handicaps - one less than the normal correct handicap, so giving the advantage to the stronger player/team. 14 of the 21 games were played even.

There were 11 players on each side. Cambridge had the strongest player (Li Shen), and Oxford the weakest. The playing strengths ranged from 5 dan to 12 kyu, with a majority of the players being dan level, and an average of about 1 kyu. On average, Oxford was 1/2 a stone stronger than Cambridge.