UK Tournament Report

The 48th London Open ended in a tie. So many of the 70 players were strong that the bar was at 5 dan and the three best players ran out of sensible opponents for the last round. As a consequence the players and organisers agreed that no arbitary tie-break would be applied in the case of a draw. In the end one of the three lost and it was two players, Minseong Kim (7d Korea) and Yaoling Yang (6d Bristol), that were declared joint winners, both on 6/7. Chun Fang (5d Edinburgh) had to be content with third place on 5/7.

Those not reported here already:

Confucius Cup (Irish Open), Dublin - 24th-25th September - 39 players
Winner Stanislaw Frejlak (1p Poland).
Second Dohyup Kim (7d Korea).
Results

Sheffield - 9th October - 20 players
Winner Alvina Kwok (1d London).
Second Richard Wheeldon (1d London).
3/3 Bjorn Eurenius (7k Lancaster),
Steve Andrews (13k, Lincoln).
Results

It was good to resume the Northern after the two year pandemic break by returning to Cheadle Hulme School on Sunday 20th November. Sizeable contingents from Sheffield University and Lancaster added to the pupils at the school and others to bring the total attendance to 32. The overall winner was Junlin Lei, 5d from Lancaster, shown here on the right receiving his prize. Zhang Wei, 5d from Manchester, was in second place.

The Swindon Tournament was back on and at its usual Conservative Club venue in the old town part of Swindon. 21 players took part, with a small top group of 3d and above. In the end there was no unique winner as three Chinese players all beat each other. Unfortunately for Changhao Huang (5d UCL) his SOS was one point worse than the other two, so Oxford University's Guodong Cao (4d) and UCL's Peikai Xue (4d) tied for first. Jonathan Evans (1d) was the only player to win three games and got the only prize below the bar. Results

Congratulations go to Zeyu Qiu (5d, Birmingham) who won the Edinburgh Open Tournament 2022 with three wins from three games. Also on three wins was Florian Pein (13k, Lancaster); prizes also went to everyone on two wins. Results

The Mind Sports Olympiad returned to being a physical event and was held at the usual venue of the JW3, a community centre on London's Finchley Road. Remarkably this year half of the 26 players in the MSO Go Open (19x19) tournament were juniors and as well most of the adults were Chinese students. A view of part of the playing room is above.

The Welsh Open returned for its 28th edition on the 25th and 26th June. The venue was once more the Min Y Mor Hotel in Barmouth, which gives the chance to stay on site, to socialise over the Saturday evening dinner or to quickly pop to the beach and enjoy the weather. A total of 22 players came to play including a number from South Wales, North West and South West England and further away.

We held the first physical tournament in Durham since 2019 on 11-12th June. Nearly 30 people came with a whole range of ranks from some strong dan players to DDKs. While several players were from the North East, the majority had travelled from all corners of England and Scotland to attend. It was good to see so many familiar faces after an interval of two years for Covid.

Congratulations to Gaoge Wang, from London , who got an unbeaten 6/6 to win the 2022 Candidates'. Also congratulations go to Bruno Poltronieri from Cambridge who was runner up with 5/6. The tournament was played over three days of the Jubilee holiday at the Letchworth Settlement in Letchworth Garden City. 16 players took part, notably including four juniors. One of these, Scott Cobbold, won four games, as did Tim Hunt. Gaoge and Bruno will now play a best-of-three match for the British Championship. Results