UK Tournament Report

The rockets of the National Space Centre were appropriate for November 5th, but luckily none were fired during the East Midlands Go Tournament. Chong Han (5 dan) from Loughborough was the winner beating Francis Roads, Jon Diamond and Tony Atkins along the way. Two other of the 40 players won all three games, namely Chris Bryant (9 kyu) from St Albans club and Paul Reade (14 kyu) from Leamington. Francis Roads and Alistair Wall were awarded plaques for supporting the small small-board side tournament.

Results

Yunlong Liu, 3d, a temporary student in Scotland, won the 42nd Wessex Tournament in Bath. He beat the defending champion Andrew Kay by 2 points in the final. The only other player of the 30 participants to win all 3 games was Dylan Carter, 2k, from Cardiff.

Results

Ms Kobayashi Chizu, 5p, visited the UK in the middle of October. She gave two interesting game reviews to the players at the Autumn London International Teams match. Further details and results of this match, won by China A, are available. On the Monday she visited Oxford which ended with a very enjoyable Chinese meal attended both by local players and others from slightly further away such as Matthew Macfadyen. The following day in London Kobayashi-sensei met with officials from the BGA in her position as Overseas and Publications Director of the Nihon Ki-in.

The winner of this year's Shrewsbury tournament was Toby Manning, after a long struggle with Baron Allday, who creatively made eyes for two wandering dragons only to find his safe corner die as a result. Toby collected his prize at a run and departed to catch a plane to Kosovo, now less of a war zone than the Go board. Kathleen Timmins also won three games. Although numbers were down on last year, those present enjoyed the tournament and commented that the shift to Sunday had made travel and parking trouble free.

Results

Despite having trouble getting the community centre unlocked, the Swindon Tournament went well and attracted 36 players. Winning again after a gap of six years was Bei Ge (5 dan), who beat Francis Roads in the last round. Francis led the Wanstead club to victory in the team prize. The only other player to win all three games was young Aidan Putman (12 kyu) from Swindon, so a special prize went to Adan Mordcovich (2 kyu) for two good wins.

Results

In a nail-biting game in Camden Town, Matthew Macfadyen beat Nick Krempel to take the title of British Go Champion for - if your administrator can count after 8 hours of relaying a game - the twenty-fifth time.

The records of all three games are available in the championship section. Guo Juan has kindly commentated on all three games and has created free audio lectures about the first two; she will release a third about this game and that link, too, will be posted soon.

Thanks are due to Nick Wedd and Francis Roads for refereeing, and Kirsty Healey, Sally Prime and Laura Krempel for feeding everyone involved and general organisation (and also to Geoff Kaniuk and Alistair Wall for administering the earlier sections of the championship).

Richard Moulds won this year's Northern tournament. Although there were only 21 players, there were four other prize winners on maximum wins, namely: Ron Bell, Roger Huyshe, James Brownrigg and Brian Timmins. Also noteworthy is the fact that Adan Mordcovich from Wanstead, the youngest player to attend, was placed second overall.

Results

Sue Paterson won the Cornish Rapid Handicap on the Saturday and Ian Marsh won the Cornish Open on the Sunday. 20 people took part in all over the weekend that included a teaching session as well as the two tournaments.

Open Results and Lightning Handicap Results

Andrew Simons was unbeaten winner at this year's 22-player Belfast Tournament. Matthew Crosby was second with 4 wins, only losing to Andrew. Also winning 4 were Poland's Justyna Kleczar and Marek Gutkowski. Winning 3 to come third was local player James Hutchinson.

Results

Matthew Cocke picked up his second MSO Gold in two days by winning the 16-player Open at the Mind Sports Olympiad in London. Silver went to Adam Pirani who lost to Matthew in the last round. Equal Bronzes were Francis Roads and Chu Lu from China. Paco Garcia from Spain was fifth.

Results

Matthew Hathrell ignored Go this year to concentrate on other games winning Bronzes in Settlers and Oware and a Silver in Blokus.