UK Tournament Report

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

The Sheffield University Go Tournament was held on Saturday 14th May. This was the very first Go tournament held in Sheffield since the University Go Society was revived earlier this academic year. It was a great start for the society, with 22 attendees. It was held in a room rented out from the University, and the many windows allowed for some lovely sunshine for the players to compete in.

Not The London Open ran for the third time over the early May Bank Holiday weekend at the London Go Centre. The professional-in-residence was Stephanie Yin from the New York Institute of Go, shown right, informally assisted by Mateusz Surma.

The British Go Congress was held the weekend before Easter in the Welcome Centre on the campus of the University of Lancaster and the local club was thanked for their help in the organisation. The Congress was generously sponsored by SmartGo and the prizes included vouchers for SmartGo products.

The Friday evening British Lightning had groups of four players playing all-play-all leagues, the winners going on to the knock-out stage. As planned the final was played next day; it was won by Changhao Huang (5d Liverpool), with Zherui Xu (4d Cambridge) runner-up.

After skipping two years, the Cheshire Go Tournament was back and held at the community centre in Frodsham as usual. Saturday 19th March proved that spring was approaching, as it was a beautiful, warm and sunny day.

Cambridge’s Trigantius Tournament returned after a year’s Covid break to the excellent new venue of St Philip's Church in Mill Road; this was appreciated for closeness to local shops, cafés and station. Bristol’s Yaoling Yang took top spot from Cambridge University’s Zherui Xu, both on 3 wins out of 3, on SOS tie-break. Other Chinese players took the next five places. The bar was set at an unprecedented 5 dan and higher rated 4 dans were promoted to get eight players above the bar, but then unfortunately two were then drawn down in round one leading to the split tie.

The London Go Centre trustees took the view that the 47th London Open Go Congress would be staged as though the world were back to normal, writes organiser Gerry Gavigan. We thought this was important to help ensure the future health of the tournament. During the registration period it became clear that not everyone agreed with us.