UK Tournament Report

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.

This year, because of no events earlier in the year, the top two British players at September's British Open were selected to contest for the title of British Go Champion. The two players were Daniel Hu (5d) who was equal second in the Open, and Bruno Poltronieri (3d) equal fourth. The match was arranged for Saturday 27th Novermber at a private location in Cambridge and the game got under way about 12 minutes after the advertised start time of 10:30.

Scott Cobbold, a young player from East London, won the 2021 Bar Low with a perfect five out of five. This event was this second tournament to be run by the London Go Centre at its new location and the second of the weekend. Second place was tournament director Richard Wheeldon with four wins. Both players entered at 1 kyu, the maximum grade allowed for this kyu player event.

Yaoling Yang (5d Bristol) won his third event in a row by winning the T Mark Hall Rapid Play Tournament with five straight wins. Finishing second was Peikai Xue (3d Central London) with four wins. John Bamford (5k Oxford) was the other player to win five games, whilst four wins were achieved by Richard Wheeldon (1k South London), Michael Kyle (2k Edinburgh), Tim James (4k Brighton), Gilles Englebert (7k Oxford), Andrew Volovich (9k Cambridge) and Marco Praderio (10k Lancaster).

The Wessex Tournament returned to its usual venue, St Mark's Community Centre in Bath, and its usual one day format, on the day the clocks go back. Eleven of the 25 players were from Bristol Go Club, with the Bath Go Club players making it over half local participation.
Winning all games to add Wessex to his British Open title was Yaoling Yang (5d Bristol). The only other player winning all their games was Alison Bexfield (1d Letchworth), who started below the bar. Results

This year’s British Go Congress, comprising the British Open and the British Lightning Championship, was held at the Novotel Leicester between the 1st and 3rd of October. This was the first face to face tournament the BGA has organised since Covid, and, despite being delayed and short notice, just over 30 players enjoyed a weekend of games.

As in 2020, the 2021 Mind Sports Olympiad was held online. This year the normal round medals were replaced by a special design based around pentagons to celebrate it being the 5x5 or 25th edition (as shown).