Foreign Tournament Report

The 25th International Amateur Pair Go Championships was held in Tokyo at the end of October. To celebrate the silver jubilee, in addition to the usual 32 pairs from Japan and around the world an extra 30 guests were invited, people who have proved keen to promote Pair Go over the last quarter century. From the UK the extra invites went to Tony Atkins, Francis Roads, Alison and Simon Bexfield.

As the pair from Turkey dropped out at short notice, Alison and Simon were promoted to the status of players. They won two of their five games, losing to Singapore, Hungary and Germany, but beating Mexico and Italy to end in 26th place.

We won our second game of this year against Lithuania 3-1, but are only third in the league on games won. Nevertheless a promising start. Links to the games are available on our main PGETC page

Andrew Simons writes about his game on Board 1:

"My game started with a strange joseki mistake in the Kobayashi opening where my opponent forgot to pincer, but the real fun started when he played a fighting variation in the top right corner. His descent of q18 should have been r18 hane then n16 jump, but taking advantage of that was not easy and we ended up with two eyeless groups of his surrounding my ko-to-capture corner as a ticking time bomb.

He took a big point and I forced the ko, and he resisted one of my threats in a way which meant he captured some of my stones to settle his big group but I killed a nearby group of his in exchange.

Our first match in the new season of the C League was against Greece, one of the newest Go countries in Europe. We won it 3-1, to end the day at the top of the league alongside Bulgaria and just above Lithuania, who both also won 3-1.

1. Des Cann (B) beat Konstantinos Michailidis (Crates, 1k) by 32.5 sgf
2. Paul Taylor (W) beat Dimitrios Satkas (notevenbad, 5 kyu) by resignation sgf
3. Toby Manning (B) beat Harris Lambrakis (Drugon, 5 kyu ) by resignation sgf
4. Jonathan Gallimore (W) lost to Dionisios Sema (Mathsnails, 7 kyu) by 41.5 sgf

Our League Page for 2014-2015 with sgf links

Update: Croatia - Kazakhstan ended a day late as a 4-0, pushing UK down to equal second.

The UK representative at the 2014 KPMC was Andrew Kay. He won three games out of six to come 33rd. He beat Brazil, Ireland and Slovenia, but lost to players from Hong Kong, Romania and Spain.

Ireland's player was Thomas Shanahan who was 40th with two wins, against Argentina and Hungary.

Wei Tae-Woong of Korea won the event, ahead of China, Thailand, Japan, USA and Mexico.

Results

Chan of Chinese Taipei was the winner of the 35th WAGC on SOS tie-break from China and Korea, all on 7 wins. This is the first time since 1986 that the WAGC was won by a country ouside the big three - China, Japan and Korea. On six wins were Hong Kong, Bogdan Zhurakovskyi of the Ukraine and Lukas Podpera ofthe Czech Republic. The other places went to Russia, Sweden, Japan and USA.

UK's Francis Roads was 44th with three wins, beating Argentina and Switzerland on day 3, but losing to Belarus and Turkey on the final day. Ireland's John Gibson won two games, against Brazil and Argentina.

Results Ranka Reports

The World Amateur Go Championship has reached halfway. It is being held in Gyeongju, Korea, and being competed for by 54 players from around the world. China, Chinese Taipei and Lukas Podpera of the Czech Republic are the only ones on four wins, as Korea lost to Chinese Taipei and Japan lost twice. Notable among the players on three wins is Suzanne D'Bel Low from Malasia who played for a while in the UK.

The UK representative, Francis Roads, lost to Slovakia, Australia and Poland, and then beat Azerbaijan in round four.

Results Ranka Reports

Depite being the UK's oldest ally, the BGA team fought and beat Portugal in the Pandanet C-League on 1st April. However it was not the expected four-nil victory, with one game being lost by half a point.

Switzerland and Spain are now tied with the UK on points, but 3 and 2 board points respectively ahead. As both Switzerland and UK have two easy matches left, it seems unlikely the UK can get into the second place for a promotion play-off, unlikely unless Switzerland suicide one of theirs. Our next match is Cyprus on 6th May.

Andrew Simons on board 1 writes:

My game was fairly easy as my opponent misread a ladder in the opening, which incidentally started the same as my 2nd British Championship game with Andrew Kay.

Des Cann on the Top Board said "I formed a heavy group in the opening. However, I had to let it go and used some of the aji to build influence. I did well later and came back into the game, close going into the yose.

Then I formed another heavy little group of stones and dropped behind. However, worry about my first sacrificed group when in overtime led my opponent to slip up and suddenly my second heavy group of stones cut off some of his stones and he resigned."

Board 2 Alex Kent commented "A Nirensei fuseki occurred in my game and it ended up being a battle of large territories. The game was progressing fairly evenly until my opponent made a mistake which gave me a strong shape, making my moyo a lot stronger.

Please visit our Picture Gallery for many photos of this event.

Hopefully the 89 young players in the 19th European Youth Go Championship went away with happy memories of their time at the event. Inevitably there was the odd tear or two when a blunder was made in a game and unfortunately one girl had to withdraw due to sickness, but most players had a really good time both on and off the board. By holding the event at the Butlins holiday centre there was a lot to amuse the children between and after games and very few were seen at the venue after the second game of the day was over.

Bognor is the sunniest place in England and the weather did not disappoint on that count, although the competitors were greeted by rain when they arrived on the Friday and the Sunday evening turned stormy too.

When they should have still be hard at work updating the results, counting the money or safely storing the BGA's equipment, the BGA's EYGC team were spotted in an Arundel pub winning a pub quiz. The BGA team scored 31 points out of 60 to win a meal voucher and also £33 in the raffle. A BGA spokesman said "At least they are good at something."

Pictured are the three main organisers with Bob the Builder: Sue Paterson, Toby Manning and Tony Atkins.

Other members of the BGA and the EGF assisted in various roles.