Foreign Tournament Report

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.

Under-20 1. Lukas Podpera (CZ) 2. Jonas Welticke (DE) 3. Tanguy LeCalve (FR)

Under-16 1. Alexandru-Petre Pitrop (RO) 2. Grigorij Fiorin (RU) 3. Viacheslav Kaymin (RU)

Under-12 1. Oscar Vazquez (ES) 2. Denis Dobranis (RO) 3. Arved Pittner (DE)

See the British Go Congress - EYGC gallery for pictures of the winners

Also winning trophies were:

Under-20: Aleksander Vashurov (RU) for 4/6 in 4th place.

Under-16: Stepan Popov (RU) and Valerii Krushelnytskyi (UA) for 4/6 in 4th/5th place.
Mirta Medak (HR) for 5/5 at 14k.
Viktoria Csizmadia (HU) for 5/6 at 16k.

Under-12: Mikhail Dobricyn (RU) and Jakov Galunov (RU) for 4/6 in 4th/5th place.
Jaroslav Krainov (RU) for 5/6 at 13k.
Ismael Fathallah (FR) for 5/6 at 18k.
Gregor Semmler (DE) for 5/6 at 20k.

Full Results

Despite problems in some parts of England caused by flooding, there should be no weather problems affecting Bognor Regis this weekend. Friday is predicted to be 6C but quite wet, with 4C and dry at night. Saturday is showery but Sunday is predicted a sunny 7C! Monday is predicted showery, at 8C. (Updated Thursday)

There should also be no problems with travelling by train to Bognor from London or Gatwick Airport. Information on services and fares can be found at the Southern Railway website. Note they offer reductions for groups and children under-16 travel for just £2 off-peak with an adult.

We managed to repeat our result from 2011, although we're now both in League C, not League B...

Andrew failed for us on Board 1. His opponent, whom he had beaten in the first season of the league in 2011, played some rather strange and bad moves in the opening and Andrew spent rather too long trying to punish them. Andrew didn't get much advantage (if any) and got annoyed.

He then got a group in trouble and lived in ko instead of unconditionally, losing some stones in the process, but then his opponent, presumably thinking Andrew was an utter moron based on the play so far, played some nonsense overplay of his own and created some dead stones. Andrew then missed a tesuji, so some more stones died and then the group that should have been alive had to fight the ko, as Andrew was trying to kill his surrounding group. Andrew lost that ko, but saved another group and then died instead of living in his corner because he played 3-3 instead of 3-2 by mistake...

The 2014 Irish Go Congress occurred over the weekend on 14th -16th February, with 44 players attending in a surprisingly sunny Dublin. Celebrating 25 years of Go in Ireland, the main tournament, the 3rd Confucius Cup, was well represented with a strong field of players.

Fan Hui (2p France) won with a perfect 5/5 score. 2nd, 3rd, and 4th places all had three wins with the order decided with SOS, resulting in Csaba Mero (6d Hungary) in second place, Antoine Fenech (5d France) third, and Ondrej Silt (6d Czech Republic) fourth.

In the 6th round of the online teams league, the British team lost to Spain, but two games only by a very small amount. All the games went into overtime. First to finish was Martha McGill's game against Rogelio Gomes. Unfortunately some edge stones got captured and Martha had to resign. On board one Andrew Simons claimed our only win against Paco Garcia de la Banda. When Andrew killed one of Paco's large groups late on, Paco was unable to kill Andrew's back and had to resign. The other two games were very tight finishes and both ended at almost exactly the same time. Unfortunately we lost both: Des Cann lost to Jesus Roldan by 1.5 points and Sandy Taylor to José-Manuel Vega by 3.5 points. This left UK very mid-table with three wins, two losses and a draw. Spain's win put them up to third behind Bulgaria and C League leaders Turkey.

Full results for the season and game records can be seen here