Foreign Tournament Report

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

All games played handicap less one, max 9 stones.

We started out tied with Turkey at the top of Division C, but they are nominally the strongest of the other teams in the Division and quite close to us in overall strength. Nevertheless we had high hopes as we put out our strongest team.

Sadly, this was not to be to be the case as we lost all three completed games...

On top board Andrew Simons had a good opening with one cutting group between two weak groups. He didn't play that severely and his opponent managed to settle both groups, but he got some decent profit in exchange, though Andrew did make an annoying timing mistake which meant his opponent could get a big tenuki during the fighting.

The UK's pair of Natasha Regan and Matthew Cocke had a tough draw which caused them to struggle at the International Amateur Pair Go Championship in Tokyo. In the first round they lost to a strong Canadian pair, and were rewarded with a game against China. This they lost as expected and then played and lost to Poland. Bravely they battled on and beat France in round 4 and Denmark in round 5, to end on 2 wins and 26th place.

Report/Results

The 8th Korean Prime Ministers Cup, organised by the Korean Amateur Baduk Association, was held in Gumi Conference Centre, in an industrial city about four hours South East of Seoul. The weather was lovely (about 22 degrees), but sadly the sun was shining outside on the UK flag being flown upside down, possibly indicating distress at the UK's likely results? The opening ceremony featured magic acts making women, flowers and birds disappear and then appear again, and also strange modern Korean dancing.

There were three games on the first day, with above the bar China, Japan, Hong Kong, USA, Finland (Juri Kuronen) and Czechia (Ondrej Silt) winning all three. Ilja Shikshin of Russia unfortunately got Hong Kong in the first round.

The British rep to the 34th WAGC, now on in Sendai Japan, Andrew Kay gave an interview to Ranka online. After two days he had won two games out of four, having lost to Korea, beating Turkey, losing to Switzerland and beating New Zealand. Results from Nihon Ki-in