Foreign Tournament Report

Team UK 1 won both their first matches in the WMSG Team Tournament. They beat Ireland 2-1 in the first round (Matthew Cocke lost to Ian Davis by 1.5 points) and in the second round Chong, Vanessa and Matthew beat the Netherlands 1 team 3-0. The UK 2 team lost both their matches 0-3, the first against Canada and the other against USA 1.

Lai won the Men's Individual and Lin won the Women's Individual tournaments to take double gold.

Unfortunately Vanessa Wong lost her semi-final against Osawa and then lost to Sarah Yu of Canada by 1.5 points to miss out on a great opportunity. Sadly, very late in the latter game she answered a smallish ko threat rather than living in her opponent's corner, which cost her about 10 points and a Bronze medal.

Congratulations to her.

Vanessa Wong won both her games on the third day of the WMSG Women's Individual to qualify for the knock-out stage with 4 wins. Osawa Maya of Japan lost her fifth game to Sarah Yu of Canada, so both those players qualified on four wins too. The fourth player into the knock-out was Lin Hsiao-Tung of Chinese Taipei, also with 4 wins. The other UK Players, Anna Griffiths and Natasha Regan, both ended on 3 wins.

In the Men's Individual the four qualifiers were all from Chinese Taipei: Lai and Lo on 5 wins and Kuo and Hung on 4 wins. Top UK player was Chong Han in 20th place with 3 wins. Henry Manners also won 3, Andrew Simons 2 and Paul Tabor 1 win.

The female members of Team GB were all on two wins after three rounds of the Women's Individual at the World Mind Sports Games. Unfortunately Vanessa Wong did not win her third game, against Osawa Maya of Japan, so ended the day in fourth place not first or second.

In the Men's, Chong Han won a second game to end the second day in 11th place of the Men's Individual. Henry Manners also had two wins.

Results

Our picture library for the WMSG 2012 is now available.

The British team did well in the first round of the Men and Women events at the World Mind Sports Games.

All three women and three of the four men won. Chong Han and Vanessa Wong are the top team players with a chance of medals. Only Andrew Simons lost his game by 7.5 against a Brazilian 3d.

Natasha Regan and Matt Cocke finished a very creditable 7th out of 24 in the European Pair Go Championship, held in Lyon, France, 2nd-3rd June 2012. They won 3 of their 6 games.

It was won with a flawless record by the Professional Russian Pair, Svetlana Shikshina and Alexandr Dinerchtein.

Results

We won our final match of the season against Denmark 3-1, meaning we will finish in 4th or 5th place, depending on the results of the other games in the final round; better than last year when we finished 7th. Watch http://pandanet-igs.com/communities/euroteamchamps/ for final details.

In round 9 Chong Han won on board 1 against Kasper Hornbæk, getting the better side of the deal in a fighting game of many trades and winning by resignation.

Des Cann beat Thomas Heshe with a nice counter attack in which what Thomas must have thought was one of Des's weak groups, ending up killing one of Thomas'. The game continued for a while but Des defended solidly and won by resignation once it was clear all his groups were safe.

Andrew Simons got off to reasonable start in his moyo game, and although Uffe Rasmussen's invading group broke out he secured a large territory.

The 33rd World Amateur has ended in Guangzhou in China.

Our winning ways came to an end this month with a 2-2 draw against Slovakia.

On board 1 Chong Han was in for a tough game against Pavol Lisy 6d, under-20 European Youth Champion in 2011. Chong had some nice attacks, but Pavol defended well and Chong didn't manage to use the attacks to reduce Pavol's left or top side moyos, leaving him short of points. The ending was rather unfortunate with Chong resigning when a group died after filling dame.

Des Cann played his favourite high-Chinese opening again, but at a crucial moment invested another move in growing the moyo instead of helping his weak group which died. Maros Kral then killed another group and although Des made his big moyo into territory it wasn't enough and he resigned.

Andrew Simons' game against Marian Hrdina started fairly peacefully and featured a textbook invasion at the top right, but was then plunged into fighting with several trades.