Foreign Tournament Report

The UK team beat Croatia 4-0 in the Pandanet Go European Team Championship on 24th May to give the team its first and only win of the season. Congratulations to Daniel Hu, Bruno Poltronieri, Alex Kent and Des Cann for this convincing win in the last round. To avoid relegation they needed South Africa to lose their last round match, but South Africa defeated a weakened Italian team 3-1. This meant that the UK team ended bottom of League B and have therefore been relegated to League C for the 2022-2023 season. Germany and Austria both won to take first and second places respectively.

The UK team lost to Germany 0-4 in the Pandanet Go European Team Championship on 3rd May. The cemented Germany in second place in the B League behind Austria. The UK stayed bottom behind South Africa in 9th and Croatia in 8th, the opponents in the last match on 24th May.

League Page with game records

The seventh match of the season was against Finland. At their request Bruno played board one on the previous Saturday and the games on the Tuesday were at staggered times. In the end Bruno was the only winner and the loss put the team in bottom place of the B League, on tie-break behind South Africa.

Because Russia and Belarus have been removed from the leagues, there is only one relegation place now this season.

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The UK team lost to Austria 3-1 in the Pandanet Go European Team Championship on 8th March; congratulations to Jamie Taylor who provided our win. We are now 9th (out of 10) in league B and in the potential relegation zone: everything now probably depends on our last match against Croatia who are just above us in the Table unless we can beat one of the higher teams.

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For the February match the UK was against Italy who are in the top half of the league table. All our team lost to give Italy a win. The teams below (Croatia and South Africa) both lost, so the team stayed eighth.

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Following the abandonment of a game in the match against Switzerland in December causing the team to lose the match, the team was hoping to do better against South Africa. Indeed when Bruno Poltronieri played the first board on the Saturday before and beat the very strong Victor Chow, a win looked possible. On the match Tuesday, in the other games, Des Cann won his game, but Jon Diamond and Alison Bexfield lost making the match drawn; the team stayed in eighth place, just above the relegation zone.

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The result of the UK match against Switzerland is uncertain as one game was not finished. Bruno played his game early on the Sunday morning and won, but on the Tuesday night both Alex and Jamie lost. Jon's game against Frédéric Schlattner was, however, abandoned after connection issues meant his opponent dropped out four times.

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The UK drew their second match in the B-League of the Pandanet Go European Team Championship, against Turkey, with the last two games ending within a few seconds of each other. Black won all four games by resignation. This left them ninth in the table.

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The UK lost their first match, against Sweden, in the new season of the B-League in the Pandanet Go European Team Championship, one game to three. This left the team
eighth out of ten in the table.

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The London Go Centre, with help from the British Go Association (including Matt Marsh as Tournament Director), ran the 2021 edition of the European Women's Go Championship. Unfortunately was is not held in London at the Go Centre (as originally planned for 2020), but was played online on OGS. The online games attracted audiences of up to 80 and Diana Koszegi (2p) analysed some on Twitch (will be uploaded later on the LGC YouTube channel). During the final round she commented with Benjamin Drean-Guenaizia (6d) live on three games, the top two boards and Julia Volovich's game.