Foreign Tournament Report

Wins on boards 2 and 4 for the UK ensured the honours were split evenly between the UK and Austria.

Captain Will Brooks finally broke his duck, and Jon Diamond did his duty as president, while misfortune befell Matthew Macfadyen and Andrew Simons.

The season is nearing its end with only 2 more matches to be played (vs. Slovenia and Spain). For more details, see the BGA Euroteams page

Vanessa Wong was second at the EYGC for a second year running. She lost, as last year, to Mateusz Surma from Poland who retained the under-16 title. Also travelling to the beautiful setting of the lakeside Santon Hotel in Brno, Czechia, were sisters Kelda and Roella Smith from Cambridge. In the under-12s Roella won 2 games at 11k to place 13th and Kelda won 3 at 20k to place 41st. Vladsylav Verteleckyi from the Ukraine was the under-12 champion.

Results

Finland's Antti Tormanen (6 dan) tied with Wei Wang (6dan) in the 62 player Irish Open. This was Antti's fourth tournament win of the Pandanet Go European Cup, which put him top in the points table with 57. Wei Wang, studying in London but being Chinese, is ineligible for Pandanet points, so the next points went to Slovakia's Lisy Pavol (5 dan) and Czechia's Ondrej Silt (6 dan) in equal third. This put Csaba Mero and Ondrej Silt equal second in the Pandanet points table on 51.
The other point places went to Willem-Koen Pomstra from the Netherlands, Juri Kuronen from Finland, Quentin Mills from the UK, Gavin Rooney from Ireland and Germany's Bernd Sambale.

Patrik Macek (6 kyu Slovakia) won all five and the following each won four: Jan Reichelt (1 kyu Germany), Martin Klemsa (2 kyu Czechia), Marek Fulle (4 kyu Slovakia), Peter Kollarik (9 kyu Slovakia) and Marek Gutowski (13 kyu Poland).

Results

As usual, many of the players in Dublin for the Irish Open congregated in the Teachers' Club on the Friday night for the Irish Rapid handicap tournament. The 26 players had to cope with the decreasing time limits and the handicap-plus-one games. Best at coping was Ian Davis (1 dan) from Belfast. Second, losing to Ian in the fifth round, was Jan Reichelt (1 kyu) from Germany. Also winning 4 were Cork's Gavin Rooney (2 dan) and France's Jean-Philippe Leduc (1 dan).

Results

Team leader Will Brooks lost again, but the team still beat Croatia thanks to wins from Matthew Madfadyen, Andrew Simons and Nick Krempel.

The 3-1 win puts the UK in a much safer position for avoiding relegation, nearing the end of the season.

BGA Euroteams page

A pretty bad disaster today: we had major troubles trying to get a team together on the Tuesday night that the Swedes insisted that we play on. (The rules entitle them to do so.)

So we came up one board light and to avoid deduction of two Board Points rather than one, Jon played as Board 1 and we left Board 2 empty: Swedes 1:GB 0 before we started.

It's Paul's first match and he had major troubles with getting in and finding the Playing Room, but he eventually got going.

Then Jon got in an unfortunate fight, lost quite a few critical stones (probably with a number of misplays) and couldn't recover by killing another group. So Sweden 2:0.

Sadly, the other two games weren't very favourable either, with the Swedes cruising to easy wins in both, so a comprehensive defeat 4:0.

After some struggle with dates we were given permission to bend the rules and play this match over two days.

On day 1 (Tuesday) Des Cann lost, as he described it, an unloseable game and Andrew Simons won a lost one, so the score was 1:1.

Day 2 (Wednesday) didn't go according to plan, with Matthew Macfadyen having some shape problems and then losing after a ko struggle. Jon Diamond was doing nicely, but allowed a group to be cut off and could only manage a ko without sufficient ko threats...

So a 3:1 loss in the end - must try harder!

Full details and game records at BGA Euroteams page

Britain (Represented by Matthew Macfadyen, Jon Diamond, Des Cann and Andrew Simons) drew with Denmark in the third round, with Jon blotting his copy book (badly) this time.

Full details and game records at BGA Euroteams page

The team score is now one win, one loss and one draw.

Britain (Represented by Matthew Macfadyen, Jon Diamond, Des Cann and Andrew Simons) scored an excellent 3-1 victory against Belgium in the second round, with Jon maintaining his perfect record.

Full details and game records at BGA Euroteams page

28 players attended the UCC Tournament in Cork, the largest number yet. Seven nationalities, as well as Irish, took part including several Dutch. The winner was Willem-Koen Pomstra (5 dan) from Arnhem. Local 4 dan Tong-Yu Cao only lost to the winner, taking his usual second place. Przemyslaw Dyszscyk (2 kyu Poland) and Maxime Houssin (5 kyu France) won 4 games and Dublin's Jos Elkink (11 kyu) won all 5 games. Best beginner was Cork's Con Quigley (20 kyu).

Results