Announcement

The Leo Phillips Isle of Man Go Festival is taking place from 30 July - 4 August 2017. Early bird discounted entries are available until 14 May so please enter soon to take advantage of the reduced price.

This popular event has been held 12 times since 1991 and gives you a chance to mix playing Go with sightseeing on the island. The timetable of tournaments allows you to choose how much time to spend playing Go and how much to spend on other things. And there is a range of side events including a continuous lightning tournament, rengo, 13x13 Go and a quiz. Port Erin, where the festival is held, is a delightful small seaside town in the south west of the island.

There are a lot of interesting things to see on the Isle of Man. There are two castles, a lot of great museums and many good beaches and places to walk and see the wildlife. You can travel on the steam railway and even a horse-drawn tram in Douglas.

The Winter 2016 - 2017 edition of the BGJ is now available for members to read.

Because of a problem with the venue, the UK Go Challenge Finals scheduled for 2nd July in Aston have been cancelled.

It is hoped to reschedule to the autumn.

The Nihon Ki-in have announced the first Summer Go "Camp" in Tokyo. This is similar to the one that runs in Osaka (dates of the 4th Osaka camp and the associated congress below).

Well, THE match is now over, and we're almost back in the right time-zone, so it's time to give an interim view as to the effects on us in the UK.

Obviously our profile has risen just a little! I turned on to the BBC News on Monday towards the end and lo and behold there was an item about Go and the implications for AI, and I wasn't even surprised... If you look at our page of media mentions for the match you'll see what I mean. I haven't counted, but there must be at least 100 in the National Papers, Radio and TV. Did we appear on all channels?

The nominations for our Annual Awards are now closed and can be seen here: http://www.britgo.org/awards/2016

Voting is now open to our Association Members (you need to login first) and will close one week before our AGM, on 24th March.

Both the London City Go Club and the Central London Go Club have returned this week to their normal pub venue after the pub's refurbishment.

However the Melton Mowbray is now known as the Inn of Court.

For those who do not know it is located at 18 Holborn near to Chancery Lane tube station. Details on the pub website.

City club meets Friday evenings and Central London on Saturday afternoons.

Go is featuring at FestivalAsia, a unique three-day spectacular at Tobacco Dock in London, from Friday 15th May to Sunday 17th May. It boasts over 150 exhibitors and a main performance stage along with a cultural room, a spiritual room and children’s entertainment. There is something to suit all tastes at FestivalAsia, which embraces the amazing diversity of Asian arts & cultures from many of the 29 countries making up this intriguing continent.

The BGA will be demonstrating and lecturing on the game, with a number of volunteers headed by Roger Huyshe.

Press Release (rtf)

Lecture to be given in the British room on KGS by Matthew Cocke, 5 dan. Aimed primarily at single digit kyu players, but others should also benefit. Start time: 19:30. Join the game of "BGATeach".

The Newsletter format is changing. In future all Newsletters will be distributed electronically, from our website rather than manually from the list of addresses that our Membership Secretary has. To keep you better informed, we intend to produce Newsletters monthly, probably in two formats - one without and one with recent News items, the latter for those of you who aren’t constantly looking at our website.

If you're a member of the British Go Association you should have received an email about this as well as the first issue. If you didn't then we either don't have your email address or we have it recorded incorrectly. In either case please notify our Membership Secretary.

*Actually, it's possible that our Newsletters are being treated as SPAM, so please check your Spam boxes first before contacting us.