UK Teaching Event

On Sunday 14th the Chester Go Club showed Go to a number of passers by in the centre of Chester. As Chester is a popular city for tourists, we were spotted by a large party of Chinese visitors who instantly recognised the game and shortly afterwards by a similar party of Japanese who stopped to chat and record us on their cameras.

A number of local people were encouraged to learn about the game and we look forward to seeing some of them at either the local club or the online sessions.

Roger Huyshe

The Learn Go Week event in Stevenage went pretty smoothly, with some great support from Letchworth Go Club and the BGA. Phil Smeaton, manager of Costa's in Stevenage High Street, kindly allowed us to take over part of the café for four hours on the Sunday afternoon, as well as generously covering printing costs and issuing a flyer with invitation to learn Go to every customer during the event.

However, despite the flyers and the posters which went up in many places around town, and coverage in the largest local paper (Stevenage Comet), only three people actually asked to be taught. They were a resident Italian family, who saw the item in the Comet.

Martin Harvey took up the kind offer from the Japan Society North-West (JSNW), to arrange the manning a stall at this year's Manchester Japan Day, this last Bank Holiday Monday. Eight local players gave free demos to the public, over seven hours, with only short breaks to see the drummers, cosplay, kendo, kimono dressing, sushi bars and much more.

Aslo this year's Japan Day was honoured by being opened by a minister from the Japanese Embassy - his first trip to Manchester.

We estimate we gave about 150 demos, from the 2120 members of the public who had free entry on the day, most of whom would have seen our stall, well placed next to the stage. We also handed out say 250 tri-folds and sold 10 boxed wooden starter sets and 5 TYGo books.

Hi all,

Thank you to everyone who has been in touch so far to let us know about their event. I’ve been really impressed with the enthusiasm from lots of Go people and I think such a positive response is promising for not just the Learn Go Week on 13th September 2014, though for future years as well!

As on the update before, if you’re organising an event please sign up to the Go Game Guru events signup form , as it will encourage more people throughout the UK and the rest of the world, to keep getting involved – quick note, try to include as much of the information as possible about your event – as it will be manually copied across to the live site by the Go Game Guru organisers and it will make it much easier for them!

The new season of the Online Study Group (formerly Shodan Challenge) is about to start! If you wish to improve your Go skills, or help others to improve theirs, please sign up via the link below:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/10VUfH9F0qfNKHyo2gOYYHKD6TzV7zre4zuIDSo3S1I0/viewform

The Online Study Group will start on 22nd April and run for about 12 weeks. It is designed to allow you to arrange games with players of similar strengths, request help from stronger players and give help to weaker players.

If you have any questions about the study group, please feel free to get in touch by replying to billywoods@gmail.com (Finally, apologies for leaving it so late to arrange this - life got in the way for a little while...)

Best wishes

Billy

Two Professionals, MINEMATSU Masaki (6p), Kansai branch of NHK and KOBAYASHI Chizu (5p), NHK, visited Oxford on Thursday 27th February.

We started the evening with a suggestion of Kobayashi Chizu. There were 13 players from 20 kyu to 5 dan, with a few more dan players than kyu players. We split into 2 (almost) equal size groups -- a Black group, and a White group. The first Black and White players each played 2 moves, followed by the second players, who did the same. Sometimes, the players were asked by Kobayashi why they made their choice, and alternative moves were often discussed.

As we have already announced we are pleased to receive two professionals from the Nihon Ki-in to the UK, with the assistance of the The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation.

They will be visiting Oxford and Bognor Regis. Chizu Kobayashi will then go on to visit London and Edinburgh.

The Professionals

Kobayashi Chizu (小林　千寿), 5 dan, born 28th September 1954 in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture. She is the sister of several professionals and was a student of the very famous Minoru Kitani and became 1 dan in 1972, 2 dan in 1973, 3 dan in 1974, 4 dan in 1976 and 5 dan in 1978.

As we have already announced we are pleased to receive two professionals from the Nihon Ki-in to the UK, with the assistance of the The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation.

They will be visiting Oxford and Bognor Regis. Chizu Kobayashi will then go on to visit London and Edinburgh.

The Professionals

Kobayashi Chizu (小林　千寿), 5 dan, born 28th September 1954 in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture. She is the sister of several professionals and was a student of the very famous Minoru Kitani and became 1 dan in 1972, 2 dan in 1973, 3 dan in 1974, 4 dan in 1976 and 5 dan in 1978.

As part of the effort related to the European Youth Go Championship in Bognor Regis we've organised a Learn to Play Go day at the Fishbourne Centre in West Sussex on 8th March.

Please feel free to invite anyone to drop in between 10am and 3pm (experienced players also welcome).

A Go hothouse sprang up in Letchworth Garden City, over the weekend of 8th - 10th November, when 14 of the our strongest and most promising players congregated at the home of Letchworth Go Club organizers Simon and Alison Bexfield for an intensive weekend honing their Go skills under the guidance of Guo Juan 5 dan professional.