Second Youth Squad Training Tournament
— Tony AtkinsWe held our second online British youth training tournament today, reports Alison Bexfield. Any British youth player who has reached at least 20 kyu in strength is invited to these events, where we run a three round tournament online with even games to test the players in tournament conditions and see who has been improving. We expect players wanting to be selected for the British Youth Team to try to participate in these events.
This was our second such event. We were missing some of our top players who were in transit back to schools, but still had an excellent turnout of 32 players (including our ghost). This time we had a closely fought top group with six players all around 3 kyu in strength. This group included a couple of players who have risen rapidly in strength over the past six months. One of these rising stars, Sam Barnett (U16, Cheadle Hulme), was undefeated to take first place.
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Zherui Xu Wins His Second Online Event
— Tony Atkins29 players took part in the BGA's third online tournament, played one game a day over the August bank-holiday weekend. Zherui Xu (4d Cambridge) came out as winner for the second time in these online tournaments and won a £25 Amazon voucher. Second place went to Mark Baoliang Zhang (1k) and third place went to Yangran Zhang (3d) who won £20 and £15 vouchers respectively. A strong showing from Sheffield Go club saw both Teague Johnstone (6k) and Steve Andrews (14k) win £15 vouchers each for winning all three of their games. Another Sheffield prize winner was David Wildgoose, picking up a £5 voucher for the tied highest-placed DDK prize. Dutch player Gérold Nicolasen (10k) picked up the other half of that prize and Gene Wong (3k) won a £10 voucher for the highest placed below-the-bar player.
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UK Youth Team Wins Match Against China
— Tony AtkinsThe "Supergo" match on KGS between twelve British youth players and a team of twelve Chinese youth players continued throughout July and into August. After the strong runs of some of our early players, the Chinese last player Li Yuze won six games in a row to set up a final against our last player, Jayden Ng (British Youth Go Champion). After an exciting game, Jayden won by 11.5 to complete the match in our favour. Our congratulations go to all who took part and our thanks to the youngsters from the The Li Ang Go Collection Team for playing us.
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MSO 19x19 Ends with Exciting Midnight Final
— Tony AtkinsThis year's Mind Sports Olympiad was played online, with the Go events on OGS (online-go.com). 46 players took part in the main 19x19 tournament on the afternoon and evening of Sunday 23rd August. As well as a lot of UK players and quite a few from elsewhere in Europe, there were players spanning time zones from America to Hong Kong. With the bar at 4k the top players battled over four rounds to see who would make the final, whilst below the bar a big group of players played enjoyable games, though some of the handicaps got as high as 19!
As many as 14 of the players were juniors who had quite a late night as the fourth round games ended between 10:00 and 11:00. Junior medals went to Italy's Davide Bernardis (gold) who was also fourth over all, Samuel Barnett (silver) and on tie-break Ryan Zhang (bronze) who unfortunately lost one game because of loss of Internet. Winning all four games below the bar was Russian junior Fedor Dmitriev (10k).
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MSO 13x13 Another Italy Win
— Tony AtkinsThe second Go event of the online 2020 Mind Sports Olympiad was the 13x13 on the evening of Friday 14th August. 23 players turned up though some Russians arrived late due to getting the time-difference wrong and one player dropped after one round.
The second Gold medal of the year also went to Italy, with Alessandro Pace winning all five games. After applying tie breaks Silver was Maciej Brzeski from Poland and Bronze was Chinese player Wei Zhou. The UK's Tim Hunt was fourth, also on four wins, just missing a medal.
Top juniors were Russia's Fedor Dmitriev and Ryan Zhang; third was Oliver Bardsley.
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MSO 9x9 Held Online is Largest Ever
— Tony AtkinsThe 2020 Mind Sports Olympiad moved online with free entry and has been attracting large numbers of players, with the barrier of travel and the cost of entry removed. Chess and Poker event entries have been in the hundreds.
The first Go event was the 9x9 on the evening of Wednesday 12th August. 42 players entered, but in the end 28 players turned up to still make it the biggest MSO 9x9 ever. Small board play is always less popular than 19x19 with some editions only attracting four entrants!
Gold medal this year went to Carlo Metta from Italy who won all five games. The Silver went to Davit Rostomashvili a strong online player from Georgia and Chinese player Wei Zhou took Bronze, both on four wins. Also with four wins, but just missing out on a medal by tie-break and non-longer counting as a junior, was Jacob Zhang (UK) in fourth.
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BGJ 192 Now Available in Members' Area
— Tony AtkinsThe Summer 2020 edition of the BGJ is now available for members to read.
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BGA Second Real Time Online Tournament Won by Kalle Timperi
— Tony Atkins36 players took part in the second BGA real time online tournament, this time with a single day, three-round format. Kalle Timperi (1d) came out top, winning a £45 Amazon voucher for his efforts. Joel Barrett (4k) and Michael Kyle (3k) took second and third place, winning vouchers of £25 and £10 respectively. Vouchers were also awarded to others on three wins: Sam Barnett (7k) and Jason Jackson (18k). Prizes also went to the highest placed below-the-bar (Colin Williams) and highest placed DDK (Dan Whiteley).
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Successful July Youth Squad Tournament
— Tony AtkinsOn Sunday 5 July, 30 young Go players gathered online for our first online training tournament for the UK Youth Go Squad, reports Alison Bexfield. Any player who had reached 20k or better was invited (that we were aware of) and it was pleasing to see how many of the players had improved over recent months since we last saw them play.
The tournament was played over three rounds during the afternoon on OGS, where we were able to have a private invitation-only group.
The fact that the strength of our youth players has increased over recent years was evidenced by the fact that 8 of our 30 players were graded 3kyu or stronger (with three of this group in the U12 age group) .
Jacob Zhang is our strongest player and won all three games to lead the top group, although a very rapidly improved Ryan Zhang, now playing at 2k, gave him a good game.
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Ireland Narrowly Lose Promotion Play-Off
— Tony AtkinsAs they finished second in the Pandanet Go European Team Championship C-League, to get promotion Ireland had to beat the B-League's ninth placed team, Sweden.
Board one was played early on Sunday 14th May and Karl Irwin lost to Sweden's Charlie Åkerblom by resignation. The other four boards played on the Tuesday, 16th May, and Philippe Renaut beat Martin Li, also by resignation, to make the match one all. Matei Garcia's game ended when Tiger Hillarp lost on time in a complicated game with huge territories and dead groups, but James Hutchison struggled against Robin Nilsson, eventually resigning. This meant it was all down to the last game between Ian Davis and Anton Silfver. This was a very close and long game, but unfortunately an error in the small yose saw Ian lose a point and the game by half a point.
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