Yangran Zhang (3d Manchester), seen seated on the left, won the 20th Cheshire Tournament. A record 46 players took part, thanks to a large group from Cheadle Hulme School, as well as players from Liverpool, Manchester and other local clubs.

Yangran beat Gong Cheng, Mark Zhang and Alistair Wall to take the title.

Also winning three games were Ai Guan (7k Lancaster), Chun Yin Wong (11k Lancaster), Andrew Boyd (13k Liverpool), Gordon Hall (20k Whaley Bridge) and Elliott Barlow (30k CHS).

Hugo Ryan (35k CHS) won the Fighting Spirit prize, Ben Howe (27k CHS) won 6/10 in the 13x13 and Elliott also won a prize for 9/9 in the 13x13.

Results

The Winter 2017-2018 edition of the BGJ is now available for members to read.

The fifth round of the B-League on 23rd January saw the UK playing Finland. Yet again our team did extremely well, winning the match 4-0. As top placed team Netherlands lost to Germany 3-1, the UK team returned to the top spot, on boards-won tie break from Germany (18-16); Netherlands dropped to third.

Bruno Poltronieri wrote about his game against Javier-Aleksi Savolainen: I won by resignation. Not much happened until I decided to start poking at his floating group in the top right which seemed a bit over extended. I started with a peep, which he didn't really answer, so I was able to cut off a chunk of the group and kill it. In exchange he got a ponnuki in the centre, but since I had strong centre stones nearby it wasn't really worth much. After that I had a big lead.

Tim Hunt, 2d Milton Keynes, led his team to victory in the 27th Maidenhead-Hitachi Tournament. He beat Jim Clare in the final to win the tournament and he led the winning Milton Keynes team in the team competition. All players on three wins got an envelope and the choice of a game or a bottle, and those on two wins got a choice of one out of the three. The prizes, the great location and the free buffet lunch are all thanks to long term event sponsor Hitachi Europe. However rumours that Brexit is making the company consider moving to Europe proper mean this might be the last such event.

Those on three wins were Geoff Kaniuk (5k Cambridge), Joel Barrett (6k Manchester) and Robert Scantlebury (8k Sheffield). The 13x13 side event prize was not awarded.

Results Press Photos

The 24th annual European Youth Go Championship (EYGC) will be held in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, during the 2018 Easter holidays. This is the biggest youth competition in Europe, and there are already over 100 youngsters registered, from 8 countries, as at 21st January. There are three age groups: Under-12, Under-16 and Under-20. The BGA has arranged for a group of UK juniors to attend, with the support of DeepMind.

The UK party is 16-strong, as at 21st January - all with flights booked (also accommodation - in one hotel where our own evening 'UK team room' is available). Entry to the competition - and the UK group - is still open, however. The upper age cut-offs for U12 and U16 will be taken as at 31 August of 2006 and 2002 respectively.
The first three days include lectures, coaching and excursions and the last three days are the tournament. It is possible to attend just the tournament.

Of the 94 players from the UK and abroad that played in the 2017 London Open it was the large group of Chinese players currently living in the UK that dominated the event, but also there were two Belgian players in the top 5, Lucas Neirynck in third with 5 wins and Thomas Connor in fifth with 4 wins. The UK's top player, hence winning the David Ward Trophy, was Daniel Hu in fourth place with 4 wins also. In the end it was Weijin Chen who ended unbeaten with seven wins who took the trophy and top cash prize. Second place went to Ho Yeung Woo who only lost in round four to Chen. Chen is shown here in his last round game against Yousun Yang who took sixth.

Alistair Wall (1d) from Wanstead Club in London travelled up to Edinburgh for their annual Christmas Tournament. He topped the list of 19 players at the Skyscanner offices by winning three games out of four. He beat local player Boris Mitrovic (2d), but lost to another local Liu Yen-Ting (1d) who won two out of two.

Others winning three games were Roger Daniel (6k Wanstead), Serhii Gavrylov (7k) and Edinburgh players Robin McLean (10k) and Neil Sandford (15k).

Results

The fourth round of the B-League on 12th December saw the UK playing one of the other teams on three wins, Germany. After some exciting games the match ended a draw. This left UK just above Germany on boards won, but Netherlands were expected to beat Turkey and take the number one spot in the league table.

Daniel Hu wrote: I won against Jonas Welticke 6d by resignation, bring me to an unbelievable 10/10 on pandanet! This was supposed to be my toughest test so far, so while maths has been prioritised this term, I tried to study go for the last 2 weeks, particularly define 3.0 on the computer Go server.

He opened adventurously with four 11-3s. Especially as I wanted to play territorially anyway, this set bells ringing in my head that this should be a territorial game (hard to make frameworks, so I focused on the corners). He invaded 3-3 into my star point and his result was poor when I took the corner (the 10-3 was an inefficient one space extension from a ponnuki).

This year's Coventry Tournament had a new organiser, but the same winner as last year. Taking over the organisation was Norwegian 4d Jonas Egeberg, and local player Philip Leung (4d) again won all three games to top the field of 40 at the event, held in the University of Warwick's Social Sciences Building. Second was Lucretiu Calota, 4d St Albans, and the organiser himself was a creditable third.

Players lower down who won all their games were Andrew Russell (4k Birmingham), Michael Kyle (6k Manchester), Alan Stokes (8k Manchester) and Pierre Oliviere (15k St Albans).

Results

Congratulations go to Jenny Rofe-Radcliffe and Francis Roads for winning two games at the 28th International Amateur Pair Go Championship in Tokyo. They beat the pairs from Chile and Switzerland, losing to three Japanese pairs, to take 25th place.

For a change, a Japanese pair (Unegawa and Takizawa) were the winners. Korea took second, China third and Chinese Taipei fourth. The European Pair Go Champions, Natalia Kovaleva and Dmitry Surin, took ninth and Klara Zaloudkova and Jan Hora, from Czechia, also won three games.

Full results (off-site)

If the parallel student event, Korean pairs took the top two positions, with a Chinese pair third. UK's Joanne Leung was paired with Russia's Alexander Vashurov and they beat Singapore to score one out of four.

Full results (off-site)