The Edinburgh Open was again held at the "St Columba's by the Castle" Episcopal Church Hall. This year, nice weather meant they could use the garden of the church hall as a review space. Overall turnout was up on last year with 29 players and pleasingly included three first-time tournament players.

The bar was set at 2k, which made for a very competitive field of seven players who could win the competition. Local player Grzegorz Kudla (2k) won the tournament with three wins from three games, following a tense final game with Ai Guan (Birmingham 1k).

The 27th Mind Sports Olympiad (MSO) took place in its regular venue of the JW3 centre in London. As usual a large number of games fans from around the world, including this time a large team of Koreans, assembled to play a long and varied list of games. Some Go players competed in several games: Ai Guan, Paul Smith and Caleb Monk; Natasha Regan was the Women's Pentamind champion. Details of all MSO results are on the MSO Database.

This weekend on 26th / 27th and if needed 28th at the London Go Centre Bruno Poltronieri and Ho Yeung Woo will play the best of three 2023 British Championship title match.

Play will start at 12:00 each day and go through until the end of the game. The London Go Centre will be doing a live stream on their YouTube channel. Commentary will be provided on KGS (probably the English Room) by Matthew Macfadyen. Please take the time to drop in online and have a look at how it is going.

The Summer 2023 edition of the BGJ is now available for members to read in the Members' Area, with printed copies being sent out to those that receive them.

On 24-25 June, the switch back to Barmouth's Dragon Theatre proved popular with the 30 attendees, who took advantage of a rare whole-weekend tournament on the BGA calendar. The theatre was the tournament's very first venue in the seaside town, back in 1993. It felt good for the event to be supporting a fine, renovated community amenity, for this 29th edition.

The weather was mixed, but there were chances to climb the cliffs for views of the town, its wide bay and the start of Snowdonia national park's scenic mountainous region.

The Cheshire, which had been postponed from March because of a train strike, took place on Saturday 1st July at Frodsham Community Centre. North-west clubs were well represented: Liverpool club provided five of the 32 players, Manchester eight players, Lancaster four players and Chester four players.

The 2023 Durham Go Tournament was held in Elvet Hill House, next to the Oriental Museum, as has become traditional over the last few years. This year Andrew was able to be there in person to help with the organisation, having not contracted Covid!

As they ended second in the C-League, the UK team had to play a five-board play-off match against B-League’s Finland. The opposition fielded three 5d players and so seemed likely to win, and in fact did so by winning all five boards. So Finland stay in B-League, joined by Ireland who replace demoted South Africa. [See here for League Page with game records.]