Congratulations to Centrol London Go Club A team, Franciso Divers, Michael Webster and Chuck Fisher, for winning the 2014 season of the online league ahead of Belfast and claiming back the GoGoD shield, which they last held in 2011, from Edinburgh.

The second division was won by Cornish Rogues (Paul Massey, John Culmer and Rob White), who will be moving up to the first division next year, narrowly beating the Three Counties team.

We are starting to take bookings for the next season of the online league, which we hope to start promptly in April, so please could everyone who wants to take part get in touch with me at jmc AT toad.me.uk to confirm that they want to play.

Whilst we like to have teams associated with clubs, people on their own are very welcome to join up with an existing team which is low on members, so please don't hold back.

The 41st London Open Go Congress took place at International Students House at the end of December 2014. As well as the main seven-round tournament, there were Pair Go, Doubles, Lightning and Rengo side events, and the tournament culminated in 40 participants attending a New Year's Eve Dinner.

Day two of the London Open, Monday 29th December, saw rounds three and four of the Open. At the top in round three Benjamin Teuber lost to Mateusz Surma and Young-Sam Kim lost to Chi-Min Oh. So the two on four wins faced off in round four; Oh beat Surma to take a clear lead. At the end of the day the other players on four wins were: Kalle Timperi 1k, Lova Wåhlin 2k, Johannes Siven 3k, Alberto Adriasola 4k and Jannik Gram 5k.

Results

The three pros present were busily anaylsing games at the end of each round and in the early evening Miss Choi gave a lecture for kyu players and Fan Hui reviewed a game with the stronger players.

The 2014 London Open got under way 15 minutes late on Sunday 28th December after a repairing. 108 players in all are expected, with 101 already playing. As usual a large number of players are from outside the UK, with many strong Chinese players as well as players from several European countries.

Also present are three professionals: Fan Hui from France, Dongeun Choi from Korea and Hajin Lee, the IGF Secretary.

Again the venue is ISH at the top of Great Portland Street convenient for seeing London and providing accommodation for those staying over.

Results

The Edinburgh Christmas tournament saw a total of 25 players.

Tongzhou (Joe) Cai (3d Glasgow) sparkled the most and took the bottle of champagne with 4 wins from 4. Prizes for 3 wins went to co-organiser Boris Mitrovic (3d Edinburgh), Alistair Wall (2d Wanstead), Niall Paterson (5k Glasgow), Baron Hasslinger (5k Edinburgh) and Greg Cox (10k Dundee). The remaining two prizes went to Quintin Connell (9k Glasgow) for 2 wins from 3, and Magdalena Mladenova (1d Sofia) as the furthest-travelled on 2 wins.

Results

The BGA UK Youth team lost 1-4 to Israel on Sat, 13 Dec 2014, in the European Youth Go Team Championship which sees us currently in 10th place overall out of the 13 teams, with 2 rounds left to play.

We were heavily outranked on boards 1, 4 and 5 against Israel, although Tom, Anthony and Hilary acquitted themselves well in the face of grading differences of between 10 and 16 stones.

It was good to see the two U12 players playing a solid game, protecting their groups so there were no major dead groups at the end. Charlotte had a quick win and Dylan had his opponent on the ropes for much of the game. His opponent narrowed the gap, and Dylan resigned, thinking he was about to lose a group of stones. In fact, with a little thought, he could have saved them and would have won the game by about 8 points.

UK stayed second behind Bulgaria in the 12-team C-League. Bulgaria have won two more boards than the UK.

The match against Ireland ended in a 3-1 win for the UK team, as follows:

1. Des Cann (W) beat Ian Davis (hogweed, 1d) by 17.5
   
2. Paul Taylor (B) lost to James Hutchinson (jameshutch, 1d) by 8.5
   
3. Chris Bryant (W) beat Peter Kasko (Kaskai, 3k) by resignation
   
4. Evan McKiernan-Dooner (B) beat Tiberiu Gociu (OTible, 4k) by resignation
   

Links to the games, with .SGFs, are available on our main Pandanet Go European Team Championship (PGETC) page.

The second South London kyu players' teaching day and tournament was again at the Croydon Quaker Meeting House. Nineteen students were taught in the morning by four teachers - Andrew Kay, Alex Rix, Tim Hunt and Alison Bexfield. In the afternoon there was a three round tournament.

In the teachers' section the teachers all played each other, in a round-robin tournament, with all games even. In the students' tournament all games were played with handicaps equal to grade difference where appropriate.

Andrew Kay won the teachers' tournament with three wins; he received a prize of a bag of delicious gingerbread men from the organiser's excellent local cake shop.

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.

We're now in December - the final month of the 2014 Youth Grand Prix (YGP).

Cash prizes of £50, £30 and £20 will soon be decided.

With 11 months' results now in, the current standings suggest that the top 3 will come from these 4 players (grade, club and - most importantly, here - current YGP points are in brackets):

Edmund Smith (10k Milton 595)

Melchior Chui (9k Cambridge 510)

Kelda Smith (17k Milton 508)

Charlotte Bexfield (10k Letchworth 480)

Can Melchior, Kelda, Charlotte - or anybody else - stop Edmund regaining the title he lost last year to Oscar Selby?