The European Go Federation is proud to announce the start of the certification of European professional Go players. This is in cooperation with CEGO, the EGF's main sponsor, and only possible thanks to their initiative and generosity.

For full details see http://www.eurogofed.org/proqualification/

The Spring edition of the London International Teams moved from its usual Sunday to a Saturday to fit in with its new venue, the Melton Mowbray in Holborn.

This time a strong team of French players took part, but they lost out on the tie-break of Captain's results (match result would have been the same) to the North London Club. So North London was first (2 wins 5 games), France was second (2 wins 5 games) and Central London A was third (1 win 5 games). Wanstead took fourth place (1 win 2 games) with Alistair Wall bravely playing simultaneous games as they were a player short.

Following on from the success of the European Youth Go Championship 2014 held in the UK, the British Go Association is forming a youth squad which is aiming to send a UK national team to the 2015 youth championships to be held in the Netherlands.

The Leader of the Youth Squad will be Alison Bexfield, 2 dan.

The youth squad is for any junior who will be under 16 on 31 August 2014 and who has progressed past the beginner stage (40 kyu -31 kyu) to reach at least novice stage (30 kyu and stronger). We will be running coaching events and encouraging participation at youth tournaments in the UK to develop the playing ability of squad members in a fun environment.

To reach the standard required to play for the UK in the European championships players will need to reach a minimum of 20 kyu or stronger for those aged up to 16. We will recommend which players we believe have made this standard in advance of the event.

Depite being the UK's oldest ally, the BGA team fought and beat Portugal in the Pandanet C-League on 1st April. However it was not the expected four-nil victory, with one game being lost by half a point.

Switzerland and Spain are now tied with the UK on points, but 3 and 2 board points respectively ahead. As both Switzerland and UK have two easy matches left, it seems unlikely the UK can get into the second place for a promotion play-off, unlikely unless Switzerland suicide one of theirs. Our next match is Cyprus on 6th May.

Andrew Simons on board 1 writes:

My game was fairly easy as my opponent misread a ladder in the opening, which incidentally started the same as my 2nd British Championship game with Andrew Kay.

18 people from 4d to 8k attended the 2014 Birmingham Tournament. Several players won two games, but only local player Andrew Kay won 3 games. He was the tournament winner beating Alex Kent in the last round.

The weather was amazing and there was a particularly enjoyable game review in the garden of the venue, Newman House (the University of Birmingham Catholic Chaplaincy).

Results

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Nihon Ki-in and they will hold the Summer Go School from 26th August 2014!

Major New Features 2014: - You will play at Japan’s most popular amateur tournament called ‘Takara Shuzou Cup’ at which over 1000 people play! All participants will be given fantastic prize by the sponsor.

• You will visit Kamakura city where the 10th game was played by Go Seigen and Kitani Minoru. (Kamakura is a very popular tourist destination. Kamakura offers numerous historical monuments and Kamakura's sand beaches attract large crowds during summer)

• You will visit the most famous and traditional Goban shop in Tokyo. You can see more than US$100,000 expensive go boards and a very old goban from 16th century!

Special Offer! :
If you register before 30th April 2014, you will get 10% discount of the fee!

The third Skye tournament attracted thirty-six players, four more than the previous best. Four dan players, six kyu players and five late arrivals from Glasgow played in 9X9 leagues on the Friday evening; these were won by Matthew Macfadyen (6d Leamington), Nick Wedd (3k Oxford City) and Donald MacLeod (4k Glasgow) respectively.

Matthew Macfadyen also won the main tournament, with six wins. Ulf Olsson (3d Gothenburg) was second with five wins. Joseff Thomas (13k Glasgow University) and Gediminas Sarpis (20k Glasgow University) also won five games. On four wins each were Matthew Reid (1d Cambridge), Sue Paterson (4k Arundel), Rob Payne (7k Edinburgh) and Alasdair Clarke (11k Edinburgh).

The prizes again included bottles of "Skye Monkey Jump Ale", with Go quotes on the back labels replacing the Go proverbs of two years ago; those quoted range from Confucius to Captain James T Kirk. Local firms and craftspeople donated prizes, Diageo again gave a bottle of Talisker single malt.

Des Cann on the Top Board said "I formed a heavy group in the opening. However, I had to let it go and used some of the aji to build influence. I did well later and came back into the game, close going into the yose.

Then I formed another heavy little group of stones and dropped behind. However, worry about my first sacrificed group when in overtime led my opponent to slip up and suddenly my second heavy group of stones cut off some of his stones and he resigned."

Board 2 Alex Kent commented "A Nirensei fuseki occurred in my game and it ended up being a battle of large territories. The game was progressing fairly evenly until my opponent made a mistake which gave me a strong shape, making my moyo a lot stronger.

Jon Diamond (4d) won the Trigantius Tournament in Cambridge for the first time. He beat ex-Cambridge student Will Brooks (3d) in the last round, to end top of the list of 35 players.

Jonathan Richman (5k) and Simon Mader (6k) were the two local players who won all 3 games. Tor Gillberg (11k) from the London City Club and local player Geoff Kaniuk (4k) both won 2 games out of 2.

Results

Photos by Kiyohiko Tanaka

Please visit our Picture Gallery for many photos of this event.

Hopefully the 89 young players in the 19th European Youth Go Championship went away with happy memories of their time at the event. Inevitably there was the odd tear or two when a blunder was made in a game and unfortunately one girl had to withdraw due to sickness, but most players had a really good time both on and off the board. By holding the event at the Butlins holiday centre there was a lot to amuse the children between and after games and very few were seen at the venue after the second game of the day was over.

Bognor is the sunniest place in England and the weather did not disappoint on that count, although the competitors were greeted by rain when they arrived on the Friday and the Sunday evening turned stormy too.