Between March 31 and April 7 Michael Redmond, professional 9 dan, will be visiting the UK. Michael was born in the USA. but has been living in Japan for several years.

Michael will be hosting several events during that week.

More details

Congratulations to the top three players in the 2012 Youth Grand Prix, who receive cash prizes thanks to the family of the late John Rickard. First was Edmund Smith, 19k Milton, with 748 points. Second was Adan Mordcovich, 1d Wanstead, with 611 points, and third was Oscar Selby, 14k Epsom, with 590 points. The 2013 Grand Prix is already under way.

Final Points 2012     Youth Grand Prix description

The winners of the first Grand Prix for Double Digit Kyu players has been announced. Top player who started in the 10k - 19k range was Colin Maclennan and the top player who started in the range 20k-40k was Edmund Smith. They receive vouchers to Guo Juan's Internet Go School as prizes. The 2013 event is well under way with many poeple scoring points at Oxford.

Grand Prix details     2012 Top 20 places     2013 points to date

Li Shen (5d), now a student at Cambridge, returned to tournament Go at Oxford and won the event for the third time (previous wins were in 2003 and 2005). He was top of a list of 92 players which included a lot of fellow Cambridge students for the varsity match arranged for the following day, and a large number of novices who could also battle for their own prizes at the bottom end of the draw. Prize vouchers were again supplied by Hoyles who had a bookshop there as usual, and also there were software vouchers. Others winning all three games were Paul Smith (1d Cambridge), Jonathan Reece (2k Oxford), Philip Smith (5k), Andrew Russell (6k Birmingham) and Daniel Peace (11k Oxford).

After our unfortunate forfeit against the Netherlands last month (we forgot to turn up), we were up against Poland this month.

On board 1 Andrew Simons was looking forward to getting his revenge against Marek Kamiński whom he had narrowly lost to at the Polish Go Summer Camp last year (http://lsg.go.art.pl), but Marek didn't show up so he won by forfeit.

Played the night before, Des Cann was in for a tough match against young talent Stanisław Frejlak who won the Polish Championship last year. Fighting soon broke out in the opening, with his groups getting cut in bad shape and some sharp moves from Stanisław brought down too many groups so Des resigned.

Martha McGill's game against Roman Pszonka also had a lot of running fights with weak groups, but unfortunately the dead groups were once again British so she resigned.

Henry Clay scored a good win against Sebastian Pawlaczyk in his debut for the team.

Toby Manning, 2d Leicester, won the 2013 Cheshire Open. He beat Tony Atkins, 1d Reading, in the final. Also winning 2/3 were Roger Huyshe, 3k Shropshire, and Chris Kirkham, 4k Manchester. In the 14 player Handicap section Dave Horan, 9k Chester, was the winner with 5/5, narrowly winning his last game on time. Winning 4/5 were Brian Timmins, 8k Shropshire, and John Green, 4k Leamington. Winning the fighting spirit prize was Gary Ashworth, 4k Manchester.

Results Report with pictures

38 players braved the snowy conditions to attend the Maidenhead Tournament. Winner was Matthew Cocke, 5d, from Epsom. Also winning all 3 games were Paul Margetts, 3k Epsom, Malcolm Hagan, 7k, Winchester, and Robert Scantlebury, 8k Sheffield. 13x13 winner was Rebecca Margetts, 35k Epsom. Epsom also won the team prize with 9/12. Joe Doyle, 11k, was awarded a prize too, for getting a jigo at his first ever tournament.

Results

This summarises the major discussions and actions from the BGA Council meetings 13th October and 2nd December 2012 and preceding discussions:

Congratulations to the Edinburgh team on winning the fourth season of the BGA Online League held during most of 2012.

The contest in Division 1 was extremely close, with each team winning and losing 9 games apiece.

Lukas Kraemer unbeaten in London Open

Lukas Kraemer, 5d from Bonn, won the London Open with a perfect 7 out of 7. Second was the UK's own Matthew Cocke, 5d, who only lost to Lukas. The third player to win European Cup points was Volkmar Liebscher, 3d, from Germany who topped the group on 5 wins on tie break from Lucian Nicolaie, 2d, from Romania. Next placed was David Armel-Wolff, 4d Zurich, who won 5/5.

Winning 6/7 was Joerg Sonnenberger (6k Rostock). Winning 5/7 were Boris Mitrovic (2k Edinburgh), Michael Plikk (3k Oslo), Laurence Ogden (4k Manchester), Timofey Arsenov (4k Russia), Carl Roll (5k Nottingham), Richard Wheeldon (6k South London) and Marwan Jabbour (8k Ouest Parisien). 103 players took part.

Results