Guo Juan, the teaching pro at the London Open, won the London Pair Go Tournament again. This time she played with French 6k Claude Brisson. They beat Andrew Kay, 4d, and Klaudia Kleczkowska, 1k from Poland, in the finals. 16 pairs took part in the event held on the second evening of the London Open.

Results
Gallery

UK's Vanessa Wong was part of the European team at the 2nd SportAccord World Mind Games in Beijing. In the Women's event she lost to Choi Jeong 2p of Korea, beat Rita Pocsai 5d from Hungary and lost to Natalia Kovaleva 5d from Russia. She also played Pair Go with Jan Hora of Czechia. They lost to Joanne Missingham and Lin Chih-han of Chinese Taipei and then to Irene Sha and Bill Lin of Canada.

The Women's was won by Li He of China and the Men's by Choi Chulhan of Korea. Choi also won the Pair Go playing with Choi Jeong.

Full results (off-site)

Read an interview with her

After last year's wobble, the Edinburgh Christmas Open has made a full recovery. The 2012 event was attended by a healthy 32 players at an excellent venue, only a stone's throw from the station and with home baking laid on by local organisers Martha and Matt. William Grayson (9k Durham) was the only player with 4 wins. Prizes for 3 wins below the bar went to Arthur Geddes (4k Glasgow), Andrew Thurman (7k Durham), John Shafer (7k Durham), Greg Cox (10k Dundee), Sam Sowden-Garcia (12k Durham), David Barnes (17k Edinburgh). From the five players at the top all on 3 wins, the SOS tiebreak gave the whisky to David Lee (3d Dundee). The following three players on the same SOS performed nigiri for the one remaining prize which went to Jakub Ziomko (1d Poland) over Piotr Wisthal (1d Aberdeen) and Andrew Simons (3d Cambridge).

Results

The day after the tournament, twelve players gathered together for a day of studying.

Our disappointing start this season continues... so badly that we are now bottom of the League with only one draw from four matches!

We are still seeking our first win of the season after a disappointing 1-3 loss to Norway. However, the match was much closer than the result shows.

This was the first game this season that Jon Diamond took the top board and he was facing a tough opponent in Jie Lin Xia 5d. Despite managing to save his weak group after playing tenuki several times, he didn't have enough points and had to resign after some stones got cut off in the yose.

Andrew Simons had a comfortable lead against Øystein Vestgården after making a decisive cut to capture some stones and was playing to simply seal the win, but then embarked on a crazy adventure which resulted in a bad trade which made the game close again.

Congratulations to Martha McGill on becoming the 200th player to be awarded a dan certificate by the BGA!

Congratulations also to Dylan Carter for becoming the 201st.

See our Dans list for a full list of all dan players with certificates awarded by us.

David Lee has become Scottish Champion for the third year running, beating Matt Crosby in the final. The games were played on KGS on the 7th and 21st November.

In the semi-finals, David defeated Boris Mitrovic while Matt defeated Martha McGill.

43 players took part in the Coventry Tournament at Warwick University. Winner was Andrew Simons (3d) who beat Siu Fung Cheung (4d) from Bournemouth in the final. In third was Francis Roads (1d Wanstead) on 3/3. Also winning all three were James Brownrigg (5k Chester), Thomas Streamer (7k Northampton), Oscar Selby (14 kyu Epsom) and Paul Heeney (18k).

Results

From the 16th-18th November, fourteen of the UK's strongest players gathered together for a training event at Kirsty Healey and Matthew Macfadyen's house in Barford, Warwickshire. The format was similar to previous years, with the participants being split into two groups according to rating. One group played games while the other had their games reviewed. Later there was a chance to mix, with a match taking place between the two groups on Saturday evening.

Fantastic teaching was provided by the indefatigable Guo Juan, who gave four lectures and reviewed some fifty-six games over the course of the weekend. Kirsty and Nick Wedd proved excellent chefs, with meals being eaten on-site so as not to spend any time away from the Go boards.

Many thanks to Kirsty, Matthew and Nick for hosting, cooking and giving lifts (in various combinations). Of course, thanks are also due to Guo Juan: her teaching was inspiring as ever.

Despite the first appearance by Vanessa Wong on top board for our team our poor start to the season continues and we're now in the Relegation Zone for the first time.

We had another loss to the Swiss, with Bei Ge managing our solitary win by a substantial margin. Vanessa had much technical trouble starting her game (getting to grips with Pandanet for the first time can be tricky), with her playing White when it should have been Black, and lost by resignation.

A veil should be drawn over the other two games...

Full season results

Matthew Cocke won a three way tie at the Three Peaks. Andrew Simons and Richard Hunter were the two losing out by SOS when three top players ended on four wins. Also on 4 wins were Roger Huyshe (3k), Mike Cumpsty (3k), Dave Crabtree (8k) and Brian Timmins (9k). 42 players took part in the event, held as previously at the Commodore Inn in Grange-over-Sands.

Results