Thirty-six players turned out for the Welsh Open, held at Barmouth for the 20th year. Richard Hunter (3d Bristol) won with 5 out of 5. Other prizewinners with 4 out 5 were Toby Manning (tournament runner-up), Edward Blockley (5k Worcester), Huw Mort (10k York) and Colin Maclennan (10k Twickenham).

The tournament was fortunate to be visited by two Korean lady professionals; Juyeon Ko (8p) and Sohyun Park (3p). Ms. Ko gave a lecture before the start of the tournament on dealing with non-joseki moves, and the two gave a simultaneous display against 17 players on Saturday evening, winning all their games and spending time afterwards with each player to discuss critical moments.

Results

Andrew Kay (5d South London) retained his title by winning this year's Durham Tournament. Reduced to one day, because of hosting the British earlier in the year, the event attracted 19 players from as far away as Edinburgh and southern England. Second on tie-break from Matthew Crosby (3d Edinburgh) was Boris Mitrovic (1k Edinburgh) who went away with the prize of a month's subscription to Dinerchtein's Insei League. Unattached player John Green (4k) won all three games and Martha McGill (1k Edinburgh) was rewarded for not losing any games (she had one win and two jigos). The event finished an hour early and gave plenty of time to allow players to stand in the rain and watch the Olympic torch arrive in the city, before going on to an Italian restaurant. The weekend was completed by a barbecue on the Sunday.

Results

Natasha Regan and Matthew Cocke retained the British Pair Go Champions title for a third year. They won the top group of the 22nd Pair Go Championships beating Jenny Radcliffe and Francis Roads, the organiser, in the final. Winning the fighting spirit prize were Jackie Chai and John Johnstone.

In the handicap group there were 6 pairs including several children and a 5d Korean lady. Winners were Helen and Martin Harvey, playing in the handicap section as Helen was still recovering from injury. They beat the youngsters Rebecca Margetts and Oscar Selby in the final, proving that 26 stone handicaps can be overcome. The handicap fighting spirit prize was won by Yvonne and Paul Margetts.

Sam McCarthy and John Collins won both the best dressed couple prize and the chemistry quiz.

Results

Congratulations to Andrew Kay on his success at the Challengers League and his promotion to 5 dan.

Also to Felix Wang for his promotion to 4 dan.

Natasha Regan and Matt Cocke finished a very creditable 7th out of 24 in the European Pair Go Championship, held in Lyon, France, 2nd-3rd June 2012. They won 3 of their 6 games.

It was won with a flawless record by the Professional Russian Pair, Svetlana Shikshina and Alexandr Dinerchtein.

Results

The Challengers' League is the penultimate event in the Championship cycle. With Matthew Macfadyen in retirement, there is a new sense of interest in who will win take the title this year - it will definitely be a new name on the trophy.

Eight of the UK's finest players descended on the Nippon Club, London from June 1st to 4th, for the all play all event. In first place, with 6 wins from 7, was Andrew 'the Great Destroyer' Kay. There was nearly a 4 way tie-break for second place, but cream rises to the top, and Nick 'Slowhand' Krempel, played his way to a 5th win, taking outright second.

These two will now meet in the best-of-three Title Match, which will be relayed via KGS. Watch out for more detailed announcements when plans have been finalised.

This year, the BGA is making a concerted effort to attract new players to the game of go by encouraging new go clubs to form in Universities and Colleges. We are asking as many as possible of our existing go clubs to consider sponsoring a new club in their local University or College by running a “go stall” at the “Freshers’ Fair” event in October, and helping any interested students to set up a new Go club and get it established.

The BGA will support any of our clubs who are willing to take part.

Setting up a go stall at a Fresher’s Fair

Clubs taking part first need to identify a Go player in the University or College, staff or student, to take the lead in arranging for a “Go stall” at the Freshers’ Fair event. You will need some Go equipment to demonstrate the game. Your club may already have some equipment. However, the BGA can supplement this with some basic demonstration sets.

The BGA Council has decided to produce this update once a month for double digit kyu (DDK) players. If you are a DDK player, let us know what you like to hear about. And if you have any ideas about the sort of Go tournaments or events which are best for DDK players or which you would like to see in the future, please let us know. If you are a tournament organiser and you are keen to have DDK players taking part in your tournament, please let us know about that too.

Tournaments

Some tournaments have a particularly good record of attracting DDK players so you know that they are a likely place where you can find many other players around your grade. One of these is the Durham tournament, which takes place this year on Sat 16 June. Last year there were 11 DDK players at this event, ranging from 10k to 19k.

In recent tournament results, Daniel Peace 12k from Oxford won all his games at the Bracknell tournament.

This summarises the major discussions and actions from the BGA Council meeting 22nd April 2012 and preceding discussions:

• All existing Officials, as per the website, were re-appointed, with Maria Tabor replacing Jenny Radcliffe as Chair of the Tournament Committee.
• The trifold leaflets needed updating with new subscription rates and change of Membership Secretary. It was decided not to reprint them immediately as there were some suggestions for redesign and to consider this further at the next Council meeting.

This summarises the major discussions and actions from the BGA Council meeting 11th March 2012 and preceding discussions: