It's round 6; we're still seeking a win and now we're playing the second team in the League, Finland, relegated from Division 1 last year, so it's going to be tough.

Chong Han leads off with a quickish victory on Board 1. He's always in control and, despite missing several opportunities in the middle game to force a resignation, wins by the large margin of 17.5 points.

Des Cann had a tough game and let a few stones too many die in the middle game, losing by 8.5 in the end.

Jon Diamond on Board 3 was always in charge, squeezing a weak group leading to cutting off some other stones that he'd had his eyes on from early on in the game. His opponent ran into time troubles and eventually resigned.

The final game, and also last to finish, was the team captain's, Andrew Simons. Despite, as he says, "making what must have been 50 points of mistakes in byo yomi", he won narrowly, by 1.5 points.

So we rounded up with a close win and our first this season.

Since the 1960s Oxford has not done very well in its Go matches against Cambridge. Even by normal standards, 2011 was a particularly bad year -- Oxford lost 6-0. However, in the run-up to this year's match, Oxford's spirits were high. Their line-up included a 5 dan undergraduate, and a 4 dan chef, from China, as well as a 4 dan visiting professor from Korea. To combat this, Cambridge's team included one visiting Chinese 4 dan. On paper, therefore, Oxford were the clear favourites.

Victory did not come easy, however. The first round saw a game between an Oxford 2 dan (name withheld, to protect the guilty) and Sam Rodrigues (3 kyu) from Cambridge. It was a game of two ladders -- one was in the mind of the Oxford 2 dan, and the other was on the all-too-real Go board. After they had played 15 moves each in the ladder, it became apparent, even to the 2 dan, that Sam's mind had also contained the correct image of the real world.

This year's Oxford was the largest UK tournament apart from the London Open for 4 years. 87 players of all strengths took part, including a large contingent from Cambridge who would play the varsity match the following day and many young players encouraged by the included novices' event. Winner in a Cambridge-Oxford final was Lingjun Miao (4d) who beat Korean player Yousang Baik (4d). Players on 3 wins receiving book token prizes thanks to sponsor Hoyle's Games were: Paul Barnard (1k Swindon), Bogdan Ghica (3k Newmarket), Julia Woewodskaya (8k London), David Crabtree (9k Chester), Yvonne Margetts (15k Epsom), Pauline Bailey (16k West Surrey) and Edmund Smith (28k Milton). Junior prizes were awarded, thanks to GoGoD who donated 3 CDs, to Adan Mordcovich and Roella Smith in the U18 section, Anthony Ghica, Kelda Smith and Hammod Munir in the U15, Edmund Smith, and Rebecca Margetts in U12 and Isabelle Margetts in U9.

Kath Timmins, 13k, became the oldest winner of a Cheshire tournament when she won the 8-player Cheshire Handicap with 4/5. Best of the 8 players in the top group was event organiser, Tony Atkins 2d, winning the Open title.

Results

Andrew Kay (4d, South London) won the first ever City of London Winter Go Tournament, by winning all three of his games against Alex Rix (2d, Central London), Paul Taylor (1d, St Albans) and Andrew Simons (3d, Cambridge). Also on three wins was Phil Smith (5k) who is not affiliated to a club. Andrew Kay also had time to play an unbeaten six games in our new Xinyi Lu 13x13 Cup, winning that also in a close finish with Jonathan Turner (1k, CLGC). Andrew also won the City club's Blitz Shield last October, making him somewhat a "Grand Slam" winner of all the competitions they have run in the past few months! The event was well attended, with 37 players braving the cold weather and threats of snow. The hospitality of the Melton Mowbray pub and the kindness of the staff helped to blow away any Winter blues.

Results

With regret we report that Allan Scarff, pioneer Go programmer, died from cancer on 9th December 2011, aged 65.

Allan first came across Go in 1969, when working as a programmer with NCR in Dundee, from a Pure Science student friend, Phil Bristow. Go immediately captured his interest and he was soon teaching it to anybody and everybody, including his family, of whom son Christian still plays regularly.

In 1970, with a wife and three children to support, he got a job with ICL in Reading, and joined the existing Go club which he helped run for some years whilst reaching dan level. He left ICL in 1983 to work for himself, but stayed in Reading.

Allan had what he called a cellular automaton idea to produce a Go program which could run on a small PC like BBC Acorn. Microgo1 came on the market in 1984 and Microgo2 followed; it won places in various competitions between 1985 and 1989.

We went into our match this week hoping to get our first win of the season, Switzerland being one of the weaker teams who were promoted from the C league.

On 1st board was new team member Chong Han. He played an unconventional, centre-oriented opening which lead to complex fighting and many chances for both to win, but in the end he lost by a few points.

On board two Des Cann started powerfully and looked on course for a crushing victory until he blundered some key cutting stones, but fortunately he battled on and won anyway. Alex Selby also won his relatively peaceful game.

Finally, Andrew Simons lost his game when he played a time tesuji to read if a group could be killed by ko or unconditionally and then forgot to kill it afterwards.

The Swiss team kindly let us join reviews of the games the next evening by their trainer, Hwang In-seong 7d. So another draw and our first win of the season remains elusive.

Andrew Simons won the slightly delayed 2011 British Small Board Championship to hold on to his title won in 2010, by beating Tim Hunt, despite losing to him in their first game. Unfortunately though Andrew still has not received the trophy as the delay in passing it on last time was repeated when the organiser brought the wrong trophy along. Nevertheless all else was organised well, including the cooking by Paul Smith's family. Youth prize winner was Melchior Chui who won all 8 games. Best Junior was Anthony Ghica with 6/8, and best under-8 player was Edmund Smith. Other junior prizes went to Peran Truscott and David Robson. Also winning prizes were Andrea Smith and Stanislaw Klajn.

Results

Xinyi Lu, former organiser, was remembered at the 2012 Maidenhead Tournament. The tournament was honoured by the presence of both Xinyi's parents and several family friends. 49 players took part in the tournament and it was fitting that it was a Chinese player, Chu Lu 5d, who was the winner. She beat Bei Ge in the final. Also winning three were Mike Charles, 2k, and Dave Storkey, 8k.

Happy New Year to all our members and other Go players

The BGA is continuing its regular activities, such as Membership Administration, the Youth Grand Prix and the BGJ, however Council has been discussing what and how to prioritise our development activities for 2012 and this is what we've come up with:

Club Development

Quite a number of our clubs are just about hanging on, a few have given up recently and some are reported as not being terribly friendly to novices.

We will be focussing on trying to spread best practice from the active clubs to less active ones. We also be trying other methods of encouraging clubs not just to play more, but also to recruit and teach new players.

We also need to know what the BGA can additionally provide to help clubs.