The London Open kicked off with more than 100 players from 23 countries in round one and more than 120 players in total. On hand to do teaching was Korean Professional Miss Ko Juyeong. On the second evening the 16 team Pair Go was won by Ko Juyeong and Chong Han.

After 5 rounds Korean 7d Young-Sam Kim was unbeaten, close behind were Yunlong Liu 3d from China and British players Chong Han 5d and Andrew Kay 4d.

In the end nobody could beat Young-Sam Kim who took the first place. Five players ended on five wins in the next positions: Lingjun Miao (4d China), Yunlong Liu (3d China), Chong Han (5d, UK), Andrew Kay (4d UK) and Ching-Nung Lin (6d Taiwan). The second-third and fourth-fifth places were tied. Winning six games were Rafael Mello (11k Durham), Carl Roll (7k Nottingham) and Martha McGill (2k Edinburgh). All players with five wins got a prize selected from the prize table and all with four wins got a certificate.

The third season of the online team league and the first season of the online Individual League concluded on 17th December 2011.

After some adjustments, awarding draws in unplayed games, the winners of the online team league, taking the GoGoD shield, were Central London Go Club A.

Winning Division 2 and promotion to division 1 were St Albans Go Club team.

Winning Division 3 and promotion to division 2 were the Chester A team.

Winning Division 4 and promotion to division 3 were the South London team.

The individual league prizes in the first online league were named the "Xinyi Lu prizes" in honour of Xinyi Lu, who tragically died in October 2011.

Winning Division 1 was Andrew Simons from Cambridge.

Winning Division 2 - and what would have been promotion to division 1 - was Xinyi Lu from the Central London Go Club.

Winning Division 3 and promotion to division 2 was John Collins from the St Albans Go Club.

Coming bottom of their respective divisions and relegate

Yet another loss in the Pandanet European Championship...

The two newcomers to our team did not have a good time - Bei Ge losing a very close game on the first board against the top Israeli Ali Jabarin, actually playing from Korea where we think he's undergoing some Baduk training, and David Ward on last board struggling with using Pandanet for the first time, also losing.

Jon Diamond screwed up again, first playing at a wrong point and his opponent then unable to Undo the move (poor user interface perhaps?) and finally missing an obvious snapback when in a good position.

Unfortunately Andrew Simons was unable to recover the situation on his own but did win his game, just like last year. So a 3:1 loss, just like last year...

The full season's results and games are here.

China were unbeaten in all five matches to win the team event at the first SportAccord World Mind Games in Beijing. They beat Europe, Taiwan and finally the US 5-0; in round 2 they had beaten Korea 3-2 and in round 4 had beaten Japan 4-1. Second place went to Korea who only lost to China and beat Japan in the last round 4-1. This made Japan take the third place. Fourth was Chinese Taipei on two wins, fifth was USA and sixth Europe. Both USA and Europe only won games against each other, the result being 3-2 to USA in round 3. The UK's Vanessa Wong was playing for Europe on board 5 and next would be playing in the Pair Go event with Catalin Taranu.

At the request of the Brazilian Go Association we have given them permission to translate into Portuguese articles from the British Go Journal, with appropriate acknowledgements. This will help them popularise the game in Brazil, where the 2016 World Mind Sports Games is scheduled to be held.

Hopefully this will also help promote Go in Portugal, Mozambique, Angola and other Portuguese-speaking countries.

We understand that other South American countries, although Spanish speaking, are also interested in this project.

This summarises the major discussions and actions from the BGA Council meeting 6th November 2011 and preceding discussions:

No weather problems this year, unlike in in 2010 which delayed that edition until February. Yunlong Liu (3d Stirling) was the best of the 24 players attending, with Boris Mitrovic (1k Edinburgh) the runner-up on 3 wins.

Ten years after previously winning, Malcolm Hagan won the West Surrey Handicap Tournament. This was probably the last ever such event, with only the support of 13 players meaning it is not worth continuing. Malcolm (7k Winchester) beat Roger Daniel (6k London) in the final to win all 4 games. Also winning 3 were Ed Blockley (5k Worcester) and Colin Maclennan (10k Twickenham). Pauline Bailey (16k West Surrey) won the 13x13 competition with 8 wins, Tony Atkins won the lunch time Pits and Sue Paterson won the competition for writing 26-word passages where each word starts with a different letter.

Results

There is some nice publicity for go in this week’s edition of Ariel (the BBC staff magazine which also goes outside the BBC to some people in the wider media industry).

The article is about Alison Bexfield's participation in the World Amateur Pair Go Tournament, made the top half of page 4 and included a nice picture of her by a goban.

23 players graced Cork with their presence this year. The tournament took place in the rather beautiful main campus of University College Cork. Top of the bunch was Kim Ouweleen, 3d, from Amsterdam, with a perfect 5/5. In second place was Ian Davis, 1d, who edged out Spain's Matei Garcia, 4k, on tiebreak, despite his 5/5 score. Also scoring 5/5 was Thomas Shanahan, 15k, from Galway. With 4/5 were Arthur Cater, 9k, Marek Gutkoswki, 10k, and Kevin Doherty 15k.

Results