Team leader Will Brooks lost again, but the team still beat Croatia thanks to wins from Matthew Madfadyen, Andrew Simons and Nick Krempel.

The 3-1 win puts the UK in a much safer position for avoiding relegation, nearing the end of the season.

BGA Euroteams page

"The Ring of Water" is the fifth book in the Young Samurai series of teenage novels by Chirs Bradford. It was published by Puffin on 3rd March 2011. Its hero is an English boy stranded in 17th Century Japan who has learnt to be a Samurai in order to survive. In this book he has to play a game of Go against a Japanese lord in order to gain freedom for him and his friends.

Chong Han (5 dan Loughborough) won his first UK tournament by taking with ease the 8th Nottingham. Also winning 3 were Roger Daniel (5 kyu London), Maria Tabor (6 kyu Nottingham), David Crabtree (9 kyu Chester) and Andrew Russell (12 kyu Birmingham). Mike Charles won the 9x9 prize and Toby Manning the quiz prize.

Results

A pretty bad disaster today: we had major troubles trying to get a team together on the Tuesday night that the Swedes insisted that we play on. (The rules entitle them to do so.)

So we came up one board light and to avoid deduction of two Board Points rather than one, Jon played as Board 1 and we left Board 2 empty: Swedes 1:GB 0 before we started.

It's Paul's first match and he had major troubles with getting in and finding the Playing Room, but he eventually got going.

Then Jon got in an unfortunate fight, lost quite a few critical stones (probably with a number of misplays) and couldn't recover by killing another group. So Sweden 2:0.

Sadly, the other two games weren't very favourable either, with the Swedes cruising to easy wins in both, so a comprehensive defeat 4:0.

After a two year gap the Oxford Tournament returned, on the same day as the Cheshire, and attracted 51 players. Andrew Simons beat off three London players to win the event. Others winning three games were Sue Paterson, Brook Roberts, Peter Harold-Barry, Richard Wheeldon, Julia Woewodskaya and Kieran Smith.

Results

The Cheshire tournament was rather small this year, thanks to a clash with the Manchester football derby and other factors, but much enjoyed by those who attended. In the top group Alex Rix (3 dan London) was the winner, beating Tony Atkins (2 dan Reading) in the final. In the Handicap Section, the winner on 4/5 was Matt Marsh (7 kyu Sheffield). On 3/5 were Brian and Kathleen Timmins (9 kyu/14 kyu Shrewsbury) and Reg Sayer (13 kyu Stafford). 14 players took part.

Results

The postponed Edinburgh Christmas Open saw a slightly reduced turnout at 33 players.

Having earlier been presented with the 2010 Scottish Championship trophy, David Lee (2 dan Dundee) also triumphed on the day. Runners up on 3/4 were Andrew Kay (4 dan Durham) and Matthew Scott (2 dan Newcastle). Also receiving prizes for 3 wins were Jenny Radcliffe (4 kyu Durham), Eevi Korhonen (7 kyu Tampere), Rob Payne (9 kyu Edinburgh), Andrew Bate (10 kyu Durham) and William Grayson (12 kyu Edinburgh), who was 3/3 as a ghost.

The Scottish championship 2011 semi-finals were decided to be David Lee v Martha McGill and Piotr Wisthal v Glynn Forsythe.

Results

After some struggle with dates we were given permission to bend the rules and play this match over two days.

On day 1 (Tuesday) Des Cann lost, as he described it, an unloseable game and Andrew Simons won a lost one, so the score was 1:1.

Day 2 (Wednesday) didn't go according to plan, with Matthew Macfadyen having some shape problems and then losing after a ko struggle. Jon Diamond was doing nicely, but allowed a group to be cut off and could only manage a ko without sufficient ko threats...

So a 3:1 loss in the end - must try harder!

Full details and game records at BGA Euroteams page

Andrew Simons (3 dan) from Cambridge won the tie-break that separated the top players at the 56-player Maidenhead-Hitachi Tournament. Second was Tom Brand (3 dan) from Reading and third was Nick Krempel (3 dan) from London. Winning 3/3 were David Ward (2 dan), Baron Allday (1 kyu), David Hall (8 kyu), Pat Ridley (11 kyu) and Jan Poslusny (9 kyu) from Prague.

On Sunday 16th January, Matthew Macfadyen beat Vanessa Wong in the fourth game of the 2010 British Championship match. This put Matthew 3-1 ahead in the 5-game match. Matthew is therefore the 2010 British Champion.