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06-Aug: BGJ 192 Now Available in Members' Area


The Summer 2020 edition of the BGJ is now available for members to read.

25-Jul: BGA Second Real Time Online Tournament Won by Kalle Timperi


36 players took part in the second BGA real time online tournament, this time with a single day, three-round format. Kalle Timperi (1d) came out top, winning a £45 Amazon voucher for his efforts. Joel Barrett (4k) and Michael Kyle (3k) took second and third place, winning vouchers of £25 and £10 respectively. Vouchers were also awarded to others on three wins: Sam Barnett (7k) and Jason Jackson (18k). Prizes also went to the highest placed below-the-bar (Colin Williams) and highest placed DDK (Dan Whiteley).

Results

06-Jul: Successful July Youth Squad Tournament


On Sunday 5 July, 30 young Go players gathered online for our first online training tournament for the UK Youth Go Squad, reports Alison Bexfield. Any player who had reached 20 kyu or better was invited (that we were aware of) and it was pleasing to see how many of the players had improved over recent months since we last saw them play.

The tournament was played over three rounds during the afternoon on OGS, where we were able to have a private invitation-only group.

The fact that the strength of our youth players has increased over recent years was evidenced by the fact that 8 of our 30 players were graded 3kyu or stronger (with three of this group in the U12 age group) .

Jacob Zhang is our strongest player and...

18-Jun: Ireland Narrowly Lose Promotion Play-Off


As they finished second in the Pandanet Go European Team Championship C-League, to get promotion Ireland had to beat the B-League's ninth placed team, Sweden.

Board one was played early on Sunday 14th May and Karl Irwin lost to Sweden's Charlie Åkerblom by resignation. The other four boards played on the Tuesday, 16th May, and Philippe Renaut beat Martin Li, also by resignation, to make the match one all. Matei Garcia's game ended when Tiger Hillarp lost on time in a complicated game with huge territories and dead groups, but James Hutchison struggled against Robin Nilsson, eventually resigning. This meant it was all down to the last game between Ian Davis and Anton Silfver. This was a very close and long game, but unfortunately...

08-Jun: UK Youth Go Players Online


The meetings on OGS for youth players and parents are continuing every Sunday from 4pm to 6pm. There are junior players from 25-kyu up to 2-kyu and about half a dozen parents joining in as well. New members are very welcome, please contact Paul Smith (paul361smith at gmail.com) for details of how to join.

On 1 June some of our youth players from this group joined in the Dutch youth group on OGS organised by Dave de Vos. We won 6 out of 8 games played against the Dutch junior players (and Alexander Hsieh won a handicap game against Dave), but this wasn't a competition. The point was just mostly to play with some different players and have fun. If there are any other groups on OGS (for example any UK club groups) who we could have...

19-May: UK Team Draw Last Match of Season Against Belgium


Our team’s last match of the season was against Belgium. If we won then we would jump above them into fifth. A loss would move us down near, but just above, the relegation zone. Jon Diamond finished quickly and Des Cann finished slowly, being the last game of the B-League season to end. His game was a win which went with Jamie Taylor’s to make the match a draw. The team stayed to sixth (on tie-break from Switzerland) to end the league comfortably in the middle. Serbia saw off demoted Lithuania to take the top place, and Italy drew with Switzerland to get the promotion play-off place. The most important game of the evening saw the Netherlands beat Sweden, allowing the former to escape the relegation game in favour of the latter.

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10-May: First BGA Real Time Online Tournament Over


The BGA held its first real time online tournament on the 2020 VE Day Bank Holiday weekend. 42 players took part in a three-round Mcmahon tournament on OGS, with one game per day. Zherui Xu (4d Cambridge) came out the eventual winner with three wins. Sandy Taylor (2d Cambridge) took second place and Mark Baoliang Zhang (1k Manchester) was third. All three received Amazon vouchers as prizes. Also picking up vouchers for three wins were Dan Whiteley (11k Birmingham) and Callum Urwin (10k No Club); Callum also took the Highest Placed Double Digit Kyu prize. Gokul Ramanan Subramanian (2k Cambridge) took the highest placed below-the-bar prize.

The intention was to run these tournaments each month whilst unable to run face-to-face...

08-Apr: UK Team Loses to Italy


In their eighth match of the season the UK played against Italy. The first three games to finish went Italy's way, but the last game ended with a win for Andrew Simons after nearly three hours of play. This loss moved the team down to sixth out of ten, with just the final mach against Belgium on 19th May to go.

Andrew Simons wrote: My game against Matias Pankoke was the opposite of Jon's and Alex's: we had a modern AI joseki, following my attachment against his big low shimari and he made a slight overplay, with the L14 hane instead of extend, and then a big one with the atari which meant his corner turned into mine. As I had a sizeable lead I tried to simplify the game with early settling of my groups (kick and kosumi...