The eighth match of the B-League season, on 14th April, was against our old friends and league rivals Ireland. Gavin Rooney was expected to play board three for Ireland, but in the end James Hutchinson had to move up a board with John Courtney playing board 4, Karl Irwin and Philippe Renaut on boards 1 and 2. The UK team fielded its strongest team to try and cement our second place; this tactic worked as Damon Woo, Michael Cheung, Bruno Poltronieri and Jake Game all won by resignation. As Sweden drew, the team moved one point clear of them in third place, but still behind leaders Netherlands who are uncatchable. The last round will be on 12th May against Finland.
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The Winter 2025-2026 edition of the BGJ is now available for members to read in the Members' Area, with printed copies being sent out to those that receive them.
The top seven places at the Trigantius all went to Chinese players, five of them starting above the 5-dan bar. With none of these on three wins, Yuanzhen Li, an MSc student at University College London, won with two wins and best SoS tiebreak. He is pictured below with the trophy.
Other prizes for three wins out of three went to Toby Manning (Newtown Linford 1k), Simon Thornewill von Essen (Stevenage 3k), Joshua Sing Ching Fai (no club 4k), Wenzhou Mei (Warwick University 5K), John Shafer (no club 7k), Horace Stoica (Stevenage 10k), Clarence Qin (Oxford 12K), and Toby Thornton (Warwick University 13K).…
In the sixth match of the 2025–2026 B-League season the UK team played Switzerland winning 4-0. Congratulations to Michael Cheung, Bruno Poltronieri, Jake Game and Ryan Zhang. This made the team third after leaders Croatia had their first five match wins voided after a player used AI. Netherlands now lead the table, ahead of Sweden, with what is probably an unassailable lead. Next match is 14th April against fourth-placed Ireland.
Michael Cheung wrote: Tonight I played a chaotic game against John Walch; luckily my opponent runs out of time at the key moment, so my overplay was not punished.
Bruno Poltronieri wrote: On Sunday I won my…
Although held at its usual venue of Frodsham Community Centre, this year's Cheshire had new organisers and a new feature. Ai Guan and Florian Pein introduced the new Cheshire Chase, a self-paired three-round tournament played between rounds of the Open. 13 of the 32 players played at least one Chase game and the Chase winner was Caleb Fai (8k), the only player to play and win all three. His brother Joshua (6k) and Leo Zhang (15k) from Cheadle Hulme School won both the games they played. Adding both events together gave an Endurance ranking, again won by Caleb.
In the main event there were sadly few strong players, but a goodly 11 from Cheadle Hulme School. The unbeaten Open winner was Yifan Bao (5d), with Zhan Shi (3d) from…
