The Second Not The London Open took place over the second May Bank Holiday weekend at the London Go Centre. At 21, we had a slightly bigger entry than last year, reported organiser Gerry Gavigan, but we've still got a long way to go before we reach the size of its progenitor the London Open Go Congress. However in its own terms the tournament was successful. A nice feature of the weekend was the five or six people who just dropped in watch and enjoy the event, such as Bruno Poltronieri and Martha McGill.

This time the Scottish Open moved back to the weekend at the end of May and to a first time venue at Columbkille’s Church Hall in Rutherglen, just east of Glasgow. Unfortunately there was a drop in numbers attending, with just 15 players taking part at some point. So the decision was made to make the event a Swiss System event, with handicaps less one; everyone playing all rounds had a chance of winning.

In the end it was the two dan players and a 7k who ended on five wins. Peikai Xue (2d London) was the winner of the title on SOS tie-break (shown right collecting his prize). His only loss was against Jakub Ziomko (1d Aberdeen) who finished second. Coming third was Quinlan Morake (7k Glasgow) who beat Jakub but lost to Peikai. Taking prizes for four wins were Edinburgh's Grzegorz Kudla (2k) and Neil Sandford (16k).

After a six year gap the Oxford Tournament was relaunched and successfully attracted 57 players. The previous Oxford event had 92 players, but that included a team playing a varsity match and attendances were generally higher in 2013. This time a new venue was used, Oxford Deaf and Hard of Hearing Centre. This former meeting hall, converted into a community centre including a chapel and various side rooms, is conveniently near the centre of the city, tucked in behind Pembroke College and the new shopping centre.

Best of the players was Chao Zhang (6d London) who won all three games, including beating Romania's Alexandru-Petre Pitrop (4d), America's Hugh Zhang (6d) and Cheng Gong (3d London City). Hugh was rewarded with the runners-up prize. Those winning all three games lower down were Malcom Walker (5k No Club), John Bamford (7k Oxford Uni) and Paul Heeney (18k No Club).

The Kyu Players Weekend, held at the London Go Centre over the first May Bank Holiday, started with a teaching day on the Saturday. Teachers were former professional Chao Zhang (6d), former British Champion Daniel Hu (4d), Charles Hibbert (3d), Joanne Leung (2d) and Jonathan Turner (2k) - shown bottom left - who variously led small groups in analysis, discussion and simultaneous playing sessions. The lectures were videoed and may be found on the LGC YouTube channel.

About 30 players enjoyed the 2nd Nottingham kyu training day and rapid tournament. It was held, as in 2018, in The Dice Cup board game cafe, near the city's Victoria Centre. The number of players was boosted by a minibus of students from Cheadle Hulme School (CHS), accompanied by Martin and Helen Harvey, and physics teacher Mike Winslow.

In the morning the teaching was given by Andrew Kay, Sandy Taylor, Martin Harvey, Robin Dews, Carl Roll and Tetsuro Yoshitake, a student from Japan, studying at the University of Nottingham.

In the afternoon there was a three-round rapid-play tournament, with 30 minutes per player, sudden death. The winner was Tetsuro Yoshitake (3d Nottingham), who won all three games including that against Andrew Kay (4d Birmingham). Tetsuro was presented with the Nottingham Tournament Trophy, which is engraved with the names of previous winners of the Nottingham Tournament, from the 1980s, around 2010 and from 2018.

The latest edition of Youth Go News has been published, No. 5 May 2019.

If you missed any, then old editions are available.

Please tell any young players you know about it.

Fifteen players gathered in the small Hertfordshire town of Letchworth, more formally known as Letchworth Garden City, to play in this year's Candidates' Tournament, the first round of the British Championship. It was held at the community hall called "The Settlement" and we are grateful to Simon and Alison Bexfield who arranged the venue and also acted as ghosts. Our thanks also go to Matt Marsh for running the Tournament.

As usual the event had six rounds over three days of the first May Bank Holiday, run on the Swiss system. With six players to qualify for the Challenger's League, four wins would almost certainly ensure qualification, while with three wins one would need to do well on the tie-break to qualify.

Andrew Kay (3d Birmingham) made sure he wasn't worried by tie-break by winning all six. Sam Bithell (1d Cambridge) did very well, only losing to Andrew. On four wins were Boris Mitrovic (2d Edinburgh), Tim Hunt (2d Milton Keynes) and Jamie Taylor (2d Cambridge).

In the last match of the season, our team had trouble against a lower-graded team from Turkey. They lost board one and two to draw the match. However the match point scored kept the team above the relegation zone and their final position in the B-League was 7th.

Andrew Simons wrote: Annoying loss for me against Hakki Burak Güner. The opening and early middle game went well. However the h4 “timesuji” blunder should have been at r13. He ignored this and attacked well; I helped him kill me. Then I messed up some more.

Alex Kent wrote: I lost by resignation to Ugur Arikan. My game was a bit disappointing - credit to my opponent as he didn't seem to make any real mistakes! The opening contained three 3-3 joseki (I made a large shimari in the fourth corner) and it seemed pretty balanced. I experimented a bit in the lower-left and destroyed the side rather than taking the corner. I don't think I got a bad result there.

The Spring 2019 edition of the BGJ is now available for members to read.

Our team was outplayed by a strong team from Sweden, losing all four games. This leaves the team still in seventh place in the B-League, but only on tie-break. The final match of the season will be on Tuesday 5th May, against Turkey.

Alex Kent wrote: I lost by resignation against Fredrik Blomback. The opening did not go well: I went wrong in a "windmill" joseki in the upper-left. I ended up needing to live small while my opponent got a wall. Definitely one I need to investigate! Early in the middle game I started playing more aggressively to try and catch up, but this backfired dramatically and I barely survived. Later on things got a little exciting and I tried a few tricks but to no avail.

Jon Diamond wrote: Against Charlie Akerblom, for a change I didn’t screw things up in the early middle game, but I nearly did so! Decent exchanges in the fuseki and I created a running weak group...