With the oldest players of recent years moved on to University the way was open for the new generation to take over at the British Youth Go Championships in Aston, Birmingham. Everybody expected Oscar Selby to triumph, at 6k being 3 grades above the rest of the field, but he made a mistake in a fight to lose by less than 10 points to Leamington Go Club's Dylan Zhu-Dong. Dylan beat the other top players too and ended up collecting the Under-14 and Youth Champion titles. Oscar won the Under-12 and was runner up in the overall championship. Runners up in those age groups were Hasan Nisar from Aston and Kelda Smith from Cambridge. Melchior Chui from Cambridge won again in the Under-16 section, with Thomas Meehan from Solihull the runner up.

The British Pair Go Championship settled into a new home for the 24th edition, as the old venue had closed down. The event was held in the Red Lion in Hatfield, less than five minutes walk from both the station and the historic old town area. This is now also the venue for the Welwyn Garden City Tournament.

Due to the busy calendar and some illness, there were only 10 pairs taking part and so they were split into six for the open section and four for the handicap section. Winning the top section and returning to the champions position were Natasha Regan and Matthew Cocke and winning the handicap section were Jil Segerman and Patrick Ridley.

The Fighting Spirit prizes went to Edwina Lee and Charles Leedham-Green and to Roella and Edmund Smith.

Alex Rix (3d London) won the Bracknell Tournament. He beat Chris Bryant (1d St Albans) in the last round to claim the Clive Hendrie Trophy for a year. The number of players was down at 24, but nearly everyone got closely matched games due to a gap between 1k and 5k, and exactly 8 players 1k and above. Best of the 5k players was Steve Bailey (Arundel) who won all 3, but close behind was Eric Hall, also 5k (Swindon), who won two with a second round jigo. Daniel Peace (8k Oxford) also won three games.

The team prize was won by "SwinMaid" on a close decision from St Albans. Bruce Tinton (11k South London) won the problem solving contest, playing at his first tournament. The caption contest was won by popular acclaim by Shawn Hearn's "And this move is the Incy Wincy Spider Pincer."

Results

24 qualified players made it to the Midlands venue of the University of Warwick for the first stage of the 2014 British Championship, the Candidate's Tournament. They played over six rounds on the three days of the May Bank Holiday weekend. The only player to win all his games was Bei Ge. Only losing to Bei was defending champion Andrew Kay. Alex Kent, Boris Mitrovic and Sandy Taylor all tied for third at the top of the group on four wins. Sixth was Des Cann, seventh was Tim Hunt and eighth was local organiser Bruno Poltronieri. Alistair Wall was the final player on four wins and so becomes reserve for the Challengers' League, which is held the next bank holiday in London.

Results

The Bar-Low tournament was moved to Warwick University this year in order to regain its usual place alongside the Candidates' Tournament.

Chris Volk won four games, only losing to the dan level ghost player. Ben Ellis also won four, only losing to Chris. Those two agreed to have a blitz play-off game. This was won by Chris, so he took home the £30 top prize, while Ben took the second prize.

The tournament was generously sponsored, although the turnout was still low, so most of the players won cash prizes, including Peter Fisher who also won four out of five games, and everyone took home chocolate prizes.

Results

22 players attended the fourth Welwyn Garden City Tournament which this year was held at the Red Lion Public House in Hatfield.

The winner after a showdown on the top board was Paul Taylor (2d St Albans). Also winning 3 games out of 3 was Colin Maclennan (10k Twickenham). A prize for best young player was given to Edmund Smith (13k Cambridge) who won 2 games out of 3. Some smaller prizes were given at the organisers' whim to other winners of 2 games out of 3, including to Mark Baoliang Zhang (1k no club).

Results (Photo from Tony Collman)

We have just received the announcement of a very interesting tournament for students, organized by the Shanghai branch of the Ing Chang-ki Foundation. The tournament is open to any individual who is, has, or will attend University (both at the graduate and undergraduate level) in the 2014 calendar year. Exceptions can be made if the individual is taking time off from school, but is planning on continuing in the foreseeable future.

The Ing Foundation will pay for every student's: Room, board, travel within Hong Kong, tours and events planned by the Shanghai Ing foundation. The student will be responsible for their airfare to and from Hong Kong, as well as any nightlife, entertainment or souvenirs outside of the preplanned events.

The new season of the Online Study Group (formerly Shodan Challenge) is about to start! If you wish to improve your Go skills, or help others to improve theirs, please sign up via the link below:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/10VUfH9F0qfNKHyo2gOYYHKD6TzV7zre4zuIDSo3S1I0/viewform

The Online Study Group will start on 22nd April and run for about 12 weeks. It is designed to allow you to arrange games with players of similar strengths, request help from stronger players and give help to weaker players.

If you have any questions about the study group, please feel free to get in touch by replying to billywoods@gmail.com (Finally, apologies for leaving it so late to arrange this - life got in the way for a little while...)

Best wishes

Billy

The European Go Federation is proud to announce the start of the certification of European professional Go players. This is in cooperation with CEGO, the EGF's main sponsor, and only possible thanks to their initiative and generosity.

For full details see http://www.eurogofed.org/proqualification/

The Spring edition of the London International Teams moved from its usual Sunday to a Saturday to fit in with its new venue, the Melton Mowbray in Holborn.

This time a strong team of French players took part, but they lost out on the tie-break of Captain's results (match result would have been the same) to the North London Club. So North London was first (2 wins 5 games), France was second (2 wins 5 games) and Central London A was third (1 win 5 games). Wanstead took fourth place (1 win 2 games) with Alistair Wall bravely playing simultaneous games as they were a player short.