Yet another loss in the Pandanet European Championship...

The two newcomers to our team did not have a good time - Bei Ge losing a very close game on the first board against the top Israeli Ali Jabarin, actually playing from Korea where we think he's undergoing some Baduk training, and David Ward on last board struggling with using Pandanet for the first time, also losing.

Jon Diamond screwed up again, first playing at a wrong point and his opponent then unable to Undo the move (poor user interface perhaps?) and finally missing an obvious snapback when in a good position.

Unfortunately Andrew Simons was unable to recover the situation on his own but did win his game, just like last year. So a 3:1 loss, just like last year...

The full season's results and games are here.

China were unbeaten in all five matches to win the team event at the first SportAccord World Mind Games in Beijing. They beat Europe, Taiwan and finally the US 5-0; in round 2 they had beaten Korea 3-2 and in round 4 had beaten Japan 4-1. Second place went to Korea who only lost to China and beat Japan in the last round 4-1. This made Japan take the third place. Fourth was Chinese Taipei on two wins, fifth was USA and sixth Europe. Both USA and Europe only won games against each other, the result being 3-2 to USA in round 3. The UK's Vanessa Wong was playing for Europe on board 5 and next would be playing in the Pair Go event with Catalin Taranu.

At the request of the Brazilian Go Association we have given them permission to translate into Portuguese articles from the British Go Journal, with appropriate acknowledgements. This will help them popularise the game in Brazil, where the 2016 World Mind Sports Games is scheduled to be held.

Hopefully this will also help promote Go in Portugal, Mozambique, Angola and other Portuguese-speaking countries.

We understand that other South American countries, although Spanish speaking, are also interested in this project.

This summarises the major discussions and actions from the BGA Council meeting 6th November 2011 and preceding discussions:

No weather problems this year, unlike in in 2010 which delayed that edition until February. Yunlong Liu (3d Stirling) was the best of the 24 players attending, with Boris Mitrovic (1k Edinburgh) the runner-up on 3 wins.

Ten years after previously winning, Malcolm Hagan won the West Surrey Handicap Tournament. This was probably the last ever such event, with only the support of 13 players meaning it is not worth continuing. Malcolm (7k Winchester) beat Roger Daniel (6k London) in the final to win all 4 games. Also winning 3 were Ed Blockley (5k Worcester) and Colin Maclennan (10k Twickenham). Pauline Bailey (16k West Surrey) won the 13x13 competition with 8 wins, Tony Atkins won the lunch time Pits and Sue Paterson won the competition for writing 26-word passages where each word starts with a different letter.

Results

There is some nice publicity for go in this week’s edition of Ariel (the BBC staff magazine which also goes outside the BBC to some people in the wider media industry).

The article is about Alison Bexfield's participation in the World Amateur Pair Go Tournament, made the top half of page 4 and included a nice picture of her by a goban.

23 players graced Cork with their presence this year. The tournament took place in the rather beautiful main campus of University College Cork. Top of the bunch was Kim Ouweleen, 3d, from Amsterdam, with a perfect 5/5. In second place was Ian Davis, 1d, who edged out Spain's Matei Garcia, 4k, on tiebreak, despite his 5/5 score. Also scoring 5/5 was Thomas Shanahan, 15k, from Galway. With 4/5 were Arthur Cater, 9k, Marek Gutkoswki, 10k, and Kevin Doherty 15k.

Results

The British Pair of Alison and Simon Bexfield topped the group on 2 wins to come 17th in the 22nd IAPGC. They beat pairs from Philippines and Spain, but lost to Korea and two Japanese pairs. For the 6th time in a row Korea won, with Chinese Taipei in second this time. The top European pairs were Hungary in 9th and Czechia in 12th, both with 3 wins.

Results

Andrew Kay stopped Matthew Macfadyen's run of three titles in a row at the Coventry Tournament at the University of Warwick. Andrew beat Matthew in their third-round game to allow Andrew to increase his current titles to five. Matthew Macfadyen got the prize for second and Chu Lu, from the University club, was third. Other players getting prizes for winning all three were David Killen (5k Cheltenham), James Brownrigg (6k Chester), Brent Cutts (9k Nottingham) and Reg Sayer (13k Stafford). Local University club members Anees Ahee (18k) and Ross Woodruff (25k) also won all three games. 47 players took part.

Results