People involved in running the BGA

If you are looking for the person who performs a particular job, you may be better looking at the list of officers and officials. We also have a list of BGA vacancies.

A | B | C | D | F | G | H | K | L | M | O | P | R | S | T | W

Tony Atkins

37 Courts Road, Earley, Reading RG6 7DJ
0118 9268143 (home)
ajaxgo at yahoo.co.uk (home)

Phil Beck

Membership Secretary | Newsletter Distribution

41 Kingston Street, Cambridge CB1 2NU
01223 367022
mem at britgo.org
pbeck173 at yahoo.co.uk (home)

Alison Bexfield

Auditor

130 Wilbury Road, Letchworth Garden City SG6 4JG
01462 684648 (home)
alison at bexfield.com (home)

Les Bock

Archivist

36 Grove Park, London E11 2DL
020 8530 5006 (home)
lesbock@ntlword.com

Edwin Brady

Publicity Materials

30 Market Street, Saint Andrews, Fife KY16 9NS
01334 470585
eb at dcs.st-and.ac.uk

Brian Brunswick

Council Member | AGA E-Journal Distributor | Webmaster

council-brunswick at britgo.org
brian at ithil.org (home)

Chris Bryant

Shodan Challenge

simbathelionrules@hotmail.com

Barry Chandler

Journal Editorial Consultant

journal at britgo.org

Jonathan Chin

Secretary

Cambridge (Email if postal address required.)
secretary at britgo.org

John Collins

Council Member | Online Committee Chairman

3 Mandeville Rise, Welwyn Garden City AL8 7JT
01707 883174 (home) 01707 886110 (work)
jmc at xisl.com

John encountered Go vaguely in 1969, at Cambridge in 1972 and again in 1976 and always meant to get into it seriously but never quite got round to it until 2005 when he rolled up at St Albans Go club from which they haven't yet found an excuse to chuck him out.

He's sort of crawled out of the DDK pit painfully slowly since then. He would like to reach a sensible playing level before his dotage.

During his only-too-copious non-free time he runs a small Software company in Welwyn Garden City, 25 years old in January 2011, specialising in Linux and other open-source software.

John admits responsibility for the online league software which he started in 2009. Because of (or in spite of) this, he was elected to the council as Online Chairman in 2010.

4th January 2011

Ian Davis

Youth Rep Northern Ireland

ian.davis at durge.org

Dave Denholm

Gotalk Moderator | BGJ Online Archive

dave.denholm at tiscali.co.uk

Jon Diamond

President | Publications Committee Chairman | Journal Backnumbers | Advertising Manager

Silver Springs, Heavegate Road, Crowborough TN6 1UA

01892 663837 (home)

jon at diamondconsulting.co.uk

Jon is a retired IT professional living in East Sussex and learnt to play Go at school at the tender age of 14, becoming 1 dan and British Champion in 1965. He was Champion for 11 of the next 12 years, ending up by being promoted to 6 dan, but retiring to spend more time with his family (as they say) in 1997. In retirement he did represent the UK at the first World Amateur in 1979.

As well as being on the BGA Council for many years in the 1970’s Jon founded the Go club at Cambridge University, started the British Go Journal and was editor for several years. More recently he produced the now obsolete BGA CD. (Barry Chandler insists he was co-editor of BGJ 146, focussing on the World Mind Sports Games - Jon isn't so sure...). He returned to playing Go competitively a few years ago, but is only playing at about 4 dan strength (on a good day) and represented the UK at the 1st World Mind Sports Games in 2008.

When at University Jon was one of the early pioneers in Computer Go and his programme was one of the two involved in the first inter-computer game of Go in 1970.

He was elected President in 2009.

29th November 2010

Jochen Fassbender

Web Indexer

gojo at freenet.de

John Gibson

Regional Representative Ireland

30 Lakelands Park, Terenure, Dublin 6W Ireland

00 3531 4908779 (home)

john at mhg.ie (work)

T Mark Hall

Vice-President

020 7627 0856 (home)
020 7008 1436 (fax)

tmark at gogod.demon.co.uk (home)

Martin Harvey

Regional Representative North-West

5 Trafford Drive, Timperley, Altrincham WA15 6EJ

0161 969 4469 (home)

jm.harvey at ntlworld.com (home)

Geoff Kaniuk

Draw Program Maintainer | Tournament Results | Referee Training | Grading

01223 710582

geoff at kaniuk.co.uk

It was while working for Plessey Telecommunications in the 'maths hut' at Taplow Court near Maidenhead in the early 70's, that I first came across the game of Go. A small group of us used to meet regularly at lunchtimes for 13x13 games and I rapidly became enthused by everything about Go including the elegance of the playing material. Within a year I had constructed my first wooden Go board.

On moving to London in the mid 70's, I became a regular at the London Go Centre in Belsize park run by Stuart Dowsey. A lot of people used to play there on a Saturday afternoon. On a sunny day when the club doors were open, as you approached the building, you could hear an intriguing sound, a bit like gravel being tumbled about. It gives an idea of how many players there were rattling glass stones in their bowls! After attending for about three weeks he said to me - now is the time to join the BGA!

Probably my first involvement in organising tournaments was during the time of the Hammersmith Go Club (mid 80's), where for a while we had a monthly tournament. I made a draw display system for mounting cards into wooden runners glued to a stiff backing sheet. Matthew Macfadyen later turned this into a really nice wooden display system for the London Open, where for many years at the Highbury Roundhouse, I did the draw using specially printed yellow cards laid out for an 8 round tournament.

I then heard that there was a program for doing the pairing, got hold of it and ran the draw for the London Open on a portable computer borrowed from my workplace in Bromley. It worked fine, but the next year after trying to edit the draw because the pairing was unacceptable, the program crashed and we could not recover the draw. We worked like mad to transfer the draw to cards and got the tournament underway again without being lynched! I vowed to produce a decent program - and GoDraw started life in the late 80's.

I am now developing the next generation of GoDraw. I am also intent on developing a sound model for understanding the behaviour of our rating and pairing systems. So I am around in the background ready to help out with any of these issues.

11th March 2011

Alex Kent

Student Development

a.d.kent at durham.ac.uk

Mike Lynn

Youth Rep West Midlands

michael.lynn at keaston.bham.sch.uk

Matthew Macfadyen

Training Consultant

22 Keytes Lane, Barford, Warwick CV35 8EP

01926 624445 (home)

matthew at jklmn.demon.co.uk (home)

Matthew Macfadyen first became British Go Champion in 1978 and has now been Champion for a total of 25 years. His European rating confirms he is European 6 dan.

After he became Champion in 1978, he defended the championship against several challengers until he was defeated by Terry Stacey in 1985. He failed to regain it in his challenge against Stacey in 1986. In 1987 Stacey lost the championship to Piers Shepperson. In 1988 Macfadyen regained the title by defeating Shepperson. He then again defended the championship against several challengers until 1993, when he was defeated by Shutai Zhang, who had trained in China as a professional Go player. Macfadyen failed to regain the title from Zhang the next three years. In 1997 Zhang returned to his native China, and Macfadyen was then able once more to regain the title. He has successfully defended it since then, losing only two games in the subsequent eight championship matches. He was unable to beat Bei Ge when he competed in 2006 and 2007, but since then has regained his hold on the title.

Matthew is married to Kirsty (also a Go player), with two grown up daughters, and lives in Barford near to Leamington Spa. He works as an electrician when not playing Go.

January 2011

Colin Maclennan

Clubs and Membership Committee Chairman | Council Member

18 Wensleydale Road, Hampton TW12 2LW

020 8941 1607 (home)

colin.maclennan at btopenworld.com

I first encountered the game of Go way back in the 70s. A colleague at work, a keen chess player, one day brought in a Japan Airlines leaflet about the game and suggested we try it out in our lunch break. So that is what we did, using squared paper and drawing circles that we shaded or not to represent stones.

It was a cumbersome way to play and we did not get far, although we did begin to realise that building walls enclosing watertight areas in one part of the board while your opponent did the same in another part was probably not the best strategy. But it was enough to stimulate me to visit a Go club that was currently meeting in a house in Croydon. It was a long way from where I lived, and I only managed a couple of visits before family pressures took over and I relegated Go to the "RIP" section of my brain.

Years later, after I retired from the Department of Transport (I was a traffic engineer), I took over the chess club at our local junior school which my youngest daughter attended. Her initial interest in the game soon evaporated, but by that time I was locked to running the club and it was several years before I got away!

I thought about taking up the game myself, but a couple of visits to the local chess club discouraged me. At this point I recalled my brief encounter with Go all those years before. A trawl on the Internet, which we had just installed, and I was soon visiting the Twickenham club on a regular basis. The rest, as they say, is history.

"But why the Council?" I hear you say. Well I guess the real answer is that, as a London player, Geoff Kaniuk made me feel guilty by looking for someone to run the London Open. I didn't feel I could offer that as Christmas is a busy time of year when you have a family, but I saw the solution when Jon Diamond put out his call for nominations to the Council. I would volunteer for that instead! I suppose you could call it "pre-emptive volunteering"!

I do think it is important for UK go players to have an active national organisation to encourage the development of the game in Britain. I hope I can make a useful contribution to this.

23rd May 2011

Henry Manners

Junior Website Editor

henrymanners at hotmail.com

Toby Manning

26 Groby Lane, Newtown Linford LE6 0HH
01530 245298
07798 825299

toby.manning at dsl.pipex.com

Toby learned the rules of Go when he was a teenager in the 1960’s, but it was when he went to Cambridge in 1971 that he first really concentrated on the game. During his three years at University he got to be 1 kyu, and was firstly secretary then President of the University Go Society. He organised the first Cambridge Go Tournament (subsequently called the Trigantius).

His career then took him to Bristol, London, Leamington and Leicester, and in all places he was a keen member of the local club. He helped arrange each Club’s tournaments – the Wessex, London Open, Warwick and Leicester – and has organised three British Congresses as well as many Three Peaks Tournaments.

He got to be 3 dan in 1994, when he won his first tournament (the Three Peaks) although recently he has been playing at 2 dan; in 2002 he won the Irish Open. He has also won tournaments in Cornwall and Cheshire.

He was a Council member from 1976 to 1979 when he was elected President following Brian Castledine’s death, serving for 4 years. He rejoined Council in 2008, during which year he was non-playing captain for the UK Go team at the First World Mind Sports Games in Beijing.

He is married to (non go-playing) Felicity, with no children.

17 February 2010