A few simple rules ... limitless possibilities

Chris Bryant completed the final game of our match against Croatia with an easy 16.5 point win on Saturday. He got all four corners and failed to follow the proverb "If you win all 4 corners resign" and lived easily in the centre. The game was uneventful without too much fighting.

On the Tuesday Des Cann lost his game on board 1 and said: "I lost my first game this year. I blame it on being a bit stressed at work recently :-)

The game was mostly OK for me but my opponent played fast keeping me under pressure.

We've retained our unbeaten record, with our sixth match still incomplete.

We lead Croatia 2:1 with the final game involving Chris Bryant, our captain, being played this Saturday evening.

Please tune it to Pandanet then to find out whether we make it six in a row, prior to our head to head with Bulgaria in the next round, which will probably decide who comes first in League C.

Full details of our matches are available on our PGETC Page.

Our match against South Africa, probably our strongest opponents in League C, was a nerve tingler, coming down to the closest of all possible finishes.

We managed to put out our top three players for the occasion, Andrew Simons, Jon Diamond and Des Cann, with Paul Taylor (number 6 on our players list) playing on board 4.

Paul was struggling a bit in the opening, but captured a group slightly unexpectedly and was going happily along into yose with about a 15 point lead when he missed the implications of a throw-in and lost an 11 stone group though dame-zumari. Sigh...

Still, Des Cann (pictured right) soon made up for this, as he says: "I had quite a safe game. He made two low extensions from his hoshi, so I invaded in sente and then shoulder hit.

UK stayed second behind Bulgaria in the 12-team C-League. Bulgaria have won two more boards than the UK.

The match against Ireland ended in a 3-1 win for the UK team, as follows:

1. Des Cann (W) beat Ian Davis (hogweed, 1d) by 17.5
   
2. Paul Taylor (B) lost to James Hutchinson (jameshutch, 1d) by 8.5
   
3. Chris Bryant (W) beat Peter Kasko (Kaskai, 3k) by resignation
   
4. Evan McKiernan-Dooner (B) beat Tiberiu Gociu (OTible, 4k) by resignation
   

Links to the games, with .SGFs, are available on our main Pandanet Go European Team Championship (PGETC) page.

Gerry Gavigan (13k) from South London took second place in the 2014 UCC Tournament. This was held in the Mardyke Pavilion of University College Cork, situated in their sports area next to the River Lee. The 13 players who took part all played handicap games with a maximum of nine stones. Gerry won four games to win 100 euro only losing to the winner, Philippe Renaud (2d) from Galway. Philippe won all five games to gain the 150 euro first prize and Thomas Shanahan (4k Cork) took the third place on SOS tie-break from Artur Gower (18k Galway).

Results

The UK's match against Spain on 18th November was split so that board 1 was played a day later.

Des Cann on board 2 wrote: My opponent started our game with the wrong overtime and I didn't notice causing a flurry of emails and abortive attempts to restart. On the board things were much calmer and I was able to plan the yose fairly early. My opponent got a ko in my corner but just using big yose as ko threats was good enough for me. He lived but I won the game quite safely.

Toby Manning on board 3 wrote: We had a fairly quiet game, with no major fights. I played a simple fuseki, ending up ahead and by the early middle game I simply had to avoid a major disaster – either losing a group or letting him get a large central territory. He failed to start a fight on the left hand side which could have been problematic and then I started a small semeai to gain some aji on the lower side.

The 25th International Amateur Pair Go Championships was held in Tokyo at the end of October. To celebrate the silver jubilee, in addition to the usual 32 pairs from Japan and around the world an extra 30 guests were invited, people who have proved keen to promote Pair Go over the last quarter century. From the UK the extra invites went to Tony Atkins, Francis Roads, Alison and Simon Bexfield.

As the pair from Turkey dropped out at short notice, Alison and Simon were promoted to the status of players. They won two of their five games, losing to Singapore, Hungary and Germany, but beating Mexico and Italy to end in 26th place.

We won our second game of this year against Lithuania 3-1, but are only third in the league on games won. Nevertheless a promising start. Links to the games are available on our main PGETC page

Andrew Simons writes about his game on Board 1:

"My game started with a strange joseki mistake in the Kobayashi opening where my opponent forgot to pincer, but the real fun started when he played a fighting variation in the top right corner. His descent of q18 should have been r18 hane then n16 jump, but taking advantage of that was not easy and we ended up with two eyeless groups of his surrounding my ko-to-capture corner as a ticking time bomb.

He took a big point and I forced the ko, and he resisted one of my threats in a way which meant he captured some of my stones to settle his big group but I killed a nearby group of his in exchange.

Our first match in the new season of the C League was against Greece, one of the newest Go countries in Europe. We won it 3-1, to end the day at the top of the league alongside Bulgaria and just above Lithuania, who both also won 3-1.

1. Des Cann (B) beat Konstantinos Michailidis (Crates, 1k) by 32.5 sgf
2. Paul Taylor (W) beat Dimitrios Satkas (notevenbad, 5 kyu) by resignation sgf
3. Toby Manning (B) beat Harris Lambrakis (Drugon, 5 kyu ) by resignation sgf
4. Jonathan Gallimore (W) lost to Dionisios Sema (Mathsnails, 7 kyu) by 41.5 sgf

Our League Page for 2014-2015 with sgf links

Update: Croatia - Kazakhstan ended a day late as a 4-0, pushing UK down to equal second.

The UK representative at the 2014 KPMC was Andrew Kay. He won three games out of six to come 33rd. He beat Brazil, Ireland and Slovenia, but lost to players from Hong Kong, Romania and Spain.

Ireland's player was Thomas Shanahan who was 40th with two wins, against Argentina and Hungary.

Wei Tae-Woong of Korea won the event, ahead of China, Thailand, Japan, USA and Mexico.

Results