A few simple rules ... limitless possibilities

The 2014 Irish Go Congress occurred over the weekend on 14th -16th February, with 44 players attending in a surprisingly sunny Dublin. Celebrating 25 years of Go in Ireland, the main tournament, the 3rd Confucius Cup, was well represented with a strong field of players.

Fan Hui (2p France) won with a perfect 5/5 score. 2nd, 3rd, and 4th places all had three wins with the order decided with SOS, resulting in Csaba Mero (6d Hungary) in second place, Antoine Fenech (5d France) third, and Ondrej Silt (6d Czech Republic) fourth.

In the 6th round of the online teams league, the British team lost to Spain, but two games only by a very small amount. All the games went into overtime. First to finish was Martha McGill's game against Rogelio Gomes. Unfortunately some edge stones got captured and Martha had to resign. On board one Andrew Simons claimed our only win against Paco Garcia de la Banda. When Andrew killed one of Paco's large groups late on, Paco was unable to kill Andrew's back and had to resign. The other two games were very tight finishes and both ended at almost exactly the same time. Unfortunately we lost both: Des Cann lost to Jesus Roldan by 1.5 points and Sandy Taylor to José-Manuel Vega by 3.5 points. This left UK very mid-table with three wins, two losses and a draw. Spain's win put them up to third behind Bulgaria and C League leaders Turkey.

Full results for the season and game records can be seen here

All games played handicap less one, max 9 stones.

We started out tied with Turkey at the top of Division C, but they are nominally the strongest of the other teams in the Division and quite close to us in overall strength. Nevertheless we had high hopes as we put out our strongest team.

Sadly, this was not to be to be the case as we lost all three completed games...

On top board Andrew Simons had a good opening with one cutting group between two weak groups. He didn't play that severely and his opponent managed to settle both groups, but he got some decent profit in exchange, though Andrew did make an annoying timing mistake which meant his opponent could get a big tenuki during the fighting.

The UK's pair of Natasha Regan and Matthew Cocke had a tough draw which caused them to struggle at the International Amateur Pair Go Championship in Tokyo. In the first round they lost to a strong Canadian pair, and were rewarded with a game against China. This they lost as expected and then played and lost to Poland. Bravely they battled on and beat France in round 4 and Denmark in round 5, to end on 2 wins and 26th place.

Report/Results

The 8th Korean Prime Ministers Cup, organised by the Korean Amateur Baduk Association, was held in Gumi Conference Centre, in an industrial city about four hours South East of Seoul. The weather was lovely (about 22 degrees), but sadly the sun was shining outside on the UK flag being flown upside down, possibly indicating distress at the UK's likely results? The opening ceremony featured magic acts making women, flowers and birds disappear and then appear again, and also strange modern Korean dancing.

There were three games on the first day, with above the bar China, Japan, Hong Kong, USA, Finland (Juri Kuronen) and Czechia (Ondrej Silt) winning all three. Ilja Shikshin of Russia unfortunately got Hong Kong in the first round.

The British rep to the 34th WAGC, now on in Sendai Japan, Andrew Kay gave an interview to Ranka online. After two days he had won two games out of four, having lost to Korea, beating Turkey, losing to Switzerland and beating New Zealand. Results from Nihon Ki-in

The European Go Championship was won by Fan Hui, 7d, who had recently gained French nationality. He beat Slovakia's Pavol Lisy in the final to take the title. Fan Hui also took the Open title as there were not lots of strong Korean players there. He was also second in the Weekend Tournament, behind Russia's Ilja Shikshin.

Best placed British player in the Open was Andrew Simons who won 6/10 to take 38th place. Andrew Kay was 58th with 5/10. Pleasingly most British players won half their games, but Boris Mitrovic, 1d, won 7 games and Brian Timmins, 9k, won 6.

Results/Reports

The Czech Republic won the finals of the Pandanet Go European Team Championship, held at the European Go Congress in Olsztyn, Poland. The top four teams from the A-League played each other over three rounds to determine the winner. Unfortunately a clock problem on board two of Czechia v Ukraine in round one meant that game having to be replayed. As Russia beat Hungary but drew with the Czechs and the Ukrainians, the Czech Republic could win if they won this last game (having also beaten Hungary). If the game went Ukraine's way they would be second to Russia on tie-break. So Jan Hora and Bohdan Zhurakovskyj were the focus of everyone's attention, in Poland and on Pandanet, with Hora winning the game by resignation and hence the Championship for his team.

Results

The two Russia women dominated the eight player all-play-all European Women's Go Championship. Natalia Kovaleva was the unbeaten winner, Dina Burdakova second. The UK's Alison Bexfield won one game to come 7th. Results

Natalia and Dina also qualified for the European team to the SportAccord World Mind Games. They will join the winners of the SportAccord Mind Games European Qualifier, Fan Hui and Pavol Lisy. This event was also part of the Leksand Summer Go Camp and was held from 20th to 22nd July with 12 invited men players.

The other two members of the European team are Svetlana Shikshina and Ilya Shikshin who previously qualified by winning the 2013 European Pair Go Championship.