A few simple rules ... limitless possibilities

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.

We drew our final match against Italy, which we needed to win to avoid relegation. Both Bei Ge and Jon Diamond lost this time. A poor performance all round!

So we ended up with a really consistent record this season, no wins and 4 draws from the 9 matches. Jon Diamond must be tagged as the main culprit - no wins from 6 games.

Must try harder next year...

Another poor result leaves us still in last place in the second division. This time we didn't lose, but only drew against Belgium - our third draw this season and still no win.

Andrew Simons played on Monday, but as he said "Forgot to eat beforehand, didn't concentrate, didn't read, didn't win." Really careless...

Bei Ge's opponent didn't turn up or something, so he won by default.

Jon Diamond got into a poor position early in the middle game, creating some outside thickness for his opponent. Struggling to compete he made a reasonable fist of it, then having cut some stones off just failed to kill them (could he have done so?), ending up with a ko for seki and a significant loss. When his opponent cut a few more stones off as compensation the margin was just too much.

Des Cann retrieved some of our pride, capturing many stones (it felt quite easily).

Our poor run of form continues, but this time we have a really tough match against the table-topping Finns.

Vanessa again had problems with connecting to Pandanet-IGS and dropped out at the last minute, leaving Jon Diamond on top board to face Antti Törmänen (7 dan on Pandanet), who's just had a fantastic result in the World Students Oza, coming third.