A few simple rules ... limitless possibilities

The 3rd season of the Pandanet Go European Team Championship has begun, with the UK team again in League B. The team is largely the same as before, but at the top features the addition of Vanessa Wong 6d, current European Women's Champion, who will hopefully help us improve on our position of 5th place last season.

Unfortunately our campaign got off to a bad start, losing 0-4 to Austria.

Vanessa had to drop out so new team member Martha McGill stepped up to play on board 4 against Jürgen Suntinger.

Congratulations to Vanessa on her latest win, in Brno, Czech Republic!

Alison Bexfield reports that Vanessa won all five of her games and will now receive a place at the 2nd SportAccord World Mind Games in Beijing in December.

On the last day of play at the World Mind Sports Games the finals and play-offs were staggered so you could watch more than one on Pandanet and EuroGoTV and so that some of the winners could catch evening flights.

The first event to end was the Pair Go.

In the Youth, Tian Ren Chen won a third game by beating a French 3d. Henry Clay lost to a Brazilian 1d to end on 2 wins. Vanessa Wong lost to a Japanese 6d to end on 2 wins and 23rd place.

Three players form Chinese Taipei and one from Hong Kong qualified for the semi-finals.

With one round left to go Chinese Taipei were dominating the top of both the Youth and The Pair Go tournaments.

In the Pairs, Martha McGill and Matthew Crosby picked up a second win beating a Romanian pair, whilst Alison and Simon Bexfield remained on 1 win.

The 42 player Youth Tournament and the 20 team Pair Go Tournament got underway at the WMSG in Lille.

In the Youth, the UK players (Vanessa Wong, Henry Clay and Tian Ren Chen) all won one game out of two on the first day.

In A Group of the Pairs, Martha McGill and Matthew Crosby lost their first game against Americans and won their second against a Dutch pair.

Lai, Hung and Kuo of Chinese Taipei 1 won the gold medal in the Team Tournament. In the semi-finals they beat Singapore 3-0 and then in the final won 2-1 against Chinese Taipei 2. Chinese Taipei 2 (Lo, Tsai and Hsu) had beaten Russia 2-1 in their semi-final and had to be content with the silver medal. Singapore won the bronze medal beating Russia 2-1 in the play-off for third.

The two UK teams ended 6th and 12th in their respective groups at the World Mind Sports Games.

UK 1 ended with three wins in the 14-team B Group to get a very good 6th position. On the second day of the event they lost 3-0 to Chinese Taipei 1, lost 2-1 to Japan 1 and beat Australia 2-1.

Team UK 1 won both their first matches in the WMSG Team Tournament. They beat Ireland 2-1 in the first round (Matthew Cocke lost to Ian Davis by 1.5 points) and in the second round Chong, Vanessa and Matthew beat the Netherlands 1 team 3-0. The UK 2 team lost both their matches 0-3, the first against Canada and the other against USA 1.

Lai won the Men's Individual and Lin won the Women's Individual tournaments to take double gold.

Unfortunately Vanessa Wong lost her semi-final against Osawa and then lost to Sarah Yu of Canada by 1.5 points to miss out on a great opportunity.