A few simple rules ... limitless possibilities

We went into our match this week hoping to get our first win of the season, Switzerland being one of the weaker teams who were promoted from the C league.

On 1st board was new team member Chong Han. He played an unconventional, centre-oriented opening which lead to complex fighting and many chances for both to win, but in the end he lost by a few points.

Yet another loss in the Pandanet European Championship...

The two newcomers to our team did not have a good time - Bei Ge losing a very close game on the first board against the top Israeli Ali Jabarin, actually playing from Korea where we think he's undergoing some Baduk training, and David Ward on last board struggling with using Pandanet for the first time, also losing.

Jon Diamond screwe

China were unbeaten in all five matches to win the team event at the first SportAccord World Mind Games in Beijing. They beat Europe, Taiwan and finally the US 5-0; in round 2 they had beaten Korea 3-2 and in round 4 had beaten Japan 4-1. Second place went to Korea who only lost to China and beat Japan in the last round 4-1.

23 players graced Cork with their presence this year. The tournament took place in the rather beautiful main campus of University College Cork. Top of the bunch was Kim Ouweleen, 3d, from Amsterdam, with a perfect 5/5. In second place was Ian Davis, 1d, who edged out Spain's Matei Garcia, 4k, on tiebreak, despite his 5/5 score. Also scoring 5/5 was Thomas Shanahan, 15k, from Galway.

The British Pair of Alison and Simon Bexfield topped the group on 2 wins to come 17th in the 22nd IAPGC. They beat pairs from Philippines and Spain, but lost to Korea and two Japanese pairs. For the 6th time in a row Korea won, with Chinese Taipei in second this time. The top European pairs were Hungary in 9th and Czechia in 12th, both with 3 wins.

Matthew Macfadyen had lost to Dusan Mitic, one of the undefeated Mitic brothers, by resignation the previous Wednesday, so we knew that we were up against it - the team we were able to put out against the Serbians was nominally slightly weaker than our opponents.

Despite some Serbian confusion as to the start time, sadly Nikola remained undefeated also, edging Bei Ge by just 0.5 points!

Andrew Kay, representing the UK, placed 22nd in the 6th KPMC in Pohang Korea. He beat Morocco, Slovenia and Hong Kong, but lost to France, Canada and Thailand to win 3/6. Also winning 3/6 below the dan-bar was Ireland's Rory Wales in 49th place.

Results (off-site)

The British team lost their first match in the new season of the. Pandanet Go European Team Championship. Their B-League fixture against Belgium ended as a 3-1 defeat. The team of Bei Ge, Des Cann, Alex Selby and Andrew Simons battled hard, but only won on board 4.

Vanessa Wong beat Svetlana Shikshina in the last round of the Sport Accord Qualifier in Prague to get the women's place on the European Union team for Beijing in December. She will play Pair Go with Catalin Taranu. The other team members will be Cornel Burzo, Christian Pop and Ilya Shikshin.

Russian 7 dan Ilya Shikshin retained the European Championship by beating Catalin Taranu in the final. This year the top 8 placed Europeans played knockout after round 7 which gave to an exciting final on the last day. Winning the play-off for third was Ukraine's Artem Kachanovskyi, who beat Alexandr Dinerchtein.