Go in Britain 2025

Summary

2025 was a year that again saw mainly players of Chinese heritage winning events, though being mostly students some of the names were new. Peikai Xue, a winner of several events in recent years returned to China. The European Student Go Championship was held in Durham in October. A new event, the Aspirants, was held alongside the Candidates' Tournament and many familiar events continued. As usual the year ended with the international London Open.

British Go Congress

The British Go Congress was held in Edinburgh, in April, at the New Melville Bridge Club. It attracted 57 players and Quan Wan was the winner of the British Open. Dohyup Kim 1p won the British Lightning on the Friday evening.

Regional Tournaments

In 2025 the top regional tournament winner was Quan Wan who won Lancaster, Chester and Durham, as well as the British Open. Changhao Huang won three events: the Nottingham, Swindon and T Mark Hall Rapid Tournaments. Yifan Bao won the Wessex and jointly Coventry with Chenhe Yuan who also won the Welsh Open. Ulster was won by Tom Coulthard, Trigantius by Yue Wen and the online MSO Grand Prix by Zhan Shi. The Not the London Open was shared by Yaoling Yang and Michael Cheung. Manchester was won by Yuhang Xing, Newcastle by Xuanqi Cui, Three Peaks by Yangran Zhang, Northern by Yunfang Deng (on tie-break from Yifan Bao) and Edinburgh Christmas by Pan Gao. The Bar-Low was won by Jose-Manuel Pavon. The Mind Sports Olympiad was notably won by Bende Barcza, a boy from Hungary. Unfortunately Tonbridge was cancelled at short notice.

Pair Go

The British Pair Go Championship was held this time at Lady Bay Church in Nottingham. 17 pairs took part. Winners for the first time were Ai Guan and Damon Woo, beating Alison and Simon Bexfield into second. The Handicap section was a three-way tie, but Helen Harvey and Soorena Zarafshani were awarded the title being the highest graded.

British Championship

The 20-player Candidates' Tournament was held at the Bridge Club in Leicester. This time an Aspirants' Tournament was held alongside for 23 players not able to qualify for the Candidates' won by Conor Hunt. The two players selected to play the title match were Yaoling Yang (7d Bristol) and Lucretiu Calota (4d St Albans). Bruno Poltronieri just missed out in third. The title match was played at the London Go Centre. Yaoling won the first game on 31st May by 12.5 and won the second by default, after Lucretiu's journey had been delayed, to remain the British Champion.

International

The World Amateur was held in Vancouver, Canada, in May. Our rep was Alistair Wall and he won four games to end 29th out of 52.

The Korea Prime Minister Cup (KPMC) was held in Taebaek in November. Our rep Toby Manning won three games to end 38th out of 52. Also there was young Ryan Zhang taking part in a junior event held for the first time. He also won three to end 19th out of 28.

The UK online team ended the 2024-2025 season of the Pandanet European B-League in fifth place with 3 wins, 4 draws and 2 losses. At the start of the 2025-2026 B-League season the team ended the year with one draw, one loss and one win.

Lukasz Kudla, following a good result at the European Youth Go Championship, got to play at the World Youth, held in Malaysia in August. Stiff competition meant he only won one game.

Youth Events

The 2025 Youth Championship was held in Nottingham. Best of the 36 players was Alvina Kwok who was also Under-16 champion. Hayes Lee, a recent arrival in the UK, only lost to Alvina.

The Youth Go Camp at Caythorpe had just six students and the UK Go Challenge Finals were not held. The 31-player London Youth in February was won by Kwun Yin Ng.

The 99-player Youth Grand Prix was won by Joshua Fai with 1358 points, ahead of his brother Caleb Fai (1311); third was Kwun Yin Ng (651). Caleb and Joshua also topped the Double Digit Kyu Grand Prix (an adult, Daffyd Robinson, topped the 10-19k section).

The Pandanet European Youth Go Team Championship for 2025 saw the UK end fifth, but avoid relegation by beating Poland in the play-off. In the Team Competition the UK ended first after the league stage and remained a creditable first after the new knock-out stage (beating Germany in the final).

London Open

The London Open at the end of the year saw 74 players take part at this international event at the London Go Centre. There were no fewer than four professionals present. Fan Wejing 3p from China was the official teacher, the former London juniors now professionals Yue Wen and Qi Wen popped in for a visit and European 3p Mateusz Surma played in and won the tournament with a perfect seven. Kim Minseong was second and Li Yuanzhen was third, Li also won the Lightning.

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