The Learn Go Week event in Stevenage went pretty smoothly, with some great support from Letchworth Go Club and the BGA. Phil Smeaton, manager of Costa's in Stevenage High Street, kindly allowed us to take over part of the café for four hours on the Sunday afternoon, as well as generously covering printing costs and issuing a flyer with invitation to learn Go to every customer during the event.

However, despite the flyers and the posters which went up in many places around town, and coverage in the largest local paper (Stevenage Comet), only three people actually asked to be taught. They were a resident Italian family, who saw the item in the Comet.

Martin Harvey took up the kind offer from the Japan Society North-West (JSNW), to arrange the manning a stall at this year's Manchester Japan Day, this last Bank Holiday Monday. Eight local players gave free demos to the public, over seven hours, with only short breaks to see the drummers, cosplay, kendo, kimono dressing, sushi bars and much more.

Aslo this year's Japan Day was honoured by being opened by a minister from the Japanese Embassy - his first trip to Manchester.

We estimate we gave about 150 demos, from the 2120 members of the public who had free entry on the day, most of whom would have seen our stall, well placed next to the stage. We also handed out say 250 tri-folds and sold 10 boxed wooden starter sets and 5 TYGo books.

The first of the three events during a very sunny weekend in Penzance was a teaching session on the Saturday morning. Toby Manning led a review of a pro game and set the students a yose problem, whilst Tony Atkins reviewed the status of the J-Group based on the lyrics of a Go song by Neil Symes.

The first of the tournaments, on the Saturday afternoon, saw 20 players taking part. The rapid-play Handicap Tournament was won by local player Paul Massey (1k) who beat visitor Chris Volk (1k) in the final. Steve Ashton (14k Devon) was the lowest graded player to win 3 out of 4. Results

On the Sunday the number of players rose to 22. The Open was played as usual over three rounds and the venue, The Queen's Hotel, provided an excellent buffet lunch as ever.

Registration is now open for the London Open Go Congress.

The dates and location are the traditional ones; from 28th to 31st December at the International Students House.

It's a level B Bonus Points tournament for the European Go Federation Grand Prix with 12 Bonus Points for the winner, down to 1 point for fifth place. Bonus Points benefit players in terms of priority for selection as European representatives in international events and qualification for the Grand Slam tournaments.

Like some other sports organisations we have decided to initiate some British Go Association awards in order to encourage players and organisers. We have selected the following categories for this year:

• Player of the year
• Club of the year
• Loss of the year (of a game)
• President’s award for services to Go.

Your nominations in each category are solicited by 31st December 2014 with a citation of a maximum of 150 words supporting the nomination.

Following this there will then be a vote for Player of the Year amongst the membership to determine the winner. If there are more than three nominations in this category Council will choose three to participate in the subsequent voting.

The winner in the second and third categories will be determined by Council from the nominations received.

The President’s award may be given to someone who has given many years or service or to someone who has done something special this year.

We are please to announce that the following young players have been selected for this visit to Japan:

• Ben Murphy, age 24
• Charlotte Bexfield, age 13
• Edmund Smith, age 9

They will be accompanied by Alison Bexfield and Andrea Smith.

Thanks to the Nihon Kiin and the Sasakawa Foundation for their support for this visit.

Hi all,

Thank you to everyone who has been in touch so far to let us know about their event. I’ve been really impressed with the enthusiasm from lots of Go people and I think such a positive response is promising for not just the Learn Go Week on 13th September 2014, though for future years as well!

As on the update before, if you’re organising an event please sign up to the Go Game Guru events signup form , as it will encourage more people throughout the UK and the rest of the world, to keep getting involved – quick note, try to include as much of the information as possible about your event – as it will be manually copied across to the live site by the Go Game Guru organisers and it will make it much easier for them!

The Bank of East Asia (BEA) generously provided the central Manchester venue for the 2014 Northern. The tournament-winner was Ngoc-Trang Cao (1d), from France, enjoying a purple patch after her win in Belfast just a few days beforehand. The runner-up was also female, Ewa Mos (1d) from Poland who lives here and is a regular attendee at Manchester Go Club. 'Girl Power' thus ruled the roost, with three male players losing out on SOS.

Also winning prizes were Tony Pitchford (10k Chester) for 2.5 wins, and the organiser and club secretary Chris Kirkham (3k Manchester) for 3 wins.

The reduced entry fee probably was a major cause for the increase in numbers to 34, and substantial sponsorship of the prize fund by Sam Properties led to seven of these players being dans - a significantly better proportion than in recent Northerns.

I am recruiting names for the UK’s team for the online European Youth Go Championships

We need a team with up to 15 players to register for the event from which we will select 5 players for any one match.

Our Youth Squad leader Alison Bexfield is running a 6-round rapid-play tournament in Letchworth on Saturday 8th November 2014. There will be two separate junior sections included in this event. The Junior Open is for juniors who are confident players (stronger than 20 kyu) and the novice section is for those newer to the game or who have not achieved success in tournaments to date.

This is one of a series of events Alison is planning, to create more chances for juniors to play against each other.

You can find more details about this event in this flyer.

Don’t forget that some assistance with travel costs may be available from the Castledine–Barnes Trust.