Next year's European Go Congress is to be held in Poland.

The BGA has been allocated 4 discount vouchers (100€, 50€, 2 x 25€) to be awarded to people who may wish to attend but are in a position of financial hardship.

However, if you are awarded a voucher, you need to enter the Congress by December 15 this year.

If you believe you qualify, and wish to apply for a voucher, please contact Toby Manning. All applications will be treated in confidence.

More information about the EGC is here.

Vanessa Wong has been awarded a 6 dan certificate by the BGA, following her excellent performance at the second World Mind Sports Games in Lille.

This summarises the major discussions and actions from the BGA Council meeting 14th July 2012 and preceding discussions:

At the 16th MSO in London the Go gold medals went to Francis Roads and Felix Wang.

In the 13x13 event eight players from 3d to 10k played over five rounds. Francis Roads won his first four games and, despite stumbling in the last game against Michael Dixon (10k), was the winner. Taking the silver was Spain's Paco de la Banda (3d) who also won 4 but lost to Francis. Matthew Hathrell (3k) took bronze only losing to the top 2.

The MSO Open had 16 players from 4d to 15k including a family of Germans who had arranged their holiday around the event. Clear winner with 4 wins was Felix Wang, 4d, who had won the event previously in 2009. Silver went to the best of the players on 3 wins Adan Mordcovich (1d) who lost to the winner, but had beaten Francis Roads who got the bronze. Just losing out on the tie-break for third were Alsitair Wall and Bruno Poltronieri.

Results MSO 13x13

19th August 2012 in the Online Daily Telegraph:

It is billed as the Olympics of the mind. As the world's athletes flew home from Britain last week, competitors of a different kind were gathering just across the English Channel for an international contest of their own: the World Mind Sports Games. William Langley reports from Lille on the mental battle being waged by bridge, chess and Go players from 70 nations.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/9484579/Olympics-of-the-mind-Furrowed-brows-and-frenzied-thinking.html

Congratulation to Vanessa Wong on her becoming No. 1 in the UK ratings, replacing Bei Ge who overtook long-time top player Matthew Macfadyen who had a bad tournament at the London Open 2011.

Just a small caution: only the Team event of the three WMSG events Vanessa took part it has so far been included in the rating list...

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. Already Chinese Taipei had stopped Russia from taking the third place, but a very interesting and hard-fought battle ensued to see if Japan could stop their other pair from getting the gold. Eventually the game ended up tied on the board with Japan winning by komi.

Gold : Japan Maya Osawa/Riki Nakasone

Silver: Chinese Taipei Lin Hsiao /Hung Hsin Wei

Bronze: Chinese Taipei Lu Yu-Hua /Lai Yu Cheng

In the Youth, Zhoa Jia Rui from Hong Kong was forced to settle for fourth place, meaning Chinese Taipei would win all three medals again.

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. Tsai Cheng-Wei beat Hong Kong's Zhao Jia Rui and Kuo Nai-Fu beat Hsu Hao-Hung.

In the Pair Go, Martha McGill and Matthew Crosby lost to the pair from Macau to end 7th in Group A with 2 wins. In their 5th round game Alison and Simon Bexfield were due to play the Brazilian pair, but ended up playing and beating a reserve pair from Austria/Germany after the Brazilians withdrew because of illness. This gave Alison and Simon 2 wins and 8th place in Group B.

In first semi-final, Russia's Natalia Kovaleva and Dmitriy Surin lost to Lin Hsiao-Tung and Hung Hsin-Wei of Chinese Taipei. In the other Japan's Osawa Maya and Nakasone Riki beat Lu Yu-Hua and Lai Yu-Cheng from Chinese Taipei.

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.

In the Youth, all the UK players moved on to 2 wins, despite Henry and Tian Ren having to play each other (Henry won) and Vanessa getting tough opponents (she lost to a 5d from Macau and beat a 5d from Hong Kong).

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. In the B Group, Alison and Simon Bexfield lost their first game to a Dutch pair and won their second against Italians.