Paul Tabor, 1d, was the surprise winner at Arundel, when he beat tournament favourite Andrew Kay in the second round and then beat Tony Atkins (who had previously beaten Jon Diamond) in the final. Jonathan Reece, 2k Oxford, won the 9x9 side event and Jil Segerman (in a team with Roger Daniel) won the inventions quiz. 22 players took part.

Results

Andrew Kay, 4d South London, was the best of the 22 players at the second Welwyn Garden City Tournament. Also winning three games were Ludan Fang, 4k London, and Jon Robson, 10k Swindon. Prizes were presented by Barbara Kime from the local Bridge club, whose room was used for the tournament.

Results

We followed up last month's first victory of the season with a 4-0 win against Slovenia.

Chong Han on board 1 was again the first to finish, beating Leon Matoh. Chong captured some key stones early on after cutting a 2-space jump, though Leon did get some compensation. Unperturbed, Leon made the same 2-space jump soon after and Chong cut it in the same way again to build yet more thickness. He extended his lead through a series of attacks (though at one point attacked without first defending a weakness, but was lucky Leon missed the empty triangle tesuji which exploited it) and won by resignation once two desperate invasions of his territory were cleanly killed.

Des Cann also played a thick game and although he failed to kill a rather wobbly group the resulting wall was enough to turn large parts of Gregor Butala's moyo into Des's territory.

Matthew Macfadyen (6d Leamington) was the best of the 30 players at the second Skye Tournament in Portree. He again won all six games to win the tournament. Second with four wins was Francis Roads (2d Wanstead) and third was Edwin Brady (1k St Andrews) with three wins. Colin Maclennan (11k Twickenham) won five games, and winning four were Ludan Fang (4k London), Quintin Connell and Wilf Dell (both 9k Glasgow). A large cheer went up at prize giving when it was announced the event would hopefully be run again in two years time.

Results

The 2012 Youth Championships had 13 competitors aged from 6 to 18, with strengths from 2 dan to 30 kyu. The library block at Bloxham School, Oxfordshire, served again as a great venue. Tian-Ren Chen from Loughborough regained the youth title, the previous year's winner not contesting it this year.

The Trigantius Tournament was won by Andrew Simons (3d Cambridge), beating Alex Rix (3d London) in his last game. Also on 3 out of 3 were Sue Paterson (4k, Brighton), Roger Daniel (5k, CLGC) and Richard Mullens (6k, St Albans).

Csaba Mero, 6d Hungary, won the European Cup event in Dublin. This year the Irish Open was the Confucius Cup, because of a new sponsor. Second with four wins out of five was Guochen Xie, 6d China. Kim Ouweleen, 3d Amsterdam, was third and Chu Lu, 4d Warwick, was fourth, both on 3 wins. Taken the fifth place and final grand prix place was Vit Brunner, 4d Brno. Winning four games were Diana Blaszczyk, 4k Warsaw, Frank Tan, 9k Dublin, Marek Gutkowski, 9k Warsaw, and Paul Kelly, 11k Belfast. The British player with most wins, three, was Patrick Ridley, 10k Chester. Prior to the event on the Friday evening was the Irish Rapid won this time by Julien Renaud, 1d France.

Results Rapid Results

Sin Voon Chin, 3d Birmingham, won the 9th Nottingham Tournament. The student from Brunei beat Toby Manning in an exciting game in the last round. Out of the 34 players the others winning all three were Laurence Ogden, 4k Manchester, David Wildgoose, 11k Sheffield, and local players Carl Roll, 5k, and Brent Cutts, 8k. Jonathan Green got a special mention for entering the quiz.

Results Photos

It's round 6; we're still seeking a win and now we're playing the second team in the League, Finland, relegated from Division 1 last year, so it's going to be tough.

Chong Han leads off with a quickish victory on Board 1. He's always in control and, despite missing several opportunities in the middle game to force a resignation, wins by the large margin of 17.5 points.

Des Cann had a tough game and let a few stones too many die in the middle game, losing by 8.5 in the end.

Jon Diamond on Board 3 was always in charge, squeezing a weak group leading to cutting off some other stones that he'd had his eyes on from early on in the game. His opponent ran into time troubles and eventually resigned.

The final game, and also last to finish, was the team captain's, Andrew Simons. Despite, as he says, "making what must have been 50 points of mistakes in byo yomi", he won narrowly, by 1.5 points.

So we rounded up with a close win and our first this season.

Since the 1960s Oxford has not done very well in its Go matches against Cambridge. Even by normal standards, 2011 was a particularly bad year -- Oxford lost 6-0. However, in the run-up to this year's match, Oxford's spirits were high. Their line-up included a 5 dan undergraduate, and a 4 dan chef, from China, as well as a 4 dan visiting professor from Korea. To combat this, Cambridge's team included one visiting Chinese 4 dan. On paper, therefore, Oxford were the clear favourites.

Victory did not come easy, however. The first round saw a game between an Oxford 2 dan (name withheld, to protect the guilty) and Sam Rodrigues (3 kyu) from Cambridge. It was a game of two ladders -- one was in the mind of the Oxford 2 dan, and the other was on the all-too-real Go board. After they had played 15 moves each in the ladder, it became apparent, even to the 2 dan, that Sam's mind had also contained the correct image of the real world.