UK Tournament Report

Ten years after previously winning, Malcolm Hagan won the West Surrey Handicap Tournament. This was probably the last ever such event, with only the support of 13 players meaning it is not worth continuing. Malcolm (7k Winchester) beat Roger Daniel (6k London) in the final to win all 4 games. Also winning 3 were Ed Blockley (5k Worcester) and Colin Maclennan (10k Twickenham). Pauline Bailey (16k West Surrey) won the 13x13 competition with 8 wins, Tony Atkins won the lunch time Pits and Sue Paterson won the competition for writing 26-word passages where each word starts with a different letter.

Results

Andrew Kay stopped Matthew Macfadyen's run of three titles in a row at the Coventry Tournament at the University of Warwick. Andrew beat Matthew in their third-round game to allow Andrew to increase his current titles to five. Matthew Macfadyen got the prize for second and Chu Lu, from the University club, was third. Other players getting prizes for winning all three were David Killen (5k Cheltenham), James Brownrigg (6k Chester), Brent Cutts (9k Nottingham) and Reg Sayer (13k Stafford). Local University club members Anees Ahee (18k) and Ross Woodruff (25k) also won all three games. 47 players took part.

Results

Andrew Kay stopped Matthew Cocke's run of three titles in a row at the Three Peaks Tournament in Grange-Over-Sands. Andrew beat Matthew in their fourth-round game to allow Andrew to increase his current titles to four. Andrew Simons also won four wins to come third, only losing to Matthew. Other players winning four out of five were Chris Kirkham (4k Manchester), Ron Bell (4k Borders), Adrian Abrahams (10k Lancaster) and Eggert Fruchtenicht (13k Lancaster). Tony Pitchford was given a sepcial prize for helping out on day 1 when organiser Bob Bagot was not there. 38 players took part.

Results

The rockets of the National Space Centre were appropriate for November 5th, but luckily none were fired during the East Midlands Go Tournament. Chong Han (5 dan) from Loughborough was the winner beating Francis Roads, Jon Diamond and Tony Atkins along the way. Two other of the 40 players won all three games, namely Chris Bryant (9 kyu) from St Albans club and Paul Reade (14 kyu) from Leamington. Francis Roads and Alistair Wall were awarded plaques for supporting the small small-board side tournament.

Results

Yunlong Liu, 3d, a temporary student in Scotland, won the 42nd Wessex Tournament in Bath. He beat the defending champion Andrew Kay by 2 points in the final. The only other player of the 30 participants to win all 3 games was Dylan Carter, 2k, from Cardiff.

Results

Ms Kobayashi Chizu, 5p, visited the UK in the middle of October. She gave two interesting game reviews to the players at the Autumn London International Teams match. Further details and results of this match, won by China A, are available. On the Monday she visited Oxford which ended with a very enjoyable Chinese meal attended both by local players and others from slightly further away such as Matthew Macfadyen. The following day in London Kobayashi-sensei met with officials from the BGA in her position as Overseas and Publications Director of the Nihon Ki-in.

The winner of this year's Shrewsbury tournament was Toby Manning, after a long struggle with Baron Allday, who creatively made eyes for two wandering dragons only to find his safe corner die as a result. Toby collected his prize at a run and departed to catch a plane to Kosovo, now less of a war zone than the Go board. Kathleen Timmins also won three games. Although numbers were down on last year, those present enjoyed the tournament and commented that the shift to Sunday had made travel and parking trouble free.

Results

Despite having trouble getting the community centre unlocked, the Swindon Tournament went well and attracted 36 players. Winning again after a gap of six years was Bei Ge (5 dan), who beat Francis Roads in the last round. Francis led the Wanstead club to victory in the team prize. The only other player to win all three games was young Aidan Putman (12 kyu) from Swindon, so a special prize went to Adan Mordcovich (2 kyu) for two good wins.

Results

In a nail-biting game in Camden Town, Matthew Macfadyen beat Nick Krempel to take the title of British Go Champion for - if your administrator can count after 8 hours of relaying a game - the twenty-fifth time.

The records of all three games are available in the championship section. Guo Juan has kindly commentated on all three games and has created free audio lectures about the first two; she will release a third about this game and that link, too, will be posted soon.

Thanks are due to Nick Wedd and Francis Roads for refereeing, and Kirsty Healey, Sally Prime and Laura Krempel for feeding everyone involved and general organisation (and also to Geoff Kaniuk and Alistair Wall for administering the earlier sections of the championship).

Richard Moulds won this year's Northern tournament. Although there were only 21 players, there were four other prize winners on maximum wins, namely: Ron Bell, Roger Huyshe, James Brownrigg and Brian Timmins. Also noteworthy is the fact that Adan Mordcovich from Wanstead, the youngest player to attend, was placed second overall.

Results