Announcement

Many of you will remember the fine work done by Gerry Mills, in taking a BGA bookstall to a large number of tournaments and on top of that providing a mail-order operation for books and sets.

Roger Huyshe is restarting this service, albeit in a smaller way as he points out that he cannot dedicate a whole room in the house to a large stock of Go books and equipment. So a mail-order service is not offered; the service is face-to-face.

He will bring the bookstall and sample boards to all tournaments that he attends. For those that plan ahead, they can ask for a specific item and find a way to manage delivery e.g. at a later tournament or via another Go player.

All profit goes to the BGA.

We're pleased to announce that old tournament results have now been linked to the Tournament Records on our website. This will allow you to easily browse details of old events for each tournament, going back to 1996 in many cases.

See the London Open for an example.

A Sino-British Weiqi Cultural Exchange event is being held on 7th September 2013, starting at 1pm in the British Museum, London in the Hugh and Catherine Stevenson Lecture Theatre.

As previously announced in the British Go Journal and elsewhere we are pleased to launch the new Members' Section for our website.

This will contain

• electronic versions of the British Go Journals for the last year - PDFs, SGFs and Problems/Solutions
• Council Meetings and Annual General Meeting Minutes
• Annual Accounts
• Policies
• Archive contents

In addition there is a document approved by Council about the initial version of this Members Area.

The Ratings List and Organisers Handbooks will continue to be publicly available, together with some of the Policies which may be clearly relevant to non-members (such as Child Protection).

Council will review the operation and contents of this area, probably initially in 3-4 months time, so if you have any comments please let us know.

In order to minimise the effort expended in managing usernames/passwords, and given that the security level needed is fairly low, there will be initially a single account for all member

Ben Murphy and Tony Atkins hosted our stand at the London AnimeCon at the London Metropolitan University, Holloway Road on 20th/21st July.

Many people who had read the Hikaru no Go manga were interested in our stand, as well as game players and others!

The game records used by Michael Redmond 9p at his UK teaching events between 30/03/13 and 05/04/13 have been made available as zipped files.

Strong Players Training (Windows) Other Lectures (Windows)

Strong Players Training (Linux) Other Lectures (Linux)

The fifth season of the BGA Online League is now under way.

To balance the divisions out, I have moved Belfast and Billericay up to division 1, Glasgow up to division 2 and then done the draw for matches in each division.

As last year there are two matches between each pair of teams, a notional "home" and "away" match. Please try to complete at least one match if you can't fit in both matches. If you do play both, please try to field a different set of three players for each match against the same opposing team if possible.

If you have any problems and difficulties please don't hesitate to ask me or an "old hand" if available.

I hope everyone enjoys themselves this season and we look forward to seeing some interesting games!

John Collins

Full PDFs for issues 157 and 158 are now available online

It is our great pleasure to inform you that we, The Nihon Kiin, will release the English and Chinese version of ‘Cho U’s 4 by 4 Go Puzzle’ (developed by Zoo Corporation) on iPad and iPhone from 5th October 2012.  

This app is based on the 4 by 4 puzzle which has been come up with the idea by Cho U Kisei and Oza who is the best go player in Japan. This puzzle is the 4 by 4 tsumego game, an intellectual game which can be enjoyed by from complete beginners to high dan players. Kids can also learn how to play a game of go on its ‘Story Mode’ that features pretty characters.

Introductory special offer!

You can download the app at only US$ 0.99 (the regular price: US$ 2.99) for only two weeks from 5th October 2012.

The rules for 2013 have been revised by the BGA Council in May 2012. They will apply to the 2013 and all subsequent championships (until amended), and supersede all previous versions, although informally the changes are mostly effective for 2012.

The statement regarding the rules changes is as follows:

• Notification for events by letter is no longer required and is now optional for the Organizer (by letter or email to the address on our membership list)
• Announcement for events is to be on the website and in the BGJ (not in the Newsletter)
• Emphasis is now made that it is the responsibility of qualifiers to send in their entries (not the Organizer to ensure that they do)

In March 2013 Council clarified that if the Champion plays in the Candidates, then he/she cedes their automatic place in the Challengers League.