News Archive: Part 2

4 January 2011

Final YGP Standings

Congratulations to Roella Smith who held on to her lead to win the 2010 Youth Grand Prix. Jamie Taylor held on to second, and Roella's younger sister Kelda managed to get third place, just beating Barney Shiu.

26 October 2010

European Women's Goe Championship

Vanessa Wong has come joint-first - second on tiebreak - at the European Women's Goe Championship, held from the 16th-17th of October in Lyon. She scored 4/5, losing only to the winner of the tournament. Full results can be seen here. Unfortunately Vanessa has lost games 2 and 3 of the British Championship title match, but she can still win if she takes the last two games.

21 September 2010

Vanessa Wong Wins 1st British Championship Game

Vanessa Wong, 5d, has beaten Matthew Mcfadyen, 6d, in the first game of the British Championship title match. Matthew had the upper hand in the opening, but Vanessa fought back to force his resignation on move 212. Congratulations to her, and good luck in the remaining games. The match is best of five, and the next game will be played in Barford on October the 10th. The first game can be downloaded here.

10 September 2010

Isle of Man

Juniors had a particularly strong showing at the recent Isle of Man tournament. Both the 13x13 event and the Rengo (with Matthew Cocke) were won by Oscar Selby, aged 7. Barney Shiu added to his recent successes by taking first place in the Lightning event. Barney Shiu and Roella Smith both had a share of first place in the Handicap, though lost on tiebreak, and Danielle Ward scored 4/5 in the main tournament. Congratulations also to Matthew Hathrell, until recently a junior, who showed that go is not the only game he plays well, at the MSO.

04 August 2010

UK Go Challenge

Last month the finals of the UK Go Challenge were held at St Mary's Priory RC Junior School, Harringay, London. Roella Smith emerged as the overall victor, as well as the U10 Girls winner and Top Girl. Barney Shiu, the U10 Boys winner, came second overall, and Preran Truscott, first in the U14 Boys section, was third overall. Thomas Meehan and Angel Jobson were first in the U12 Boys and Girls sections respectively, and Kelda Smith and Mark Slatter won the U8 Girls and Boys sections. The top school was St Ann's. Full results including runners-up can be seen here.

08 July 2010

Rivne U12 tournament

Last month the Ukrainian championship for under twelves was held in Rivne. Valerij Krushelnyckyj 7 kyu won in style, with 6 wins and no losses. Your web editor will be in China (unfortunately not to study go) from tomorrow until the end of July, so there won't be any more news until August.

01 June 2010

Vanessa Wong to play Macfadyen for title

Vanessa Wong has earned the right to play Matthew Macfadyen for the title of British Champion. She lost two games in the recent Challengers' League, to Macfadyen and Nick Krempel, but managed to win the tiebreak game against Richard Hunter to go through to the best-of-5 title match.

27 May 2010

Bulgarian, Turkish and French Championships

Earlier this month the Bulgarian Championship was won by a 14-year old girl, Magdalena Mladenova 2k of Sofia. She is the only female ever to win it, and also the youngest player ever - a fantastic achievement!

Omer Kazanc 1k won the Turkish Youth Championship in Istanbul on May 15th-16th, without conceding a loss. Thomas Debarre 5d was victorious in the French Youth Championship, and is now playing in the World Amateur Go Championship in China.

12 May 2010


Congratulations are due to Vanessa Wong, 5 dan, who won the Candidates tournament in Cambridge at the beginning of this month with 6 wins from 6 games. Full results can be seen here.

13 April 2010

2nd TransAtlantic Youth Go Match

On Sunday the 18th April a match will take place on KGS between top European and top North American junior Go players. Kick-off is at 3 pm GMT for the first 5 games, and 6 pm GMT for the other 5. Don't miss it!

23 March 2010

British Youth Championships

The British Youth Championships took place at Loughborough Grammer School last Sunday, and overall victory was claimed for the second year in a row by Tian Ren Chen without dropping a point. Jamie Taylor, Jack Drury, Thomas Meehan, Barney Shiu and Sophie Broad all came first in their respective age groups. Loughborough won the Castledine Trophy, Langdon Truscott won the handicap section, and Aston scored most wins overall. With his victory in the U18 section and the 13x13 event, Jamie Taylor has got off to an early lead in this year's YGP standings.

10 March 2010

European Youth Goe Championships

The European Youth Goe Championships took place in Sibui, Romania, last weekend, and British players had some fantastic results! Anson Ng, 1 kyu, emerged victorious in the under-12 section, taking clear first. Vanessa Wong, 4-dan, came close to winning the under-16 section, eventually finishing in second behind Poland's Mateusz Surma. Well done to all who played.

4 February 2010

Japan Trip

In October three young British Go players - Roella Smith, Mazhar Warraich, and Tian-Ren Chen - were invited to Japan (along with Roella's dad Paul) for an all-expenses paid 'Japan Europe Youth Go Exchange'. There were similar groups from Germany and France, and the overall group leader was Catalin Taranu, the professional Go player from Romania.

On Monday 19th October they were treated to a tour of the Nihon Ki-in, a ten-storey building devoted entirely to Go, and they also got to play simultaneous teaching games with Japanese professionals. On Tuesday they met the Go legend Otake Hideo, who has won many titles and is now president of the Nihon Ki-in. On Wednesday they had more professional teaching games, and on Thursday visited a museum and a shrine. On Friday they were allowed into the playing room to watch part of a game in the Oza title match between Cho U and Yamada Kimio. Later they had more teaching games, with Tian managing to beat Ishikura Noboru 9-dan, and they met the famous player Takemiya Masaki. On Saturday they watched inseis playing Go, which Paul described as "very much as I imagined from reading in Hikaru no Go".

Overall the trip sounds like it was great fun, and hopefully it will run again in future years. Be sure to read Paul's full report in the British Go Journal!

23 January 2010


You're probably all aware of the free Kogo's Joseki Dictionary, which can either be downloaded or browsed online here. There is now a new free online joseki dictionary, called Josekipedia. It looks quite interesting, so you may want to check it out here. One further online joseki resource is BruGo, available here.

3 January 2010

Matthew Hathrell Wins YGP


19 December 2009

European Youth Goe Championship

The 15th European Youth Goe Championship is now open for registration! It will be held in the city of Sibiu, in Romania, and it's recommended that you register early to secure good accommodation.

2 December 2009

Barney Shiu

In 13th place in the YGP with 270 points we find Barney Shiu. Barney is nine years old and has only been playing since March, but he has already reached 12 kyu on the BGA rating list. He recently won the 13x13 competition at the East Midlands tournament with 5 wins from 5 games, so well done to him!

26 November 2009

U-18 Kido Cup

In October, a big Go tournament called the Kido Cup was held in Germany. The junior section was won by Alexander Eerbeek 3 dan of the Netherlands, with 5 wins from 5 games. There were no junior British participants - so mark it in your diary for next year! Full results can be seen here.

6 September 2009

Cultural Youth Exchange

The Nihon Ki-in (Japanese Go Association) has invited young players from several European countries to Japan from the 17th to 25th of October for the 6th 'Youth Go Project'. Mazhar Warraich (2 kyu), Tian Ren-Chen (3 kyu) and Roella Smith (18 kyu) will be representing the BGA, accompanied by Paul Smith. During the trip the young players will have the opportunity to visit the Nihon Ki-in and see the Yūgen Room where major title matches are held. They will also watch one of the games in the 57th Oza title match, and have the chance to play against professionals. A report of the last Youth Go Project can be seen here.

3 August 2009

BGA KGS Tournament

Throughout August the BGA is running a tournament on KGS. It's self-paired so you can play as many (up to a maximum of 19) or as few games as you want, whenever you want (though you must play at least 5 to qualify for a prize). It would be great to see more juniors playing in it so go *here* to sign up!

28 June 2009

UK Go Challenge Results

Exactly 55 players took part in the UK Go challenge this year. The event was held at Milton Community Centre in Cambridge, with sponsorship from Winton Capital Management. In first place was Tian Ren Chen, second was Mazhar Warraich and third was Matthew Hathrell. The main website has the full results.

11 April 2009

Transatlantic Youth Go Match

Youth players from the USA and Canada will take on a team of European Youth Champions on the 19th of April. The match will take place on KGS Go Server at 15:00 GMT and 18:00 GMT. The games will be open for all to enjoy.

23 March 2009

BGA Youth Championship

Tian Ren Chen won this year's Youth championship at Aston. Winners of individual sections were, Under-18: Michael Webster Under 16: Mazhar Warraich, Under 12: John Cremin, Under 10: Roella Smith, Under 8: Sophie Broad. Congratulations to them and all who took part. The Complete Results are now available.

8 March 2009

European Championship

Israel's Ali Jabarin is the new European Under 18 Champion, beating Artem Kachanovsky of the Ukraine in the final round. The Under 12 section was a Russian clean sweep, with Mikhail Sidorenko taking first.
Under 18 results table
Under 12 results table

15 January 2009

Canada - USA Youth Friendship Match.

The mighty nations of Canada and the USA squared off in a three board friendship game last weekend. The USA team defended their position as favourites well, winning with a perfect 3-0 score. You can find details of the games on the AGA website. Top board was Andy Liu against Gan Sheng Shi, both 7 dans. Andy says "the game was a good example of how to build a moyo by attacking." By keeping himself thick throughout the game, his opponent was unable to break into his moyo and left with no choice but to resign.

1 January 2009

Grand Prix News.

Danielle Ward held on to top spot in the Grand Prix with a solid performance in the London Open, earning 893 points over the course of the year. Close behind was Matthew Hathrell on 862, with Jack Drury in third place on 756 points. See the page for full details.

4 November 2008

Return of the Mac.

Matthew Macfadyen has won the British Championship again. This year he beat Hui Wang in the final by 3 games to 1, earning his 22nd title. You can find the games on the BGA website.

If you want to be British Champion one place to start might be this new joseki tool, BruGo. The author is a Belgian player, frustrated with inability to update existing joseki dictionaries, he decided to combine lines from all existing dictionaries into this one. The dictionary is still quite young, and so some lines may be missing. However, the author feels that it doesn't contain any mistakes in the lines present.

7 October 2008

World Minds Sports Games.

The World Minds Sports Games is a new event taking place in China. It features Go as one of its disciplines, alongside other Mind Sports such as Bridge or Chess. There is a UK team taking part featuring two junior players, Maria Tabor and Vanessa Wong. The IGF has a nice site with rolling news from the event.

21 September 2008

Humanity defeats the Machines.

Last night at the Cotsen Open in the USA, Myungwan Kim 8 dan professional took on the Mogo, world computer champion. Previously, Mogo had beaten Myungwan Kim on 9 stones at the US Open in July. They player two games, the first a blitz game on 7 stones, Mogo lost after playing out a broken ladder. The second game was played at 1.5 hr limits. Once again though, Myungwan defeated the computer program, which was running on 800 cores of a supercomputer. You can find the games on KGS under the accounts MoGoTitan or Myungwan. Computers are now approaching dan level it seems.

10 August 2008

European Go Congress

The European Go Congress is the biggest tournament in Europe, with over 900 players taking part from a multitude of countries. The new European Champion is Catalin Taranu 5 dan pro from Romania. Best youth player was Thomas Debarre from France, who managed a creditable 19th place.

8 July 2008

UK Go Challenge Results!

Congratualtions to Matthew Hathrell who won the UK Go Challenge last weekend in Cambridge, ahead of Hai Xia (2nd) and Stewart Smith (3rd). The Boys winners were Matthew Hathrell (U18), Hai Xia (U16), Ismael Mustafa (U14), Stewart Smith (U12) and Thomas Danes (U10). The Girls winners were Cher Bachar (U16), Danielle Ward (U12), Sijia Yao (U10) and Roella Smith (U8). King Edward VI, Aston won the best School prize, while Milton, Cambridge won the best Primary School prize.

5 June 2008

World Amateur Go Championships

The World Amateur Go Championships were held this year in Tokyo in Japan. The event was won by Korea, with China in second place. Young players who competed to watch out for in the future: 13 year old Matej Zakanj from Croatia in 39th place and 14 year old Ali Jabarin from Israel in 13th place. The UK's Matthew Macfadyen finished in 20th place.

15 April 2008

Hikaru No Go Game Collection

Maybe you didn't know this, but every game featured in Hikaru No Go was really played in real life. This website by a Dutch player gives details for each game in the mange/anime series. You can view it here.

26 March 2008

European Youth Championship

Also taking place this month was the European Youth Goe Championships in Slovakia. The Eurogotv organisation has some nice video commentary of the deciding game. You can find them at this youtube page and also on Eurogotv's homepage.

18 March 2008

New Youth Champions

Last weekend the British Youth Championships took place in KE Aston School. Overall winner was Maria Tabor, other winners were (U16) Steven Donlon, (U14) Mazhar Warraich, (U12) John Perkins, (U10) Tom Meehan and (U8) Roella Smith. You can see a detailed report on this page .

14 February 2008

New Cartoons

The American Go Foundation have created a great new website for junior players called Tigersmouth. Amongst other things, it features a rather nice Cartoon Strip which you might enjoy.

5 February 2008

Iwamoto Awards

The winners of the third Iwamoto Awards have been announced. The winners are Euro Go TV, Go Workbooks and Big Problems. Each has been awarded a prize for their effort to spread Go across Europe. You can read more about each idea on the award website.

26 January 2008

Go Challengers

Congrats to Longdendale Community Language College in Hyde who are the first school to enter this year's UK Go Challenge. Further details as always on the website.

02 January 2008

Youth Grand Prix

Last year's first and second places were reversed as Will Brooks emerged the winner ahead of Ken Dackombe. In third place was Matthew Hathrell. You can see the full results of the Grand Prix here.

05 December 2007

Go on Facebook

Some of you may be aware of the social networking website Facebook. For those of you using it, there is now a Go application. This will let you play the game with your friends and against the computer opponent GnuGo.

27 November 2007

Home and Away

News on all fronts. Abroad Kay Dacombe, Ken Dacombe and Matthew Hathrell took part in the Japan-Europe Youth Go Project. You can read about their adventures in this report. At home the East Midlands tournament took place. A lot of juniors from Aston took part and performed very well. Lead stars were Hamza Reta (18 kyu) and Mazhar Waraich (14 kyu), who both scored a perfect 3 wins out of 3.

21 November 2007

EidoGo Study Tools

A new study tool is available online called EidoGo. It provides free professional games to play through, a web interface to play against GnuGo, and a basic joseki dictionary.

14 November 2007

Cambridge Junior Chess & Go Club congress

Fourteen junior players took part in a 9x9 self-pairing Go competition at the Cambridge Junior Chess & Go Club congress. The winner was Bradley Place from Rackham School in Witchford near Ely and second was Omar Tahir from the same school. There was also a Go problems competition and the winner was Hadid Fari from Parkside School in Cambridge.

18 October 2007

International Amateur Baduk Championship

Bei Ge represented the UK at this International event in South Korea. He came a respectable 19th with 5 wins from 8. The competition was won by the hosts, South Korea. The two youngest competitors, both 13, where from New Zealand, Taiwan. They did very well, finishing 12th and 3rd respectively.

09 October 2007

British Championship

Bei Ge has defeated Alex Selby to retain his British Title. He won the hard fought match by a score of 3 to 1. If you are interested in playing through the games, you can visit Guo Juan's website. She has recorded audio reviews of each of the games.

10 August 2007

World News

There have been two big international events recently with British participation. Firstly the European Student Goe Championship took place in Stockholm, Sweden. Vickie Chan and Xinyi Lu both got 1 win from 5 games. The winner was Benjamin Papazoglou from France. The second event was the World Youth Goe Championship, taking place in Boston, America. Chun-Yin Woo did very well to score 2/5 and take 6th place for the BGA in the Under-12 section.

1 August 2007

European Championships

The European Go Congress took place in Villach, Austria this year. The new European Champion was the 17 year old Russian player Ilya Shikshin, taking the place of his sister from last year. Several UK players competed. Best was veteran TMark Hall in 47th place, junior Paul Blockley did well to manage 6/10 in the main tournament,

1 July 2007

UK Go Challenge Finals

Over 50 juniors turned up for the finals of the UK Go Challenge in Cambridge. First place was taken by Hai Xia from Aston. In second was Ken Dackombe, while Matthew Hathrell came in third. The overall Champion school was Wellington School, Somerset, with London Meed, Burgess Hill winning the best Primary school title. Full results are available on the BGA website.

26 May 2007

UK Go Challenge

The 2007 UK Go Challenge is underway and already 10 tournament packs have been sent out. Indeed the first heats have now finished, with nearly 40 players taking part in some and over 200 in all. We have the first winners: Milton - Aoife McCaul and Cambridge C&G - Owen Walker. The national finals will be at Meadows Community Centre in Cambridge on 1st July 2007, at the start of National Go Week.

19 May 2007

Midlands Gala

The Midlands Geographic Go Gala, like its fellow, drew around 20 children and parents. The kids were split into two groups for teaching in the morning, before the 13x13 tournament in the afternoon. Two Aston 26 kyus took the top prizes. Winner was Hamzah Reta with 5.5 out of 6 and second was Ismael Mustafa with 5. Siblings Matthew and Holly Hathrell (8 kyu and 25 kyu) from Coventry took the next two places with 4.5 and 4 wins. Also on 4 wins was Abdel Bedaway (30 kyu Aston).

28 April 2007

East of England Gala

The second East of England Geographic Go Gala drew around 20 children and parents. The morning was split between watching Hikaru and Teaching. In the afternoon there was a 13x13 tournament. Age group winners were U18 Tung Nguyen, U14 Ken Dackombe, U11 Aoife McCaul and U8 Yao-Chih Kuo. Players winning 4/6 were Yasmin McMullon and Matthew Harris.

17 April 2007

North American News

The American Go Honor Society has launched two big youth events recently. The first is the Kato Maso memorial series, named after a famous Japanese professional player, apparently it is the first youth title tournament series in North America. The second event is the Cities Team League tournament, it features 4 Canadian and 4 American youth teams doing battle in a double round-robin event. You can find more details on their website, both events are played online.

25 March 2007


The British Youth Go Championship was held at Loughborough Grammar School this year. William Brooks dealt with all opposition to win his 4th title. The age group winners were Matthew Hathrell, Hai Xia, Ken Dackombe, Thomas Meehan and Roella Smith. The BGA website contains the full results.

11 March 2007


The European Youth Go Championships took place in the Netherlands this year. 98 players took part in the U-18 section which was won by Russian player Artem Dugin 5-dan. Paul Blockley 12-kyu, represented the UK well, scoring 4 wins out of 6 to finish 72nd. In the U-12 section the UK did even better to take second place in a field of 48. Chun-Yin Woo 1-kyu, from Hong Kong, won 5/6, losing only to the eventual winner Theodor Toma 2-kyu, from Romania. More details on the championship website.

31 December 2006

Ken Dackombe wins Youth Grand Prix

Ken Dackombe has won the 2006 Youth Grand Prix with a total of 1369 points. Will Brooks was second with 1227 and Kay Dackombe third with 1185. Two-time winner Jonathan Englefield was fourth and the 2005 champion Maria Tabor fifth. The other players making up the top ten places were Li Shen, Matthew Harris, Matthew Hathrell, Paul Blockley and Owen Walker.

31 December 2006

Li Shen second in London Open

Li Shen, the strongest junior player in the UK, put in a strong performance to finish second in the London Open. His only loss was to the winner, another young player - Ondrej Silt aged 20 from the Czech Republic. The London Open is the strongest tournament in the UK calendar and this year there were 150 competitors including about 60 dan-ranked players. Many strong UK juniors were taking part. Will Brooks finished in 15th place. Maria Tabor and Kay Dackombe both scored 5 wins.

See newer news.

See news archive part 1.
