The Canberra club will be holding the ACT Championships in the last weekend of July (Saturday 30/Sunday 31). The event is held as usual in conjunction with the ANU Chess Festival, and the venue is the same as last year: the ANU School of Art.

Entry fee is $30 ($20 for students). Players must be AGA members.

Please contact Neville Smythe on 0414517719 or neville.smythe@optusnet.com.au if you are intending to participate or would simply like more information.

The 2010 ACT Championships will be on the weekend of 24-25 July. The new venue is the ANU School of Art – located at the “C” of Childers Street in the attached ANU Campus map. For those coming from interstate, take a right off Northbourne Ave southbound onto London Circuit, then right at University Ave, then left onto Childers St at the end of University Ave; the School of Art is at the end of the road. Parking is available. Registration is 9am on the Saturday. Contact Neville Smythe of the Canberra Go Club.

Update:The tournament was in conjunction with the 18th ANU Chess Festival at Fenner Hall in the Australian National University, Canberra. Times are unchanged: registration 9am Sat Jul 23.

Neville Smythe has posted some photos from the 2009 ACT Championships on Picasa. If you have any photos around from an Australian or New Zealand tournament, please upload them to Picasa or Flickr and share with the community, or mail them to us, who will do it for you. :)

The ACT Open Championship was won by Guyu Liu, with 6 straight wins; Yiming Guo and David Ormerod came 2nd and 3rd. The Handicap section was won by Jordan Ceglinski. The tournament was run as a McMahon, so after the second round the kyu players were mixed in with the dan players; Jordan’s record indicates we have to upgrade his ranking significantly!

If anyone has any photos or kifu or amusing anecdotes from the event, we would like to include a proper tournament report in the spring issue of the Journal.

This year’s ACT championships, hosted by the Canberra Go Club, will be held in July. The event is also held in the middle of the ANU Chess Festival, so if you suddenly find yourself craving a game of chess (for some strange reason), no doubt you’ll find one. The venue is as it has been in the past, the ABU student residence Fenner Hall. It is conveniently located in the middle of the city (see map) with plenty of accommodation nearby.

The entry fee will be $30; $20 for students, and all players must be AGA members. Don’t worry though, joining has been made simple and easy on the AGA website. You should also be able to join up on the day.

The schedule for the weekend, as we have it, is as follows:

Saturday
Registration: 9 – 10am
Round 1: 10 am
Lunch: 12.30  pm
Round 2: 1.30 pm
Round 3: 3.45 pm

Sunday
Round 4: 9.30 am
Lunch: 12 noon
Round 5: 1 pm
Round 6: 3.30 pm
Closing Ceremony: Approx. 5.45 pm

There will be the usual open division for dans and handicap division for kyus. It is, like all state championships, AGA-sanctioned (meaning credit points and everything else that implies). More information as we get it, but, in the meantime, if you’re planning to head to Canberra, remember to take warm clothes! We’re informed that it can get a little nippy at night around that time of year.

The All Keio Igo Association has challenged the Brisbane Go Club to a friendly match over the internet in January, with the intent to make this an annual event. The match will take place in the public Australian Room of the KGS Go Server, between a picked team of eleven Keio University alumni and a Brisbane team, plus ring-ins.

The main event kicks off at 3PM Brisbane time (4pm Sydney time, 3:30pm Adelaide time) and is scheduled to take around three hours. An Young Gil 6P (KGS handle younggil), currently based in Sydney, will play a demonstration match against Yamashita-san 9d from Keio, which he will then review. Master Gil is also going to select and review one of the team matches.

All Australian go players are invited to watch any or all of the games and reviews. If you don’t have a KGS account, it is easy enough to log in and create one; KGS is where most of the AGA’s public activities occur, outside of tournaments.