“There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up”. – John Holmes
We see men and women who have experienced trauma within their early years. Many have grown up within the care system and lost contact with friends & family. Everyday these people are fighting to survive. Helping Homeless Believe provide emergency response to anyone spotted rough sleeping within Bristol & South Gloucestershire. We will offer them a survival pack of basic essentials to keep them alive along with signposting to services that may be of help. Each survival pack costs £55.00. These consist of an army style sleeping bag that keep people warm in minus temperatures, a foil emergency blanket, a set of thermals, gloves, hat, socks and a sixty litre rucksack.
The Online Championship concludes
It seems a very long time ago, almost in another era now, that the 2020 Online Championship kicked off. This time under the name “UK Online Open” on WBIF, to avoid confusion with tournaments that restrict entrants based on nationality, and probably causing some other confusion in the meantime! 93 players in the Masters started off the five-times elimination back in the spring, with five random draws before the swiss-style rounds kicked in. Over the course of many weeks the field thinned down slowly but steadily, leaving us after fifteen rounds with our top five in the summer. However, three – Simon Barget, Brendan Burgess and Sean Casey – got to that point with multiple lives intact and the final stages proved to be an epic battle; first Sean lost twice, leaving Simon and Brendan with two lives apiece; and then having announced that they would play two long matches back to back it turned out that three were needed in the end… Simon emerging as winner of two and the better PR in all three, so a very deserving champion. Many congratulations to all our final five for some epic performances.
- Champion: Simon Barget (17 wins)
- 2nd: Brendan Burgess (16 wins)
- 3rd: Sean Casey (13 wins)
- 4th: Mike Shewry (12 wins)
- 5th: Sebastian Wilkinson (10 wins)
and although it wasn’t a specifically PR-based tournament, a round of congratulations to our top three all averaging under 4 for the whole tournament:
- Sebastian Wilkinson (3.47, 5th)
- Simon Barget (3.93, 1st)
- Gaz Owen (3.94, equal 9th)
Over in the intermediates, the final was finished some time ago! 51 players started the groups stage, in eight groups of six/seven. Nick Baker, Ilke Tuna and Warner Solomon all managed to win their groups undefeated, but group B turned out to be a nightmare: five players tied, and with their head-to-head results all exactly matched. That left me scratching my head over an Excel spreadsheet for a day or so trying to figure out a five-way tiebreak that gave everyone a reasonably equal chance, and would also produce a clear group winner (as group winners got a bye in the first knockout round). That held up proceedings somewhat as it involved two or three games more for everyone! Once on to the knockout stages, it was then a pretty smooth run to the end.
- Winner: Danny Gallagher
- Finalist: Radostin Damyanov
- Semi-finalists: Keith Gill and Stuart Whittingham
- Consolation winner: Ana Mancino
- Finalist: Vincent Nolan
- Semi-finalists: Dorothy Lee and Phil Perelmuter
You can find the main results here and the consolation here.
The Charity Challenge opens for sign-ups
We’re delighted to start registering players for the 2020 Charity Challenge, which will benefit Helping Homeless Believe (nominated by Gaz Owen, 2020 winner). This year, following the success of last year’s Challenge and the multiple-elimination Online Championship, we’ll be adopting a similar format, starting with five lives. Each round involves an 11 point match. The first five rounds will start with random draws on November 9th 2020 and you’ll have five weeks to play those matches. Lose a match, lose a life! After that, we pair people up with opponents who have similar numbers of lives left; everyone still with lives intact gets another opponent every two weeks until we are left with just the one champion.
Entry costs just a £10 donation to our cause – and every entry really will make a difference to someone’s life this winter. Moreover, we’re delighted that we have additional help – the trophies are being donated by our TD as usual, a very generous anonymous sponsor has offered an extra £1 in the pot for each player, and if we can reach 100 players then there will be an extra £100 heading over to our charity. Please sign up now! Just email julia@ukbgf.com to register and get payment details, and you can find full information on the tournament here. The format is pretty relaxed and everyone gets a good amount of play; last year it was around Easter time that we had our final round.
There will be an optional £10 side pool this time, just mention it when you register!
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