British Championship Sat 27th Daniel Hu vs Bruno Poltronieri

[Uberdude]

This Saturday 27th November will be the British Championship 2021 title match, between Daniel Hu 5d and Bruno Poltronieri 3d. The game will be broadcast on KGS in the British room, with an audio commentary by me, Andrew Simons 4d aka Uberdude.

Due to Covid we didn’t have a championship in 2020, and this year rather than having the usual qualification process of a Candidates tournament and then all-play-all Challengers league for the top 7 plus last year’s champion to decide the top 2 for a best-of-three or -five title match, the top 2 British qualified players from the British Open in October were selected to play a single title match game. Those 2 players were Daniel and Bruno, you can check the results at British Open Results 2021.

Daniel is certainly the favourite: his 2498 rating is 1 and a half stones higher than Bruno’s 2343 and that’s probably under-rating Daniel: he had a spectacular success in the 2020 EGF Grand Prix Final just before Covid hit beating 2 European professionals Tanguy Le Calve 1p (2695 rating) and Pavol Lisy 2p (2763), and he qualified for that by being the first British player in decades to win the London Open 2019. Daniel has been British Champion once before, he beat me 2-0 in 2017. Forum members may know him as dhu163 here. But Bruno did beat Daniel in their head-to-head game in the British Open last month, so don’t count him out! He’s been practicing ahead of his first shot at the British Champion title.

[kvasir]

What time on Saturday?

I am surprised that it is only a single game this year.

[Javaness2]

Should this event not be advertised in the KGS message of the day, and/or the British Room message?

[Uberdude]

What time on Saturday?

10:30am GMT. I will start my commentary about 10 minutes earlier (Oops, it was in the title but I had to shorten it).

I am surprised that it is only a single game this year.

Covid casualty I presume.

[Uberdude]

Should this event not be advertised in the KGS message of the day, and/or the British Room message?

Yes, but not my department (says Werner von Braun).

[Uberdude]

Daniel won by 7.5, after an exotic opening with double 3-3, side star, and then double 4-4 shimaris, so is British Go Champion 2021.