I heard that Matthew McFadyen gave up on playing in the British Go Champs giving a lack of challenging competition as a reason (now I imagine Iyama Yuta not competing in title matches during 2016-1018 because he wants the challenge of international titles, and it sounds pretty funny). However, if I'm correct, the very next year or at least less than a few years afterwards, the winner was a 5 dan, arguably stronger than him since newer ranks are stricter than during the time period he aquired his 6 dan rank. He hasn't been the best british player anymore by a longshot for a while. So is there some other reason that players aren't playing in the Champs? Forgive if I'm being rude and a knucklebrain here . . .

At the risk of putting words in Matthew's mouth, though I do know him fairly well, I wouldn't say the lack of competition is why he gave up playing in the championship. It's because he recognised he wasn't as strong as he used to be and didn't have the focus and drive to regain his strength, and didn't want to play below his previous high standards. The event which triggered this was the 2011 London Open where he did badly, losing to some 3 and 4ds he would have easily beaten before. He then didn't play in the 2012 championship or since. It would have been nice for one of us new generation like Andrew Kay to beat him in the title match as a passing-the-torch moment, but alas. I would say if Matthew did play in the 2012 championship I would still favour him to beat Andrew Kay ~60%, and ~80% vs me or Nick Krempel. Daniel Hu is the first player I would bet on to beat Matthew in a title match. I think Matthew is still stronger than both Bruno and Gaoge in this years match. His experience of playing in long games still counts for a lot: a title match is quite different to a regular 1 hour tournament game. I'm not playing anymore because I'm now busy being a dad.

If you're willing to share more, I'd be happy to hear more about how that's going

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be immersed

During the time he wasn't playing in the British Championship he still played and plays in European Go Congresses. So it's not because he thinks he's not good enough anymore. I wouldn't want it to be some Lee Sedol type situation where he's not satisfied with the BGA or something . . . I'd have to ask myself but that might be a bit rude even for me and my temporarily impaired prefrontal cortex, haha!