UK Youth Team Smash Netherlands

Alison Bexfield, team captain, writes:

The UK youth team played the Netherlands today in their second round match of the 2019/20 European Youth Go Team Championship (EYGTC). It was good to see a team from the Netherlands playing this year for the first time.

When choosing the team for each match I try to pick a team which has good winning chances, but also where the grade differences between players are likely to be close so that our players can develop their match play. The Netherlands team is much weaker in strength than our first round opponents (Russia), so we were able to play a different set of players from our squad of fifteen than the previous round. On paper going into the match we had the edge on four boards by one or two grades, with one board being a grade difference the other way.

A late substitution on board 5 for the Netherlands, due to sickness, gave Yanyi an easy game on board 5. Tom Bradbury played earlier on board 1 and gained a quick win after killing a group. Boards 2, 3 and 4 saw Scott Cobbold, Caleb Monk and Alexander Timperi making their debut appearance for the UK squad. All were able to turn in wins giving us an excellent 5-0 win.

The team have now lost 5-0 to Russia and won 5-0 against the Netherlands, putting us somewhere in the middle of the group for round 3. There may well be a different winner this year as previous winners Russia lost to Germany this round.

This year sees the biggest entry yet with sixteen teams taking part. It is pleasing to see that every team has managed to score some wins from the two rounds to date.

Results and Game Records

Follow the next match on 18th January on KGS in room "Tournaments" > "Euro Youth Team"