UK Youth Team Beat France 3-2

On Saturday 28th January 2017, the UK youth team completed their EYGTC season, with a close win against France by 3 boards to 2. This concluded the European Youth Go Team Championship 2016/17. Please follow that link for names of the complete UK youth team squad.

  Post-match comments (see below for comments prior to the games): 

Well done to the UK youth go team which won their match against France today 3-2. It was a very evenly matched set of boards on paper, so it was going to be an exciting match.

Our board 3, Josh Gorman had an early resignation, after one of his corners met an untimely end.
On board 5, Alexander Hsieh's game was exciting. He lost a large group of stones, but calmly took stock of the situation and made his own counterattack, killing a compensating group, and went on to win by a comfortable 20 points.
Edmund Smith on board 4 finished next, winning by 7.5 points.

Yueran Wang fought valiantly on board 1, but was not able to overcome his opponent, leaving the second board to decide the match.
George Han, an Under-12 player promoted to the U16 slot, was playing a 2 kyu opponent, so it was a tough game for him. The game was full of complications which George used to the full, as his opponent slipped into time trouble, in the end securing our final win by resignation.

The results have not yet been updated but, if my calculations are correct, this win should leave the UK in 4th place out of the 8 teams, which is a very creditable result.
With the youth team increasing in strength year on year, in each age group category, the future is looking good for UK youth go.

  Alison Bexfield, Team Captain 

  Pre-match comments:  

The UK youth team is playing their final match in the European Youth Go Team Championship today.

The match kicks off at 2pm today on KGS, in the Euro Youth teams room. It looks to be our most exciting match, with all players within 1-3 grades of their opponents on paper.

Our board order is:

1. Yueran Wang
2. George Han
3. Josh Gorman
4. Edmund Smith
5. Alexander Hsieh

Good luck to the team.

Both Yueran and George are playing up an age group.
Our team selection balances a number of factors - fielding a team which we think can win the match, trying to give as many of the squad a chance to play as possible over the course of the tournament, and trying to avoid really unbalanced games.
The latter enables the games to be good training ones, for the development of our young players.

I can also report that we have a really good entry of UK junior players, in all three age categories, in the forthcoming European Youth Go Championships to be held in Grenoble in February. At the latest count, we have 10 young players representing the UK at this event. We wish them all luck, in what surely promises to be a great experience for them all.

  Alison Bexfield, Team Captain