UK Youth team beat Czechia

On Saturday 25th November 2017, the UK youth team played their second match, against Czechia. We won by 3 boards to 2. This was in the new season of the European Youth Go Team Championship 2017/18 (EYGTC). Please follow that link for names of the complete UK youth team squad.

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

The UK Youth Go Team won their match against Czechia 3-2. This leaves the UK in fifth place out of the twelve teams after two rounds. The third round will take place in January.

Our team for the match comprised Yueran Wang, George Han, Edmund Smith, Alexander Hsieh and Zoe Walters. It was Zoe's first appearance in the team.

Yueran (playing up an age group on the U20 board) and Alexander (U12) outranked their opponents slightly on paper and were each able to land a comfortable win. Zoe (U12) had a tough game against a rapidly-improving player and lost her game. The two critical games were therefore on boards 2 and 3 (the U16 boards) where on paper the games looked difficult but not impossible with both our players outranked by a grade or so. George Han was on board 2 and had the closest of games to lose by half a point. Fortunately Edmund managed to win a close game by 4.5 points giving the third game required to win the match.

Well done everyone.

  Alison Bexfield, Team Captain 

  Pre-match comments:  

The UK Youth Go team are playing their second match in the European Youth online team tournament this Saturday against Czechia. The match kicks off at 2pm in the euro teams room on kgs.
Board 4 of the 5 boards will start one hour later at 3pm.

The UK team for this match comprises:

1. U20 Yueran Wang
2. U16 George Han
3. U16 Edmund Smith
4. U12 Alexander Hsieh
5. U12 Zoe Walters

Zoe is making her debut appearance for the UK team.
This is looking to be an exciting match with several very closely-matched boards on paper. So the match could go either way.

  Alison Bexfield, Team Captain