UK Youth Team narrowly lose to Hungary

Starting on Saturday 10th February 2018, the UK youth team played their fourth (& final) match, against Hungary. We lost by 2 boards to 3. This was in the European Youth Go Team Championship 2017/18 (EYGTC). Please follow that link for details of all countries' youth team squads.
So, the final Top 3 countries this year are as follows.
Winners = Russia;
Second = Germany;
Third = Romania.

Due to a clash with the Hungarian Youth Championship, we were unable to play at the defined time, and the games were spread individually over a week - something that detracts somewhat from the team nature of the event but seemed unavoidable this time.

Our team comprised Yueran Wang, Jayden Ng, Jack Nolan, Alexander Hsieh and Jianzhou Mei. Both Jayden and Jack were making their debut appearances in the team. On paper it was going to be close with a chance of us winning the match overall.
Alexander played first and took an easy win.
Yueran was next to play, playing up on board 1 on the U20 board against a 3 dan. It was a closely fought game and Yueran was unlucky to lose by 2.5 points.
Jayden played next, but was unable to recover from an early mistake and so lost the game.
Jianzhou played an exciting game, showing his fighting skill as he attacked large groups across the board, and killing one for a comfortable win. That left us 2-2 with the final board 3 to play.
We were outranked, with Jack (12 kyu) up against a 5 kyu, and the result went according to grade, although the difference in grades was not so noticeable to the spectators.

This narrow loss means the UK finishes 10th out of the 12 teams entered.
If we had converted the final round to a win we would have been 6th, so close were the middle-order teams. Due to our strong showing last year, we had started in the top half of the draw and we had relatively tough opponents, playing the teams who finished 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 7th respectively.

The squad saw some new faces this year and we managed to field almost everyone in the squad in at least one match to give them experience.
Well done to our squad of:
(U20): Zaki Betesh, Tom Bradbury, Charlotte Bexfield
(U16): Yueran Wang, Jayden Ng, Edmund Smith, Josh Gorman, Oscar Selby,
Jack Nolan, Aidan Wong, Wenzhou Mei
(U12): George Han, Alexander Hsieh, Jianzhou Mei, Zoe Walters

Alexander Hsieh (U12) is our player of the year, playing in all four of the matches and scoring two wins.

With the UK continuing to perform well on the U12 boards, and the increasing number of single-digit kyu youth players, we have talent coming through for future years. The qualifying standard to make it into the youth squad continues to rise.

  Alison Bexfield, Team Captain