All Winners from China in Online Youth Event

The first CCTV World Youth Amateur Online Weiqi Tournament was in two sections, the first being for youth teams. Jayden Ng, Scott Cobbold and Caleb Monk played the seven qualifying rounds over each weekend from late October to mid-December on the Chinese server Yike. They beat Colombia, lost to China, France and close matches against Croatia and Hungary. They then beat Argentina and Slovakia to end thirteenth out of 22. The teams making the knockout stage were both China teams, Singapore, Russia, France, Ukraine, Malaysia and Canada. The teams from Germany, Thailand, USA and Hungary finished just above the UK. The semis saw the two China teams face off and Singapore take on and beat Russia.

In the 26-player junior individual section our player Ryan Zhang did very well. He won his first three beating Yuki Kouchi of Japan, Liu Zijia of China and Julie Blondeau of France. He then lost to Vsevolod Ovsiienko of Ukraine and Takuya Kawabata of Japan. He picked up the last two against Askar Khusainov of Russia and Woo Dalyoung of Korea, to end fifth. He proceeded to the knock-out stage with both Chinese players, both of the Japanese, the American, Ukrainian and German. He next played USA's Alexander Qi who played very strongly to win easily. Taking fifth place is a brilliant result for Ryan who is not yet eight. The semis saw a China-China matching and Kawabata of Japan taking on Ryan’s vanquisher.

There was then a four month gap before the finals were organised because of covid. In these, as expected China beat Singapore and Huang Haicheng of China beat Alexander Qi.