UK Youth Team Lose Against France

The UK youth team is again playing in the European Youth Go Team Championship. As usual each match is five games played on KGS with one player U20, two U16 and two U12. Team manager Alison Bexfield made up the team following the selection tournament, including seven new team members, as announced in the November Youth Go News and listed on our EYGTC page. Alison aims to rotate the players on the team, to give all a chance to play, whilst trying to match strengths of opponents yet giving the team a chance of winning.

Alison writes:

The UK played France in the first round of the European Youth Go Team Championship. We were seeded in the top half of the draw following our good result last year and so were paired with another strong team. France, who we beat last year, outgraded us on paper this time by between one and four grades on every board, so it was always going to be a tough match.

Unusually our games were spread across two weekends to accommodate the French team's availability. Sam Barnett played first as our board 3 in what proved to be an exciting game. Sam had the best of it against the French 2 dan for the first half of the game, but his opponent fought back to claim the win. Jacob Zhang, Isabella Qiu and Derek Duan also lost their games leaving George Han to be our star of the match as he won against a 1 kyu player. Overall result was 4-1 to France.

In other matches top teams Russia and Germany demolished Ukraine and Romania respectively, and there were wins for Russia B, Croatia, Czechia and a combined team called Slovadan.