Successful July Youth Squad Tournament

On Sunday 5 July, 30 young Go players gathered online for our first online training tournament for the UK Youth Go Squad, reports Alison Bexfield. Any player who had reached 20k or better was invited (that we were aware of) and it was pleasing to see how many of the players had improved over recent months since we last saw them play.

The tournament was played over three rounds during the afternoon on OGS, where we were able to have a private invitation-only group.

The fact that the strength of our youth players has increased over recent years was evidenced by the fact that 8 of our 30 players were graded 3kyu or stronger (with three of this group in the U12 age group) .

Jacob Zhang is our strongest player and won all three games to lead the top group, although a very rapidly improved Ryan Zhang, now playing at 2k, gave him a good game. Other notable results were the three wins from Edmund Smith (3k), Caleb Monk (11k), David Baldwin (14k) and one of the Scottish youth team (Lukasz Kudla 14k).

It was also good to see a wide geographical mix to the participants with players from Scotland, London, Manchester, the Midlands, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Oxfordshire and Surrey.

We intend to hold more of these events which will help us choose the final line up for the British online youth team next autumn.

I am indebted to Paul Smith who was the driving force behind organising the event and who did all the hard work in advance of the day which made it such a success.

Results