UK Youth beat Turkey

The UK youth go team played Turkey in round 3 of the 4 round European Youth Go Team Championship.

On paper it looked to be a close match with two boards looking in favour of Turkey and two in favour of the UK EYGTC team and one even in terms of stated grades. However, grades can be unreliable as some young people can improve very fast through the tournament duration or have not played sufficient tournament games to have their grade keep up with their playing strength. Claire Chen played a solid game on board 1 for the UK, picking up a good win by resignation. Gene Wong on board 2 also showed how much he has improved over the past few months with another very solid game again won by resignation. Boards 4 and 5 were exciting to watch with both games exhibiting a variety of large groups come under severe attack on both sides with varying results in terms of groups living and dying. Lukasz Kudla on board 5 managed to turn his game into a win by resignation. Andrew Volovich on board 4 kepy his cool in a game that swung back and forth to clinch victory against his stronger rated opponent by 4.5 points, giving the UK an unassailable lead. Our final board was played the following day when Isabella made her debut for the team. An unfortunate absence of two eyes in a large group gave victory to her opponent. This left the UK with a 4-1 win over Turkey and moved the UK up into third place out of the sixteen teams with one round to go. In the final round the UK will play Czechia on 11th February - a win in this round would give the UK a good chance of finishing with a medal place.

All round three results