Youth Go News 39 - February 2025

Editor, Toby Manning.

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Your Newsletter

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NEWS

Pandanet Youth Go European Team Championship

The first round of the Pandanet Youth Go European Team Championship took place on 22 January. The UK team is playing in League A, which comprises six teams. This round the team were playing the strongest team in the League, Ukraine, and it was always going to be a very tough match as the team were outranked on all boards other than board 1 which was even. Despite some good fighting spirit the UK lost 4-1 to Ukraine. Ryan Zhang and Michael Mitcham-Harding both lost by resignation on boards 1 and 2 respectively. On boards 4 and 5 the UK players of Lea Wong and Lukasz Kudla fought hard but ultimately lost to their higher ranking opponents. The final game to finish was board 3 where Yanyi had a very long game, but played very well to defeat his higher ranked opponent by 7.5 points.

The UK squad for this event comprises nine players. Each match requires five of them including at least one female player and one U12 player. Our squad comprises:
Ryan Zhang, Lea Wong, Michael Mitcham-Harding, Yanyi Xiong, Andrew Volovich, Lukasz Kudla, Blake Shamoon, Zoe Walters, Emily Gan.

The UK youth team played France in the second round on 12 February. On paper we were the clear favourites, but France pulled off some upsets in their previous round so our players were not taking any chances. The team of Ryan Zhang, Lea Wong, Michael Mitcham-Harding, Zoe Walters and Blake Shamoon duly delivered to win the match 5-0. This meant the UK moved up to 3rd place.

European Youth Go Team Championship
The UK youth go team played Romania on 1 and 2 Februrary in Round 1 of the European Youth Go team Championship and won their match 3-2.

On paper this match was fairly closely matched on the top three boards with the UK team having the edge on boards 4 and 5. With the London Youth tournament clashing with the round schedule we had to split the match over two days for those players in both events. On Saturday, Lea Wong played a steady game to defeat her opponent by 20.5 points, while Lukasz Kudla's game on board 4 was much closer with Lukasz taking the win with a 3.5 point margin. That left us in a good position for the Sunday games, needing just one win from three games to take the match. Blake Shamoon, playing on board 5, played an exciting game from the spectators perspective, becoming involved in a fight that looked quite precarious at times. Fortunately his opponent made more mistakes and Blake in the end took a clear win giving us the match. Belinda Chen on board 1 and Alvina Kwok on board 2 were both facing experienced and strong opponents. Alvina lost by resignation, while Belinda lost by 16.5 points to her 4 dan opponent.

This competition has been running for many years and is a team event where we have a squad of up to 15 players from which five play each match. For each match there must be at least one U20, two U16 and two U12 players selected. In this event qualification for the youth team is either from citizenship of from residency in the UK for at least two years. The UK youth squad for this event comprises 14 players: Belinda Chen, Michael Mitcham-Harding, Alvina Kwok, Daniel Yang, Lea Wong, Sung Hee Lim, Yanyi Xiong, Andrew Volovich, Audrey Fung, Ryan Zhang, Aidan Fung, Lukasz Kudla, Blake Shamoon, Adam Siqi Chen.

Hong Kong Match
At the start of December the match was tied at 4-4. Excitingly by Christmas we were ahead with Hong Kong down to their last player. In the crucial game in January, Sung Hee Lim won to take the match 8-6! Congratulations to the team.

• Lin Ho Lai lost beat Lam Pak Yin by 5.5 - Saturday 7th December
• Lin Ho Lai lost to Xu Yinghan by 79.5 - Sunday 8th December
• Michael Mitcham-Harding lost to Xu Yinghan by resignation - Saturday 14th December
• Sung Hee Lim beat Cora Yiu on time - Saturday 21st December
• Sung Hee Lim beat Pang Cheuk Fung by 26.5 - Sunday 22nd December
• Sung Hee Lim beat Xu Yinghan by 48.5 - Saturday 4th January
• Daniel Yang - not required!

Youth Grand Prix 2024

The Youth Grand Prix 2024 was won by Clinton Yu with 1153 points. Ryan Zhang was second with 1059. Both of these gained points at the last event (the London Open). Olivia Jennison was third with 610. These players all get cash prizes, kindly donated by Jeremy Rickard in memory of his brother John, a strong Go player, who died in 2002. 102 players took part.

TOURNAMENTS

London Youth Tournament

On 1 February, 31 young players, including groups of players from both Tonbridge and Abingdon Schools, attended the London Go Centre for this five-round tournament.

Winning the medals were Belinda Chen (bronze), Kwun Yin Ng (gold) and Ryan Zhang (silver) as shown here. Winning four games were: Xavier Hards, Xavier Gait, Alice Monroig, Tilly Fawkner-Jones, Clarence Qin, Blake Shamoon and James Dodson. Players thanked the London Go Centre for their support and the Mind Sports Centre for selling really tasty toasties and other dishes at lunchtime.

TEACHING/TRAINING

The next Double-digit kyu teaching session will be on Sunday March 16 at 14:30. If you wish to attend please email ynews AT britgo.org before 10 March.

FUTURE EVENTS

European Youth Go Championships

This will take place in Vatra Dornei, Romania, between 6 and 8 March 2025. Here are more details.

The Youth Go Trust will be providing a £100 travel grant to all British participants.

If you need a letter to support your absence from school, please email ynews@britgo.org.

Youth Camp Info

Since 2017, we have run an annual training camp In the summer, - you can read about previous camps on our Youth Summer Go Camp page. It is held at Caythorpe Court, an adventure centre in Lincolnshire, and gets up to 24 attendees. Dates for this year are 13 - 16 August 2025. Details are available on the 2025 flyer. Entries and payments must be received by 15 June, with a discount available until 1 May.

ONLINE MEETINGS

USEFUL RESOURCES

Here are some useful resources/links:

BGA Website: Junior Pages
BGA Youth Go X ("Twitter") account @britishyouthgo, kept fairly active (369 followers)
Instagram - account is uk_youth_go - 143 followers
BGA Youth Go OGS (closed group, 156 members including adult organisers). If you are a new member, please complete this form.
BGA Youth Go Discord Channel

PROBLEMS

Black to play