The BGA UK Youth team lost 1-4 to Israel on Sat, 13 Dec 2014, in the European Youth Go Team Championship which sees us currently in 10th place overall out of the 13 teams, with 2 rounds left to play.

We were heavily outranked on boards 1, 4 and 5 against Israel, although Tom, Anthony and Hilary acquitted themselves well in the face of grading differences of between 10 and 16 stones.

It was good to see the two U12 players playing a solid game, protecting their groups so there were no major dead groups at the end. Charlotte had a quick win and Dylan had his opponent on the ropes for much of the game. His opponent narrowed the gap, and Dylan resigned, thinking he was about to lose a group of stones. In fact, with a little thought, he could have saved them and would have won the game by about 8 points.

UK stayed second behind Bulgaria in the 12-team C-League. Bulgaria have won two more boards than the UK.

The match against Ireland ended in a 3-1 win for the UK team, as follows:

1. Des Cann (W) beat Ian Davis (hogweed, 1d) by 17.5
   
2. Paul Taylor (B) lost to James Hutchinson (jameshutch, 1d) by 8.5
   
3. Chris Bryant (W) beat Peter Kasko (Kaskai, 3k) by resignation
   
4. Evan McKiernan-Dooner (B) beat Tiberiu Gociu (OTible, 4k) by resignation
   

Links to the games, with .SGFs, are available on our main Pandanet Go European Team Championship (PGETC) page.

The second South London kyu players' teaching day and tournament was again at the Croydon Quaker Meeting House. Nineteen students were taught in the morning by four teachers - Andrew Kay, Alex Rix, Tim Hunt and Alison Bexfield. In the afternoon there was a three round tournament.

In the teachers' section the teachers all played each other, in a round-robin tournament, with all games even. In the students' tournament all games were played with handicaps equal to grade difference where appropriate.

Andrew Kay won the teachers' tournament with three wins; he received a prize of a bag of delicious gingerbread men from the organiser's excellent local cake shop.

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We're now in December - the final month of the 2014 Youth Grand Prix (YGP).

Cash prizes of £50, £30 and £20 will soon be decided.

With 11 months' results now in, the current standings suggest that the top 3 will come from these 4 players (grade, club and - most importantly, here - current YGP points are in brackets):

Edmund Smith (10k Milton 595)

Melchior Chui (9k Cambridge 510)

Kelda Smith (17k Milton 508)

Charlotte Bexfield (10k Letchworth 480)

Can Melchior, Kelda, Charlotte - or anybody else - stop Edmund regaining the title he lost last year to Oscar Selby?

The UK youth go team, as you would know from previous news items, is one of 13 teams signed up to the European Youth Go Team Championship. Follow that link to see the 12 players currently registered in the UK team.

In the second round of matches, the UK team beat Italy on Sat. 29th November.

Well done to Thomas, Oscar, Alex, Edmund and Anthony for their 4-1 win, which places the UK currently 6th out of the 13 teams taking part. Every board does count, as board-wins form part of the tie-break if teams have equal match-points.

As expected, Alex and Edmund had convincing wins on boards 3 and 4 respectively. Oscar also claimed his win, but unfortunately this was due to Italy not showing up on that board. They will receive a yellow card for that. Thomas had a tough game on board 1, and his much stronger opponent prevailed.

For a second year running the Coventry Tournament had a local winner. As the previous winner, Bruno Poltronieri, concentrated on organising, it was his University of Warwick club mate Philip Leung (5d) who won this time. He was rewarded with a bottle of port and a box of Maltesers. Second was Wu Ruizhu (5d) also from Warwick and third was Alison Bexfield from Letchworth. Those on 3/3 also got prizes: Ben Riddell (2k Cheltenham), Andre Cockburn (7k Nottingham), John Capper (12k Nottingham) and Christopher Manser (17k Warwick). 32 players took part.

Results

Congratulations to Andrew Kay who defeated Alex Kent today to retain the British Championship by three games to nil.

A copy of the game is available, with comments from Matthew Macfadyen 6d.

Thanks to Nick Wedd for hosting, and to all others involved.

Toby Manning

Game Three Relay raw record including unmoderated comments.
Game Three Review with comments by Matthew Macfadyen 6d.

Gerry Gavigan (13k) from South London took second place in the 2014 UCC Tournament. This was held in the Mardyke Pavilion of University College Cork, situated in their sports area next to the River Lee. The 13 players who took part all played handicap games with a maximum of nine stones. Gerry won four games to win 100 euro only losing to the winner, Philippe Renaud (2d) from Galway. Philippe won all five games to gain the 150 euro first prize and Thomas Shanahan (4k Cork) took the third place on SOS tie-break from Artur Gower (18k Galway).

Results

The UK's match against Spain on 18th November was split so that board 1 was played a day later.

Des Cann on board 2 wrote: My opponent started our game with the wrong overtime and I didn't notice causing a flurry of emails and abortive attempts to restart. On the board things were much calmer and I was able to plan the yose fairly early. My opponent got a ko in my corner but just using big yose as ko threats was good enough for me. He lived but I won the game quite safely.

Toby Manning on board 3 wrote: We had a fairly quiet game, with no major fights. I played a simple fuseki, ending up ahead and by the early middle game I simply had to avoid a major disaster – either losing a group or letting him get a large central territory. He failed to start a fight on the left hand side which could have been problematic and then I started a small semeai to gain some aji on the lower side.