Junior + ALL news

The 2019 UK youth go squad has been selected. The team of fifteen players comprises a mix of U20, U16 and U12 players, who form a team to compete for the UK in the European Youth Go Team Championship, played online between November and February. Each of the four matches involves five players (one Under 20yo, two U16 and two U12).

The UK team has improved in strength each year since the championship first started and this year is no exception. The prospect of making it into the youth team and acquiring one of the distinctive red team hoodies has boosted youth go in recent years. Team manager Alison Bexfield explains that she reviews the results from rated tournaments during the year, to select new players for the team.

Here is the final report from UK team leader and team coach, Martin and Helen Harvey, from their base in Xi'an:

19 Aug (Day 4): Today was full of Chinese history and culture. In the morning, the organisers took us to visit Louguantai Temple, situated in the northern foothills of the Qin Mountains (70 km east of Xi'an), the birthplace of Taoism. It is a famous holy place for tourists to visit, founded in the Western Zhou Dynasty and flourishing in the Sui and Tang Dynasties. It is a beautiful and scenic spot, surrounded by mountains, a bamboo forest and decorative buildings. Whilst there the teenagers dressed up in traditional costume, sang, played games of Go and practiced bow and arrow shooting, much to the delight of the media cameras. Great fun was enjoyed by all.

Two European teams, one from France and one from the UK, were invited thanks to Fan Hui to take part in the 2019 "I-GO" "The Belt and Road International I-Go Youth Go Invitational Tournament", for teenagers. This runs from 16th to 22nd August in Xi'an in China.

Here is the first report from UK team captain and team coach, Martin and Helen Harvey:

The UK Team are enjoying the first few days of their trip to Xi'an. There are 20 teams, from six countries. The 4 UK Team members are Edmund Smith, Rowan Borrow, Daniel Gascoyne and Amy Upton - the latter 3 from Cheadle Hulme School (CHS), where Helen and I volunteer. We have thus opted for Cheadle Hulme School as the UK team name, as most of the other teams have a school name.

Congratulations to Lizzy Pollitt (facing the camera), 18 kyu from Cheadle Hulme School, for winning Group E of the Pair Go tournament at the annual 2-week European Go Congress, in Brussels this year.

Partnering a 2 dan from China, Li Feng, they won 5 out of their 6 games, including the final. Their prizes - presented by Martin Stiassny, EGF President - were nice wood-mounted shields plus a cash prize, on top of the Pair Go T-shirts generously awarded to all competitors.

It's been a successful week for Lizzy, on her debut EGC, as she also won 3 of her 4 games in the Main tournament - the Open European Championship Main Tournament.

The latest edition of Youth Go News has been published, No. 5 May 2019.

If you missed any, then old editions are available.

Please tell any young players you know about it.

Team Captain Alison Bexfield, and all her squad of 12 players in the UK Youth Go team, can look back on this 2018/19 season with satisfaction, as we finished comfortably mid table, out of the 12 teams. Whilst we lost narrowly (2-3) to Czechia, in the final fixture last weekend, it was an exciting match, and each margin was between one and a dozen points.

If one is superstitious, one might argue that we were "off colour" in the final match - playing 3 boards with the "wrong colour". That's because the match saw White winning on all 5 boards! It was always destined to be a fine margin either way with players, on paper, exactly evenly matched on 4 boards. But we congratulate Czechia on their win, and well done esp. to Edmund and Yanyi. We hope all our players still can gain from the good experience, esp.

Alison Bexfield, Team Captain, has selected players for the UK Youth Go team playing - mostly on Saturday - versus Czechia.
This is our 4th and final match in the 2018/19 European Youth Go Team Championship (EYGTC) and, against the 3 countries we've played so far, we are 2-1 up.

The two teams' captains have done really well, and managed to line up players with exactly the same paper grade as each opponent, save for a 2-grade advantage to the UK on board 1.

The board line-ups for the match are:

Good news if a tad late ...

Well, mea culpa entirely for this late snippet, but no doubt Santa was still delighted with the photo. Taken in December, it shows his helpers enjoying their lunch break at Cheadle Hulme School (CHS) in South Manchester. It seems that not even snow can stop the fun, for those with suitable head-wear. The school Go Club has been running for over 5 years now, with great support from CHS, their teachers past and present, minibuses, drivers, the BGA and DeepMind.

47 CHS students (and counting!) have experienced at least one national Go tournament. One current student Tom Bradbury - who'd not played Go before joining CHS - has now amassed no fewer than 33 events, over 6 countries!

Alison Bexfield, Team Captain, sent us 2 posts on Sat. 12 Jan. re this UK Youth Go Team match.

--- Pre-match ---
The British youth go team are back in action today, playing Hungary.
This is our 3rd match in the 2018/19 European Youth Go Team Championship (EYGTC).

Our line-up for today's match is:
U20 Yueran Wang
U16 Edmund Smith
U16 Josh Gorman
U12 Yanyi Xiong
U12 Emily Oliviere

We welcome Emily from Harpenden to the squad as our newest member, making her debut today. She joins the squad after a strong showing at the British Youth championships (which I use for talent spotting).

Three boards commenced play at 2pm and we have won on board 4 with a convincing win by Yanyi. The other two - boards 1 and 3 - are currently still playing. Boards 2 and 5 start play at 4pm. All games take place on the KGS server.

--- Post-match ---

The UK Youth team played a strong German team, on Saturday 15th December, and lost 4-1.

This was our 2nd match in the 2018/19 European Youth Go Team Championship (EYGTC).