Junior + ALL news

The first edition of a new monthly newsletter, Youth Go News, has been produced by the BGA and is available in the Junior section of the website as a PDF file. Please print or pass on electronically to any juniors who might not be on the BGA youth mailing list.

On Saturday 7th October 2017, 15 children from half a dozen schools in South Manchester attended a Go workshop at Greenbank Preparatory School (GPS). Following the same format as in the previous year, GPS had contacted the local Educational 'Gifted and Talented' scheme, who then sponsored the day and selected the children. British Go Association (BGA) members Martin Harvey, building on his connection with Cheadle Hulme School (CHS), plus wife Helen Harvey, Roger Huyshe and Tom Bradbury (Y12, CHS) were kept busy throughout, from 10:00 to 15:30, supervising the games.

While the children were just from years 4 and 5, their attention was good, they learned the basics in the morning starting with Capture Go, and progressed immediately to territory Go.

The first BGA Youth Residential Training was held at the PGL youth adventure centre at Caythorpe Court, not far from Grantham in Lincolnshire. The BGA group was made up of 19 youngsters aged 10 to 17 from Manchester, Letchworth, Cambridge and London areas, and five adults.

On arrival on Monday 14th August the youngsters were split into two by age for an afternoon of orienteering and raft building. Once dried out and fed, they assembled in the downstairs rooms of the Court for a short Go tournament, followed by Liar Dice and other games. Winner of the top group was Oscar Selby and Hilary Bexfield won both her games too.

The 22nd European Youth Go Championships were held this year in the alpine University town of Grenoble in France, with an impressive 229 entrants.

The UK team of 10 was co-ordinated by the British Go Association (BGA), accompanied throughout by the designated UK Team Leader, Martin Harvey from Manchester, and ably assisted by parents of 6 of the children.

Kindly sponsored by DeepMind (whose logo looked great on the smart, team hoodies they provided, as in the picture), the UK team faced players from 17 European countries, from as far away as Ukraine and Russia.

The event was run in three age groups and our players were generally towards the younger end of each group.

On Saturday 28th January 2017, the UK youth team completed their EYGTC season, with a close win against France by 3 boards to 2. This concluded the European Youth Go Team Championship 2016/17. Please follow that link for names of the complete UK youth team squad.

  Post-match comments (see below for comments prior to the games): 

Well done to the UK youth go team which won their match against France today 3-2. It was a very evenly matched set of boards on paper, so it was going to be an exciting match.

Our board 3, Josh Gorman had an early resignation, after one of his corners met an untimely end.
On board 5, Alexander Hsieh's game was exciting.

On Saturday 7th January 2017, the UK youth team beat a combined team from Italy, Austria and Switzerland by 4 boards to 1. This was the second of the three rounds in the European Youth Go Team Championship 2016/17. Please follow that link for names of the complete UK youth team squad.

  Post-match comments (see below for comments prior to the games): 

Although on paper it should have been an easy match for us, actually the opposing team contained some rapidly improving juniors, which showed how out of date grades can be amongst keen juniors.

Josh Gorman was first to finish on board 3 with an easy win - soon followed by Edmund Smith on board 5, and our newcomer George Han on board 4 - also with comfortable wins.

Our top two boards had a tougher time.

The UK youth team narrowly lost to Serbia yesterday 2-3. This was the first of the 3 rounds in the European Youth Go Team Championship 2016/17. Please follow that link for names of the complete UK youth team squad.

Post-match comments (see below for comments prior to the games):

As expected, Zaki and Josh - playing on the two U16 boards - cruised to easy victories, with both clearly outranking their opponents. We needed to win on one of the other three boards.

Given the strengths of the opposing team on these boards, I had picked players from our team who would have a good evenly-matched game, rather than field our U12 7 kyu against a 16 kyu, in what would be a one-sided game.

On Saturday 30 children from six schools in South Manchester attended a Go workshop at Greenbank school. Martin Harvey had used his connection with Cheadle Hulme School to contact the local Educational 'Gifted and Talented' scheme, who then sponsored the day and selected the children. Martin and Helen Harvey and Roger Huyshe were kept busy throughout.

While the children were just from years 3 and 4 (and 1 Y5), their attention was good, they learned the basics in the morning starting with Capture Go but progressing immediately to territory Go. In the afternoon they submitted to a hectic 5-round McMahon before parents came to collect them.

The UK Youth GO team have finished a respectable sixth out of the twelve teams competing in the European online Youth Go Team Tournament. This year the draw was an accelerated Swiss which meant the top teams were paired against each other from an early stage. This gave our team more chances to play more evenly matched opponents. We picked up wins against Poland (3-2) and Italy, Switzerland and Austria (4-1) and lost to Czechia (2-3) and Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia (1-3).

As last year we struggled most on the U20 board where we do not yet have any dan players. However our U12s continue to excel in this event - we picked up wins in 6 or the 7 games played in this age group with two of our U12 players also playing up an age group on occasion.

The UK Youth team had an exciting match today against the combined team of Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia. First to finish was Aidan on board 4 who played a solid game and claimed a straight forward win. We then lost on board 1 where Elom had a tough game against a 3 dan opponent. With the score 1-1 we needed a win on one of the two U16 boards. Both Charlotte and Edmund had exciting games which looked to be going their way after the opening. Charlotte had killed a large group and Edmund had mapped out a massive moyo. Unfortunately their opponents fought back strongly and we could not hold onto the advantage in either game leaving us 1-3 down with board 5 to play. Rather oddly neither board 5 managed to turn up online. Wenzhou for the UK had connection problems preventing him joining the match. The other team's player turned up 33 minutes late-technically also a default.