Junior Tournament Report

The UK youth Go teams in two different European leagues co-incidentally both played Germany last week.

Congratulations to Ryan Zhang (3d) who was Under-12 champion and became British Youth Go Champion for the first time. However he was not the best of the 37 players as Chenhe Yuan (5d), just arrived in the UK, won all six games to take the Open title.

The UK youth squad won their third round match 3-2 against Romania yesterday in the European Youth Go team Competition. With one round to go this leaves the UK in third place.

The UK youth team narrowly lost to France by two boards to three in the second round of the European Youth Team Competition. Our U12 boards, Ryan Zhang and Yanyi Xiong, both picked up wins. Ryan's game was particularly exciting culminating in a half-point win, with Yanyi again performing strongly against a higher-rated player to gain a 7.5-point win. Our two U16 boards, Alvina Kwok and Daniel Yang, fought hard but were not able to defeat their slightly stronger opponents. On the top board Scott Cobbold had an exciting game against Linh Vu Tu, a 4 dan, but ultimately had to resign.

Congratulations to Alvina Kwok (2d) who is our new Under-16 and British Youth Go Champion. Shown left, she is the first girl to win the event since Maria Tabor in 2008. Alvina, who is originally from Hong Kong, was the best of the 38 players and defeated Scott Cobbold (4d) and Ryan Zhang (2d) on her way to the trophy.

Our UK youth Go squad has played the first round of the European Youth Go Team Competition and won 5-0 against Turkey. The round was meant to be played on Saturday 11th November, but as this clashed with the UK youth championship Turkey kindly agreed to play the games early.

Held at Furze Platt School, Maidenhead. Sponsored by Equity and Law PLC.

Game wins in brackets.

The UK youth team played their final round match today in the European Youth Go Team Championship. The UK EYGTC team was drawn against Czechia and we knew that if we could win the match, and France could win against Romania, then we should finish in the medals. The same was true for our opponents. Both team managers tried to ensure we had a full team for the official match time so that it would be an exciting match.