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.

The Facebook AI Research group have submitted this paper for publication at ICLR 2016 (a conference in Puerto Rico in May). So the rumours of their developing a Go-playing program are correct!

As they say - it's not up to the best commercial programs yet, but it's probably around 4 Dan ...

Better Computer Go Player with Neural Network and Long-term Prediction.

Play it on KGS - darkforest and darkfores1.

Local club player Ruizhu Wu (5d) won the Coventry Tournament at Warwick University. He beat Guoqiang Sun (5d Warwick Uni) into second place by winning their game in the final round. Former club organiser Bruno Poltronieri (4d Cambridge) took third place. Andre Cockburn (6k Nottingham) won all three games, as did Simon Andre (8k Leicester). Edmund Smith (8k Cambridge) took the junior prize.

Despite a late start thanks to the car delivering sets getting stuck in traffic on what was a rather windy day, the 38 players were able to leave by 19:00 even if they stayed for the prize-giving.

Results

The UK Junior team is currently lying in 9th place of the 12 teams in the European Youth Go Online Team Championship with two rounds to go. They lost 2 board to 3 against Czechi on 28th November. Edmund Smith and Aidan Wong won their games in the U12 section, where as Laurence Turner (U20), Alex Terry and Dylan Zhu Dong (U16) lost theirs.

The UK will be playing the combined team of Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia in round 3 which is scheduled for Saturday 12 December. This is likely to be a close match with our strength in depth on the U12 boards countered by their U20 strength so the two U16 boards are likely to be critical.

The Bexfield family managed to have the winner in each of the two sections at the South London Tournament. Alison (1d) won the four-player teachers' section and Charlotte (10k) won the 16-player handicap section. Both wins were awarded by the lowest grade tie-break, Alison from Alex Rix and Tim Hunt, and Charlotte from Paolo Capriotti (5k Nottingham). The lowest graded players on two wins, who also won prizes, were David Siegwart, Ben Murphy, Francesco Chiarini, and Ryan Nguyen.

Results

In the morning before the tournament the 16 students were taught by four teachers - Nick Krempel, Alex Rix, Tim Hunt and Alison Bexfield. Nick was replaced by the strongest student, Bruce Tinton, for the tournament.

The 2015 British Youth Go Championships (BYGC) featured 34 competitors, aged from 6 to 17 (including two foreign players currently resident in the UK), with strengths from 2 dan to 35 kyu.
King Edward VI (Aston) School, Birmingham, was again the venue, thanks to Andrew Russell.
All games were played on full-sized (19 by 19) boards.

To determine the overall winner, Oscar Selby had to play and beat Alex Terry in a rapid play-off game.

Section Winners (Runners Up)

Youth Champion: Oscar Selby (Alex Terry)
U18: Alex Benton (Kapriel Chiarini)
U16: Alex Terry (Hasan Nisar)
U14: Oscar Selby (Jack Nolan)
U12: Edmund Smith (Aidan Wong)
U10: Alexander Hsieh
U8: Jianzhou Mei (Andreas Ghica)

An interesting article from <re/code> by Mark Bergen:

"Go Is the Game Machines Can’t Beat. Google’s Artificial Intelligence Whiz Hints That His Will."

"When the world’s smartest researchers train computers to become smarter, they like to use games. Go, the two-player board game born in China more than two millennia ago, remains the nut that machines still can’t crack.

Enter Google’s nerds. Demis Hassabis, the artificial intelligence savant behind Google DeepMind, hinted in a video interview that his secretive team has cracked Go."

Read the whole article here: http://recode.net/2015/11/20/go-is-the-game-machines-cant-beat-googles-artificial-intelligence-whiz-hints-that-his-will/

The UK Youth Go team played Poland in the first round of the four round European Youth Online Team Championship and won 3-2. Lawrence had a tough game on board 1 against a strong dan player on the U18 board. However our strength in the U16s paid off with both Oscar and Alex winning their U16 boards. Both U12 boards were evenly matched in paper. Aidan had a close defeat but Alexander gained an easy win to clinch the match. The team will be playing Czechia next on 28 November.

The Three Peaks went very well at its current location of the Commodore in Grange-over-Sands, though it was a very wet and windy weekend. 32 players took part.

As organiser Bob Bagot is moving away from the town, next year will either have a new organiser or a new venue. Any volunteers contact Bob.

Jitka Bartova (2d Leamington) won the tournament with five wins out of five. Richard Hunter (2d Bristol) came second with four wins. Other prizes to Eggert Fruchtenicht (10k) for 5/5, Dave Horan (7k Chester) for 4/5 and Anthony Pitchford (10k Chester) for 3/4.

Roger Daniel gallantly declined the wine or chocolates offered to him for being the first to enter.

Results

Ngoc-Trang Cao (3d), the strong French player from Leamington Club, won the 2015 Wessex. She beat Jim Clare, Sandy Taylor and Richard Hunter to take the title. The only other player of the 34 entrants to win all three games was Roella Smith (9k) from Cambridge Juniors.

As before the venue was St Mark's Community Centre in Bath and the day was very sunny with a chance to explore the city centre or watch the marathon runners at lunch time.

Results