UK Youth Team Wins Final Against Germany

The UK youth team has won the European Youth Team Competition 2025 having won all four preliminary rounds, their semi-final against Romania and this weekend the final against Germany.

In the final, the teams were fairly evenly matched with the UK having a very slight edge on paper. Ryan played first on board 1, losing to the German 6 dan. Sung Hee Lim took a good win on board 4 against an opponent one grade weaker on paper. With the UK expected to win on board 5 where Lukasz outgraded his opponent (which he duly did), this left the UK needing to win one of two evenly matched boards. Alvina played well to take a win on board 2, whilst Daniel lost an exciting game on board 3 with groups on both sides dying, leaving the UK the victors 3-2.

This was the UK youth teams first major win in this competition since it started and shows the strength in depth we have in the team. Compared with other countries we have strong female players and strong U12 players.

Of our squad of 14 players for this competition all but three were able to play at least one game. Those three, Michael, Andrew and Yanyi, did play games in the European Youth Team Championship running parallel to this one.

Alvina was UK player of the event - always willing to turn out for the team, playing 5 of the 6 games and winning 3 of them. Special mention also to Sung Hee who was new to the team this year and who won all three of the games he played, to Daniel, who has been a team member for many years and this year saw three good wins out of four, and to Blake Shamoon who won three of his four games in the U12 age group.

Our full team was: Ryan Zhang, Belinda Chen, Alvina Kwok, Daniel Yang, Lea Wong, Michael Mitcham-Harding, Sung Hee Lim Jun, Yanyi Xiong, Aidan Fung, Andrew Volovich, Audrey Fung, Lukasz Kudla, Blake Shamoon, Adam Siqi Chen.

I'd like to thank Paul Smith from the UK together with the other European organisers for organising another great European youth competition. Alison Bexfield, UK youth team manager