Alison Bexfield writes:

In the European Youth Go Team Championship, our UK youth team won 5-0 against Turkey.

Having narrowly lost to Romania in round 2 we were facing a relatively inexperienced team from Turkey. This gave us the chance to offer a game to those members in the squad who had not played in the first two rounds.

Even though on paper we comfortably outranked our opponents on every board, the lack of over the board rated games during lockdown means that the stated grades do not always reflect reality for rapidly improving young players and so we could not be complacent.

However, our team of Jayden Ng (Under 20), Edmund Smith (Under 16), Lea Wong (Under 16 - actually under 12, but was playing up), Yanyi Xiong and Alexander Timperi (both Under 12) all played solidly to deliver a 5-0 win for the UK.

There is one round remaining in the tournament.

In the third round of the B-League for 2020-2021 the UK played and beat Switzerland. There was a big gap in time between Jon Diamond's win and that of Daniel Hu, with that last game lasting not much short of three hours when the opponent's cuckoo clock reminded him it was bed time and he resigned. This kept the UK team in top position, with Italy beating Finland to move up to second place, a point behind UK.

League Page with game records

Daniel Hu wrote: I won by resignation against John Walch. This was the last game to finish, with plenty of tiring calculations.

My opponent made a mistake in the upper left 3-3 invasion fight, losing 2 cutting stones early on after which the game was easier for me. He set up several weak groups over the board which all managed to live (though I kept wondering if the upper right was a ko, but didn't try it as I felt I was ahead). There were many kos into the endgame.

The 2020 British Youth Go Championship (BYGC) featured 36 competitors, aged from 7 to 17. It was held over six rounds in the BGA Youth Group on OGS. The youth champions title stayed at Cheadle Hulme School, as did the Castledine Trophy for the best team, when Sam Barnett won all six games to take the title. Edinburgh's James Gillespie's Primary School was the top junior school. Section winners (runners-up) and other notable results are shown below. Results

U18: Jayden Ng (Yuji Chen)
U16: Scott Cobbold (Edmund Smith)
U14: Sam Barnett (Oliver Bardsley)
U12: Daniel Yang (Isabella Qiu)
U10: Alexander Timperi (Andrew Volovich)
U8: Ryan Zhang (Lukasz Kudla)

Youth Champion: Sam Barnett (Ryan Zhang, Jayden Ng/Scott Cobbold)
Top Open Section Player: Yuji Chen (Isabella Qiu).

Winners of five games: Rohan Neelala, Julia Volovich, Odysseas Jones-Roumeliotis, Caleb Monk.

Alison writes: I am playing in the World Amateur Women's Go Championship. There are 33 players from 33 countries taking part. The top seeds from China, Japan, Korea and Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) do not need to play preliminary rounds. All other countries have been put in four geographical groups to play knock out preliminary rounds. I am in the European group and there are four places available in the preliminary rounds from 15 countries.

The tournament is played with fast time limits (even for me). It comprise no basic time but byoyomi of ten lots of 30 seconds. So not much scope for lengthy thinking on any single move.

It is also being played on the wbaduk server. It was a good thing I did some practice on this in advance of the match. It is actually quite nice to play on, but working out how to join it in the first place and then how to set a game with the right settings was quite difficult.

My first opponent was Viktoriia Symonenko from the Ukraine.

In the second match of the new season in the B-League, the UK played and beat Sweden by three games to one. It was a long evening for the spectators as the top board was scheduled one hour after the others and that game lasted three hours.

Previous league leaders Germany lost four-nil to Italy (including two no-shows) and so the UK moved up to first place, the only team to win both matches so far.

League Page with game records

Daniel Hu wrote: I had a toughish game against Charlie Åkerblom, spending too much time thinking in the opening and not with a great result. I tried playing a bit more solidly with my shape. My opponent made a largish moyo but I got out with weak group one into the centre in sente and invaded with a ladder breaker. My opponent capped, letting me pull out the ladder stone and attack the weaknesses on both sides.

The Autumn 2020 edition of the BGJ is now available for members to read.

The UK youth team has played its first match in the European Youth Go Team Championship. We were drawn against the relatively strong French team so we knew we needed to field our strongest team.

Unfortunately Ryan was not able to play in the U12 section, but Lea Wong stepped up making her debut appearance for the team. On paper we were in with a chance although it looked likely to depend on some very even games, but with grades potentially being out of date due to lockdown it was going to be tough.

Lea played first on board 5 and did well to secure a win by 2.5 points. Jacob stepped up next on board 1 playing a French 3 dan. I watched his game and it was a masterclass in how to convert a big central area into territory to take a comfortable win. So we were 2-0 up, needing one more win, but we expected to be slightly outgraded on the last three boards.

George and Daniel finished their games next, each losing.

The London Go Centre continues to add teaching videos to its extensive collection on their YouTube channel.

Latest uploads include reviews by Daniel Hu of the games in the Adult-Youth match and the first of a series by professional Mateusz Surma: Fuseki Insights.

I am pleased to announce our UK Youth Go Team for this year's European Youth Go Team Championship is as follows:

U20 players
Jacob Zhang 3dan
Jayden Yui-Him Ng 1 dan

U16 players
Sam Barnett 2k
Edmund Smith 3k
Scott Cobbold 3k

U12 players
Daniel Chun Yang 1d
Ryan Zhang 2k
George Han 3k
Lea Wong 5k
Yanyi Xiong 9k
Alexander Timperi 10k

This youth team tournament is played over four rounds with five boards in each match of which one must be U20, two U16 and two U12. Despite losing two of our strongest players from last year (Yueran Wang and Bill Shen) to the pressures of sixth form exams, this is still our strongest team yet. The grade boundaries for the U16 and U12 selection have both moved up.

The UK youth team celebrated Halloween by playing their first round match in the CCTV World Youth Amateur On-line Weiqi Tournament. Held on the Chinese server called Yike and sponsored by Chinese TV, this new event has 22 teams from around the world taking part on weekends between now and the end of the year.

Our first match was against Colombia and was won two games to one. Jayden Ng lost a close game to Juan David Ramirez Jimenez, Scott Cobbold beat Alan Yeray Cortes Sarmiento by resignation and Caleb Monk beat Alen Vasquez Quiroga by 64.5.

In the individual junior section, Ryan Zhang did well, narrowly beating Yuki Kouchi of Japan.
26 players are taking part.