Junior Tournament Report

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.

The 2018 British Youth Go Championship (BYGC) featured 57 competitors, aged from 5 to 18. This is believed to be the second largest such event (the largest was in 2005 with 74). There were two minibuses from Cheadle Hulme School and groups from two new clubs, Rednock School (Dursley) and Sheffield Chinese School. The event would have been bigger but the Edinburgh team had to withdraw through illness and there were no locals from the host, King Edward VI (Aston) School.

Final day (day 3) of Kiev Tournament (continued from part 3).

Whilst today may have been only marginally positive, with 10.5 wins to 9.5 losses, we are delighted to finish up, by 26 wins to 23 defeats - a good improvement on last year's EYGC in Grenoble. Considering the still very young squad, we can be very happy, as the bulk of the team will be young enough to play in their current age groups for quite some years yet. All our players won at least two games out of six. This includes our joint-youngest player Edmund who, despite a confidence-draining start of four losses, showed strength of character to win both his final rounds.

Day 2 (of 3) of Kiev Tournament (continued from part 2)

In the morning, we played Round 3 of six. The spoils went to our five U20 (under age 20) players, as four won, and the loser was playing against one of our own!

Day 1 (of 3) of Kiev Tournament (continued from part 1)

The remaining three squad members and their three mothers arrived safely on Wednesday afternoon, on the eve of the main tournament. We all went to a pizza restaurant, for some squad players to get to know newcomers.

On Thursday 29th, the tournament kicked off with an elaborate opening ceremony. This featured firstly a long and colourful Chinese dragon, then a superb circus troupe of youngsters. There were gymnasts, trapeze artists and girls climbing up silk ropes, acrobatically spinning back down, all very well rehearsed. The local Go pro Artem did some translation into English of words from various Ukrainian dignitaries who wished all players good luck and enjoyable games.

Then came the first of the day's two rounds of games.

The first part of the UK Youth Go team - kindly sponsored by DeepMind - has arrived in Kiev, Ukraine for the 225-strong annual European Youth Go Congress; the remaining members joining us on Wednesday. Everyone is looking forward to the main event: two games per day on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

The team has been getting used to mounds of snow (it's still freezing overnight), signs mostly in Cyrillic, plus Ukrainian and Russian words.

On Monday Natasha, a Kiev resident and part-organiser of the tournament, took us on a tour of the wonderful, quaint and deep metro; we climbed the bell tower at St.

The 2017 British Youth Go Championship (BYGC) returned to King Edward VI School in Aston, Birmingham, thanks to Andrew Russell and the support of the headmaster there. It attracted a big crowd of young players, in fact 46 competitors, aged from 7 to 18.

Thanks to a large number of oriental players currently living in the UK, there were several dan-graded players, most of whom not being British played in an Open group for cash prizes. Also thanks to a new club at Harpenden Academy (who are shown celebrating their win as best primary school) and a good crop of new players from Edinburgh, Cheadle Hulme and Letchworth there was a large group between 30 and 40 kyu in strength. Some of the games they played were on 13x13.

This year the BGA decided to hold the British Youth Go Championship at the exciting location of The National Space Centre in Leicester. Previously used as the venue of the East Midlands Tournament, the conference rooms made a very comfortable venue for the 43 young players, aged from 5 to 17, grades 2d to 37k, and their adult helpers. There was a long lunch break so there was a chance to view the exhibition, however the promised free tickets did not materialise.

The players battled over five rounds to decide the winners in each age category and in the team competitions, as well as the overall winner. This was all kept together by tournament director Tony Atkins using the Smudgy draw system (invented by Simon Goss).

With the oldest players of recent years moved on to University the way was open for the new generation to take over at the British Youth Go Championships in Aston, Birmingham. Everybody expected Oscar Selby to triumph, at 6k being 3 grades above the rest of the field, but he made a mistake in a fight to lose by less than 10 points to Leamington Go Club's Dylan Zhu-Dong. Dylan beat the other top players too and ended up collecting the Under-14 and Youth Champion titles. Oscar won the Under-12 and was runner up in the overall championship. Runners up in those age groups were Hasan Nisar from Aston and Kelda Smith from Cambridge. Melchior Chui from Cambridge won again in the Under-16 section, with Thomas Meehan from Solihull the runner up.