On Saturday 28th January 2017, the UK youth team completed their EYGTC season, with a close win against France by 3 boards to 2. This concluded the European Youth Go Team Championship 2016/17. Please follow that link for names of the complete UK youth team squad.

  Post-match comments (see below for comments prior to the games): 

Well done to the UK youth go team which won their match against France today 3-2. It was a very evenly matched set of boards on paper, so it was going to be an exciting match.

Our board 3, Josh Gorman had an early resignation, after one of his corners met an untimely end.
On board 5, Alexander Hsieh's game was exciting.

Andrew Simons won the Maidenhead-Hitachi Tournament for a second year running. The long final game, shown in the first picture, against Finland's Jesse Savo (4d) suddenly ended in overtime with an "oops" from his opponent, meaning Jesse took second place ahead of Alistair Wall.

Youngsters Roella Smith (7k Cambridge) and Lueming Yang (26k Oxford), pictured right with his prize basket ball, won all their games and Steve Bailey (7k Arundel) ended with 2.5. Both they and those on two wins went away with prizes, thanks to the generous sponsorship of Hitachi, who also provided the buffet lunch.

The UK team drew with a much stronger Netherlands team which had three 6d on it. With an all 3d UK team this was a very good result, despite ending 2-2.

Charlie Hibbert wrote: Hmm, I lost to Gilles van Eeden. I've been on a bit of a losing streak as of late. As is common when older players play black against me, I get forced into a calm game. I actually felt I was doing pretty evenly (both had lots of territory, he had more but I had potential) until I over-egged a moyo trying to catch up on cash, and my opponent exploited the weakness very well. After that I was scrubbing around trying to find something for a bit, before resigning.

Des Cann wrote: I lost by 22.5 to Peter Brouwer. I was happy with the start of the game, but it was probably balanced. The game got interesting when I felt he played too many moves capturing a corner, whilst I built a strong moyo with one of his groups in the middle of it.

On Saturday 7th January 2017, the UK youth team beat a combined team from Italy, Austria and Switzerland by 4 boards to 1. This was the second of the three rounds in the European Youth Go Team Championship 2016/17. Please follow that link for names of the complete UK youth team squad.

  Post-match comments (see below for comments prior to the games): 

Although on paper it should have been an easy match for us, actually the opposing team contained some rapidly improving juniors, which showed how out of date grades can be amongst keen juniors.

Josh Gorman was first to finish on board 3 with an easy win - soon followed by Edmund Smith on board 5, and our newcomer George Han on board 4 - also with comfortable wins.

Our top two boards had a tougher time.

The 43rd London Open was held at its usual venue of ISH International Students House (ISH) in London. This year we had the kind support of Google DeepMind for the event, as well as the London clubs and BGA.

112 players took part in the Open, with others joining in the side events. There was a very strong top group with visiting and local Chinese players and some Korean players including Korean professional Hajin Lee, now known as Haylee Maas since her marriage.

The 43rd London Open has got underway at its usual venue of ISH in London. This year we have the kind support of Google DeepMind for the event, as well as the London clubs and BGA.

Over a 100 players are taking part, with rounds 1 and 2 being battled on the first day, 28th December. There is a very strong top group with some visiting Chinese players and Korean professional Hajin Lee, now known as Haylee Maas since her marriage.

Some other strong players will be providing analysis, such as our own Andrew Kay and visiting pro Catalin Taranu.

A total of 20 players gathered at St Columba’s by the Castle in Edinburgh, for the Christmas Go tournament. As expected, the winner was Stephen Hu (AGA 6d, xhu98 on Youtube) who was visiting Scotland that weekend. Second on 3 wins was Jakub Ziomko (1d Aberdeen). Three other players recorded 3 wins: Ron Bell (5k Borders), Roger Daniel (6 kyu London) and Robin McLean (11 kyu Edinburgh). Roger and Robin had both skipped the final game, so could claim 100% records.

photos from Stephen and from Boris - Check out the biscuits made by young Samuel Payne (son of Rob).

Results

The UK team beat Sweden 3-1 despite them playing a reserve on board 3 who was out of team order, which delayed the announcement of the official result.

Daniel Hu wrote: Happy to win, especially against Sweden. I made a moyo despite not liking them, but white just took too much territory. My opponent, Weiying Sorin, did a weird invasion early on and I think I punished it reasonably as it had to live quite small. Next, I protected for a huge corner, but my opponent making two one-space jumps into the centre was bigger than expected in this sort of moyo game. Still, I made good side territory, and simplified the game towards my preferred territory style. I played a somewhat doubtful double hane in the centre to solidify more side territory, but my opponent ridiculously tenukied aiming to reduce 8 points in sente in my big corner. That seemed much smaller than the centre control, and she didn’t even dare to take those 8 points. From then I was quite confident.

The UK youth team narrowly lost to Serbia yesterday 2-3. This was the first of the 3 rounds in the European Youth Go Team Championship 2016/17. Please follow that link for names of the complete UK youth team squad.

Post-match comments (see below for comments prior to the games):

As expected, Zaki and Josh - playing on the two U16 boards - cruised to easy victories, with both clearly outranking their opponents. We needed to win on one of the other three boards.

Given the strengths of the opposing team on these boards, I had picked players from our team who would have a good evenly-matched game, rather than field our U12 7 kyu against a 16 kyu, in what would be a one-sided game.

The second game of the 2016 British Go Championship best-of-three title match was played on Saturday 3rd December, at the Young Chelsea Bridge Club in West London. With Charles Hibbert one game up, Junnan Jiang had to win to stay in the match.

The game was relayed on OGS, thanks to Jonathan Green, but the start was nearly an hour later than its 11:00 advertised start. It was also video streamed. The game continued after a shorter than usual lunch break (the time limits are three hours each), and got into a very exciting fight. Despite Junnan being in overtime he kept a clear head and forced the resignation at about 17:30

This tied the match and the third game would have to be arranged.

British Championship page with game records.