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The 3rd "Quzhou Lanke Cup" International Children Friendly Weiqi Championship, held in Quzhou, China, on October 22-26, 2025, has started. Damir Medak, Team leader of the Croatian team, shares with us updates from the event.
There are two important additions compared to previous youth tournaments:
1) The number of youth teams is now 20 with a nice distribution across 5 continents.
2) There is a professional individual tournament with 14 players from China (8 pros), Japan (2 pros), Korea (2 pros) and Chinese Taipei (2 pros).
All teams arrived smoothly. Europe is represented by 4 teams:
1) EGF International:
Vsevolod Ovsiienko, 6d, Ukraine
Yuze Xing, 6d, Germany
Bende Barcza, 5d, Hungary
2) Croatia:
Stjepan Medak, 5d
Roko Crvelin, 3d
Karlo Vlahovic, 2d
3) UK International:
Dragos Boldeanu, 4d, Romania
Ryan Zhang, 3d, UK
Lukasz Kudla, 5k, Uk
4) Czechia:
Bartik Dach, 4d
Jan Komin, 4d
Matous Babka, 4k
Two more European players are playing for "Quzhou International Team":
Lilly Hu, 1d, Austria
Cherry Hu, 3k, Austria
It should be noted that Croatia and U.K. qualified through the 2nd Pandanet Youth Go European Team Championship (two top teams in the League A who did not participate in the previous world team event).
Since the organizers decided to invite four teams from Europe, the EGF Board decided to invite Czechia as the winner of the league B and to form a special EGF team, composed of top players who played the qualification tournament during EGC in Warsaw. Four players from countries which were not represented qualified: Vsevolod, Yuze and Bende are playing for the EGF team, whereas Dragos filled an empty spot in the U.K. team.
Since this event is becoming regular, we believe it is going to be an excellent motivation for European national youth teams to compete in the Pandanet leagues, preserving the option for top players from national teams which are not qualified to enter the EGF team(s).
The youth team tournament is played as a 7 rounds Swiss system:
October 23th
- Round 1
- Round 2: 8:30am (2:30pm local time)
October 24th
- Round 3: 3am (9am local time)
- Round 4: 7am (1pm local time)
- Round 5: 10am (4pm local time)
October 26th
- Round 6: 2am (9am local time)
- Round 7: 7am (2pm local time)
On Saturday, October 25, all participants will have a trip through Quzhou with an exciting social event (a sharing session) in the afternoon. The time settings for all games is 60 minutes basic time with 3 times 30 seconds byoyomi.
The professional tournament round 1:
1) Tian Mumu, China - Lin Zijie, China
2) Jo Sang Yeon, Korea - Zhou Ziyi, China
3) Duan Boyao, China - Wu Yen-Chen, Chinese Taipei
4) Ki Min Chan, Korea - Ma Jingyuan, China
5) Asahi Yujun, Japan - Yin Chengzhi, China
6) Han Moyang, China - Qiu Yuran, China
7) Li Chia-Hsing, Chinese Taipei - Yanagihara Saki, Japan
More information and rounds results/pairings/photos can be found in Chinese here (yike)
Final standings!!! Europe got a 3rd place!!
Rounds Highlights
(click on the round to toggle - you will find pairings and sgf when available)Round 1 🔽
Round 6 (with sgf for EGF int. vs Korea) 🔽
Updates
Day 2 (games)
Day 3 (social day)
Day 4 (final games)
Day 1 Photos
Day 2 Highlights & Photos
The third round started at 9:00 local time.
The fourth round will is played at 13:00 local time (breakfast in Europe)
The fifth round is played at 16:00.
The highlights of the Youth Team Championships include the match between China and Japan (all games broadcast on yikeweiqi server) and the match between the EGF team and Croatia. Czechia is playing Thailand. The UK team led by Dragos Boldeanu from Romania is facing the U.S. team.
For round 5, the two top teams are playing each-other in an important match for the top spot: Korea and China (all games on yikeweiqi server).
At the end of the day, only one team will have 5 wins, with 2 more rounds to go after the free day
Day 3 Highlights and photos
Rounds 3, 4 and 5 were played on the same day: at 9:00, 13:00 and 16:00 respectively. It certainly affected some players, especially those having to accommodate for a large time difference. South Korea continued its winning streak, struggling a bit on the 1st board, losing games against Croatia, Japan and China, but the perfect performance of 2nd and 3rd board brought all wins so far.
In the EGF team, no one would forecast that Vsevolod will have only one 1 win in 5 games, but the extraordinary performances of Yuze (5 wins) and Bende (4 wins) secured the top spot in the round 6: the match with Korea will be broadcast live (see Round 6 in the rounds and results section for the games records).
All other European teams are on two wins (4 match points) with very interesting pairings in round 6. Any team having 4 match wins (8 match points) should finish among top 10 and get a monetary prize. 1st place: 30.000 RMB, 2nd place 20.000 RMB, 3rd place 10.000 RMB, 4th-6th: 5.000 each, 7th-10th: 2.000 each. (1000 RMB = 120 EUR).
All activities are going smoothly with each national team having a dedicated volunteer, always ready to help and provide necessary information about results, pairings and our next moves. The accommodation and playing conditions are perfect as well. Players are passing airport-style security screening after leaving all electronics in numbered compartments. Rounds are starting exactly in time after the main referee is repeating the basic rules. Team leaders and guests are allowed to take photographs for the first 20 minutes. Players are not allowed to leave the table while being on the move. Final positions are scored by referees using mobile applications. After finishing their games, players leave the playing hall.
The Child Friendly Exchange Event
The schedule of the free day was full of interesting activities. All players and team leaders got a 30 pages booklet with lists of passengers for each bus and timing of each place we were visiting before lunch: the Quzhou Ancient City Cultural Experience Hall, the Temple of Southern Confucianism, the Ancient City Streets. Each place was unique and enriching for all participants.
The afternoon "Sharing Session of Chinese and Foreign Children" officially named "Our Strength" was held in the Mount Lake World Weiqi Culture Exhibition Hall. The place itself is a huge new project promoting the "Walley of Weiqi in China". After a short performance of classical Chinese musical artists, the rest of the session was a composition of speeches and performances of 22 go players around the world. The preparation started several weeks before coming to Quzhou, and final coordination took 3 hours in the evening before the session.
Europe has been represented by Jan Komin and Stjepan Medak, who fluently entertained the audience with automatic translation of their words into Chinese and English letters on huge screens.
The exhibition hall has many Go artefacts, storyline of development of Go in China under various dynasties, stressing the Rotten Axe legend. All explanatory texts are available in Chinese and in English. The exhibits are frequently augmented with multimedia bringing a lot of life into ancient works of art. The recent developments in Quzhou itself are well described, showing large advances achieved.
Day 4 highlights and photos
After an exciting free day, the tournaments continued. We focus on the World Youth Teams Championships, although the professional tournament is certainly very exciting.
Round 6 results
Unfortunately, Korean players won all games against the EGF team. Luckily, we were able to download all games of the match broadcast on yikeweiqi.com. The SGF files are available for a review to all readers in the results section (see upper).
Dragos Boldeanu and Ryan Zhang won their games against very young but very strong children from the Quzhou team, bringing two match points for the UK International team: in total six match points in six rounds.
As expected, Croatia won against New Zealand, coming back to 50% as well.
Unfortunately, Czechia lost to Hong Kong, probably getting the chance to "come-back" in the last round.
Round 7 pairings
It is already clear that Republic of Korea is winning the tournament, even if they lose the last match to Chinese Taipei. The only team trailing by two match points is China, playing the match with Thailand, broadcast on yikeweiqi.com.
The EGF team is playing the most important match with Singapore. Winning will be very sweet: if Korea and China win as well, it would elevate the EGF team to a miraculous 3rd place!
Both Croatia and the UK International team have tough opponents (Hong Kong and Malaysia respectively) - winning the match would have brought the placement in top 10 with a nice prize. Finally, Czechia is a favourite against Australia.
Whatever happens in the last round, the Quzhou Invitational Child-Friendly Competition grew to a full-fledged World Youth Team Championships, motivating youth around the globe to get excellent in Go and qualify for next editions.
