A few simple rules ... limitless possibilities

Wang Ma 6d topped a field of 36 players ranging from 20 kyu to 6 dan at the Massachusetts Go Association’s annual Don Wiener Memorial Tournament on April 13 in Somerville MA. “Among the players were a visitor from Scotland, a visiting scholar from China, and contingents from Vermont, Maine, and Western Massachusetts,” reports TD Eva Casey. “An eight year old girl played as did a player in her eight decade.” Casey also extended “thanks to our friends at the Boylston Chess Club for sharing their space.”

Winners Report:
1st Place: Wang Ma 6d (4-0)
2nd Place: Shawn Ligocki 8k (4-0)
3rd Place: Steven Wu 4d (3-1)
photo (l-r): Steven Wu (back to camera), Wang Ma, John Aspinall and David Spitz; photo by Eva Casey. Click here for more photos. 

The Galway Go Club is pleased to announce the fifth Galway Go Tournament, in the Bridge Club, St Mary’s Road, Galway on the 17th and 18th of May 2014. This is a 5 round Swiss tournament with 50 min main time and 20 sec per move overtime (3 times) and 6.5 komi. Tea, coffee and biscuits provided. Registration €18 (€12 for students/unwaged).

For further details and preliminary registration, please contact Kevin Doherty at kevindoherty1984@gmail.com 

See flyer: GalwayGoTournament2014

The second American Collegiate Go Association (ACGA) Spring Go Expo drew over a hundred participants to MIT’s main campus on March 29. After a two-hour round of simuls with Chinese professionals in the morning, the event opened with speeches from Ing Minghao, president of the Ing Chang-Ki Weiqi Education Foundation, Chang Hao 9P, Hua Xueming 7P, and ACGA organizers Michael Fodera and Cole Pruitt. Current undergraduates Tommy Liu (MIT) and Cherry Shen (Wellesley) emceed the event and provided translation for the Chinese delegation throughout.

Highlights of the afternoon included an exposition match between Chang Hao 9P and strong western amateurs Trevor Morris 7d and Will Lockhart 5d, broadcast on KGS with live commentary from Andy Liu 1P and Hua Xueming 7P. The Expo also featured the premiere of ‘Ring Go’, a new go variant where players form a ring organized by rank and play two games each: one with white and one with black, against a weaker and stronger player respectively.

On the heels of the Expo, the ACGA is formalizing its structure as an organization and looking to include all university community members in its growth over the next year. For more information about how to get involved in college Go, how to participate in the Collegiate Go League, or receive go equipment for your university-based club, visit www.college-go.org for more information, or contact acga.organizers@gmail.com
- Cole Pruitt

How to Submit A Classified? “Is there someone out there who can tell me how to list an item in the E-Journal’s Go Classified section?” wonders Marc Palmer. “I’ve searched the site and it’s certainly not obvious.”
Certainly; just send your classified(s) to us at journal@usgo.org; no charge for the listing(s)!

Redmond Remembers the Game of Life: “I enjoyed the Game of Life article,” (Go Spotting: Conway’s Game of Life 4/14 EJ) writes Michael Redmond 9P. “It reminded me that my father once showed it to me. We used white stones for the newborns, and then changed them to black stones after taking away the dead stones, after which we could start a new turn. Some shapes are static, and some move around, so it is interesting to have them scattered about as they interact. One tends to run out of space on a go board, so I guess it works better on a computer.”

The Origin of Surreal Numbers? “Another interesting fact about Conway, according to his biographer in a forthcoming book,” writes British Go Association president Jon Diamond, “is that he invented the concept of ‘Surreal Numbers’ when he was watching a game of go at Cambridge University between Tony Goddard and myself in 1967 or thereabouts…”

FOR SALE: Antique go board (estimated to be 150 years old): all serious offers considered; click here for more photos; contact stagnaroangelo@hotmail.com Update: this is an updated post. 

Frank Lantz, noted game theorist, developer and teacher, will deliver the keynote address at the 2014 US Go Congress opening ceremonies on Saturday, August 9th at 7 p.m., at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City. Now the director of a graduate program in game theory and development at New York University, Lantz became known to the go community because of his lecture ‘Go, Poker and the Sublime’ at the at the 2011 Game Developers Conference (Life and Death and Middle Pair: Go, Poker and the Sublime 10/30/2012 EJ). In 2005 Lantz co-founded area/code, a New York based developer that created cross-media, location-based, and social network games. In 2011 area/code was acquired by Zynga and became Zynga New York. In 2012, The New York Times referred to Lantz as a “reigning genius of the mysteries of games” following his design of iPhone puzzle game Drop7.

“The AGA Go Camp is excited to announce that Yilun Yang 7P will be joining us for the summer of 2014,” reports Camp Director Nano Rivera. Yang became a professional at the age of 14 in 1973. He has trained many notable players, including Rui Naiwei (9P), Chang Hao (9P), and Hua Zueming (7P). He is an excellent and experienced teacher, who has been teaching in the United States since 1986. Mr. Yang is also the author of many popular Go books, such as the Fundamental Principles of Go, Life and Death by the Numbers, and Life and Death in Chinese Characters. Rivera and co-director Amanda Miller  ”welcome all campers to join us for a week of go-playing and fun.” If you’re a go player between the ages of 8 and 18 “and would like an opportunity to study go for a week with a professional teacher, then the AGA East Go Camp is for you,” says Rivera.

Anyone who participated in the NAKC or the Redmond Cup is eligible to receive $400 off the price of the Go Camp. If you did not play in either tournament, but still need financial assistance, AGF scholarships are available here.  Visit the Go Camp website for general information, pictures from past camps, and news regarding this year’s Go Camp, which is scheduled for August 3-9. If you have any questions about the camp, contact the directors at  agagocampeast@gmail.com - Paul Barchilon, E-J Youth Editor.  Photo by Amanda Miller: Yang teaching at last year’s Go Camp.

The Seattle Go Center provided 15 volunteers to teach go at Sakura-Con, Seattle’s big festival of Japanese anime, manga and games.  Working in shifts, the volunteers kept the Go Center room open for 15 hours a day on Friday and Saturday, April 18-19.  On Sunday, they ran a 13×13 tournament.  The Go Center does not have an official teaching style, but most teachers follow Bill Camp’s advice from the 2013 Go Congress Teacher’s Workshop to “never answer a question that hasn’t been asked”, trying not to swamp new players with too much information.  In the late afternoon and early evening of Saturday, the room was completely full, and the enthused teachers were explaining the game in their own words.  As I was waiting for my students to play, I heard Dan Top declare, “In a situation like this, I just try to keep my stones together.  I don’t want any of my stones going down into the basement alone.” – photo of Dan Top and report by Brian Allen.

“We just finished our ‘Learn to Play Go’ presentation at Sedgwick Elementary School, in Cupertino, CA, reports Wenguang Wang.  ”Yanping Zao and I presented go to four classes of third-graders in four 30-minute sessions (over 90 kids total).  Since we have done this every year for Sedgewick’s Annual Discovery Day, most of the kids in third grade or higher have been exposed to go.  During the event, we talked about some fun facts of go, taught them the rules, and everybody played a few 9×9 games.  Most kids loved the game and many were interested to visit our Santa Clara Youth Go Club to have more fun playing go,” adds Wang. -Paul Barchilon, E-J Youth Editor.  Photo by Yanping Zhao: Wang teaching students at Sedgwick Elementary.

April 26: Middlebury, VT
Vermont Spring Go Tournament
Peter Schumer schumer@middlebury.edu 802-388-3934

April 26: Minneapolis, MN
TCGO Spring 2014 AGA Rated Games Day
Aaron Broege 612-384-8789

April 26-27: Portland, OR
Ming Jiu Weekend Workshop
Peter Freedman peter.freedman@comcast.net 503-242-4203

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Twenty-six players participated in Syracuse’s 7th Annual Salt City Go Tournament this past Saturday, with Jason Bates 2d (front left) winning the A division by tie-break ahead of Tim Aylsworth and Wayne Nelson; all three had identical 3-1 records and received cash prizes. Yan-Yeung Luk won all four of his games to clinch the B division, beating out Meg Houston and Ava Zurita, while Cross Bianchi swept his games in the C division, finishing one win ahead of Ryan Iffert and Kelvin Cheng. Theo Eckert-Budis 14k was the winner of the annual cake problem prize. Five C division players are first-year students in the weiqi class taught at the CNY Chinese School — the youngest of these was 8-year-old Liya Luk 16k, who finished with a 2-2 record. The oldest tournament participant was again 96-year-old Milton Sack 15k, who won both of the games he played. “Special thanks to Slate and Shell for greatly discounting its new books for use as prizes at the tournament,” says Syracuse Go Club organizer Richard Moseson. At right: this year’s problem cake: black to move. 

You Know, Like Grover Cleveland*: The fun of last week’s quiz is that there are more Honinbo heads than people. Quiz vet Reinhold Burger explains: “Thanks for this; I learned something. I knew that Shuei had stepped aside for Shuho, resuming the leadership after Shuho’s death. But I had not realized that Shugen had done the same for Shuei. So you have the symmetrical-looking sequence: Shugen, Shuei, Shuho, Shuei, Shugen. Interesting :)” Peter Schumer also cautioned that, while as heir Shusaku is often referred to as Honinbo, he died before he took over the house. So the seven of you who chose 19 different heads, as opposed to the total of 21 were correct. As for the anonymous person who chose 57, that was, of course, the number of “known Communists in the US State Department” according to a classic film. Congrats to Peter Schumer of Middlebury, VT, our randomly selected winner from among those submitting the correct answer.

This Week’s Quiz: The AGA will be qualifying one more new professional this year. This weekend one player will qualify for the AGA Pro Qualifier (to be held later this year) at the first Washington Open Baduk Championship (click here to register) and another next month at the 41st Maryland Open (click here to register). Pictured is your quizmaster congratulating Andy Liu for winning a spot in the first qualifier in 2012, which he went on to win. So our question this week is how many “Western” pros will our new pro be joining? To qualify, in addition to the AGA’s three pros, they must be (or have been) a pro born outside of the traditional Asian go nations, and certified as a pro by a national organization. Is the answer 12, 13, 14 or 15 Western professionals? Click here to submit your answer, and put your list of pros in the comments (in case we missed someone) and feel free to include your response to my bonus quiz “57 communists” movie reference.
photo by Gurujeet Khalsa

* Cleveland served as 22nd and 24th President of the United States, the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms (1885–1889 and 1893–1897).

Next weekend’s Washington Open Baduk Championship has been selected as a qualifier for this year’s AGA Pro Qualification Tournament; top boards will be broadcast on KGS by the EJ (email journal@usgo.org if you’re interested in being on the broadcasting team). The two-day event in Northern Virginia includes pro lectures and an unrated rapid tournament. The first Washington Open Baduk Championship will be held in Vienna, VA on April 26-27, with a top prize of at least $1,200 and cash prizes for every section. Myungwan Kim 9P (right) and Sohyun Park 3P will give lectures for both dan and kyu players on Saturday night, followed by a rapid tournament, and the professionals will do game reviews and simuls on Sunday afternoon. The tournament will be held at the Korea-U.S. Science Cooperation Center (1952 Gallows Road, Suite 330) in Vienna, VA and is sponsored by the Embassy of the Republic of Korea, the Korean Cultural Center – DC, and Scorpion Sport Inc. in L.A. It is co-hosted by the Korean Amateur Baduk Association (KABA) and the American Go Association (AGA), and organized by the NOVA Go Club, the Baltimore Go Club, and the Korean-American Go Association. There’s no entry fee but AGA membership is required and lunch is free. Click here to register. NOTE TO VISITORS: Organizers have negotiated a discounted rate with Extended Stay America (8281 Willow Oaks Corporate Drive, Fairfax VA 22031), 4.5 miles from the playing site; call 703-204-0088 and ask for the NOVA Go Club rate, or email MRD@extendedstay.com.
- photo by Chris Garlock 

 

Amir Fragman defeated Israeli champion Ali Jabarin 6d at the Israeli Korean Prime Minister Cup (KPMC) Qualifier tournament, held 16-17 April 2014 during Olamot (Worlds) festival in Tel Aviv.

Top players in Israel attended the 6-round tournament, where fourteen contestants challenged for the right to represent Israel at the upcoming Korean Prime Minister Cup in October 2014.

The tournament was decided in the 5th round, when Fragman defeated Jabarin 6d by resignation to win first place, with Jabarin in second, while third place was shared by Tal Michaeli and Ofer Zivony.

More details and photos here.

- Reported by Shavit Fragman

SmartGo Books now lets you add your own notes in books, reports SmartGo’s Anders Kierulf, who’s now in Paris for the 42nd International Paris Go Tournament which runs through April 21.

“Four new books and several translations have been added to SmartGo Books,” Kierulf adds. The new offerings include two from John Fairbairn: “Wonders of Life & Death: Honinbo Shusai’s tsumego classic Shikatsu Myoki” and “Today We Have a Splendid Feast: The Meijin Inseki’s Yoshin Teiki,” while “Fight Like a Pro – The Secrets of Kiai”, a much-requested book by Rob van Zeijst and Richard Bozulich, is also now available.

Gunnar Dickfeld has added Volume 3 of “Black to Play! Train the Basics of Go (20-15 Kyu)”, in English and German, and volumes 1 and 2 are available in English, German, Spanish, and French, while “The Basics of Go Strategy” is now available is Spanish as well as German.

Click here for details on all the SmartGo Books books now available.

After a convincing performance against lower seeds Yale and U Maryland last Saturday, the two top seeds of the Collegiate Go League, University of Michigan and University of Toronto, are vying for the championship title this Saturday, April 19 at 1 pm (EST) on KGS. Top boards will have live professional commentary and will be announced throughout KGS; head to the ‘Collegiate Go League’ room to catch the action and see who will be crowned ACGA university champion for season 3 and receive the coveted cash prize and ACGA Cup. Commentary will begin around 1:30 pm after matches commence.
- Cole Pruitt

The first stage of the Irish Championship came to a close last night. Defending champion Noel Mitchell beat Roman Pszonka in the last game of the Top 8 league. It was not enough however, to grant him a place in the final. Roman and James Hutchinson will compete for the Irish title in a repeat of the 2012 match, whilst Noel takes 3rd spot. Tiberiu Gociu and Thomas Shanahan have a tiebreak match to play to see who takes 4th place.

Young Mexican go players are visiting Cuba this week in a historic first exchange between the two countries. Next month the Cuban go community will host a group of go players from Japan, the seventh such visit. The first Cuba – Mexico School Go Exchange, which includes individual and team competitions, is taking place at the Cuban Go Academy from April 14-18. The Mexican children are a part of an educational go project at the “Center of Educational and Artistic Investigations’, a primary school begun in 2008. The Go project is led by Siddhartha Avila, who has brought Mexican groups to the last two US Go Congresses.  The Cuban children attend a local primary school in Havana and are also pupils in the Cuban Go Academy where they study twice a week.

The visit by the Japanese delegation of adult go players (set for May 14-22) will celebrate 400 years of relations between Cuba and Japan. The Samurai Hasekura Tsunenaga visited Havana in 1614.  The May event will take place both in the province of Santiago de Cuba and in Havana, and the Japanese teachers will bring a donation of go equipment to the Go School in Santiago de Cuba to support the community in light of the recent hurricane damage.

The eighth annual Orlando Go Tournament was held April 12-13 in Orlando, FL. Brian Olive 1d topped the dan division, while Bart Lipofsky 6k topped the upper kyu division, Ellis Knickerbocker 8k the middle kyu and Tia Duncan 12k the lower kyu. Thirty-four players participated in a five-round event, with strengths ranging from 21 kyu to 5 dan.

Winner’s Report:
Dan (1D and up): 1st: Brian Olive (1D); 2nd: Josh Lee (5D); 3rd: Jonathan Fisher (3D).
Upper Kyu (7K through 1K): 1st: Bart Lipofsky (6K); 2nd: Steve Barberi (1K); 3rd: Tony Vick (6K).
Middle Kyu (10K through 8K): 1st: Ellis Knickerbocker (8K); 2nd: Asahel Salgado (9K); 3rd:Aaron Otero (10K).
Lower Kyu (11K and down): 1st: Tia Duncan (12K); 2nd: Heather Crawford (15K); 3rd: Joel Mora (12K).

- photo: Christopher Sagner, Josh Lee, Fuqian Shi (left, front-to-back) and Jonathan Fisher, Yoshio Tanaka, Brian Olive (right, front-to-back); report/photo by Paul Wiegand

April 19: Syracuse, NY
7th Annual Salt City Tournament
Richard Moseson syracusegoclub@gmail.com 315-682-7720

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