Seowoo Wang 5d (left) moments before playing against the eventual champion of the 2024 World Amateur SENKO Cup, Quynh Anh Ha 6d (right) from Vietnam
Seowoo Wang 5 dan will be representing the United States at the
2025 World Amateur SENKO Cup in Tokyo, Japan on March 14, 2025. This will be her second consecutive year competing in the World Amateur SENKO Cup after winning the North American qualifier. This will be the fifth edition of this tournament, which consists of a single-elimination bracket between eight top female amateur players from North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, and Australia. The games will all be played on the same day with NHK Cup style time settings of 30 seconds per move plus 10 additional periods of 1 minute. Last year, Wang reached the semifinals having defeated Qing Yong from Malaysia in the first round, but lost to the eventual champion Quynh Anh Ha from Vietnam. "I'm grateful for the opportunity to represent the US again at this tournament, and I'll do my best to play well and hopefully run deeper into the tournament than I did last year. I'm looking forward to meeting and making friends with the other players I'll meet," Wang told the E-Journal. The competition will be tough with the 2023 champion, Amy Song 5d from Australia, returning to compete again this year.
Wang recently graduated from the University of California, Berkeley as a Biology major, and is currently working as a medical assistant at a pediatrics and internal medicine clinic. She is planning on pursuing PA school in the future. Wang learned Go from a young age in China and Korea before moving to the United States when she was 13 years old. Since then, she has won the 2018 US Women's tournament and previously represented the US at the 2022 World Pair Go Handicap Tournament, 33rd International Amateur Pair Go Championship, and 2024 World Amateur SENKO Cup.
The 2025 World Amateur SENKO Cup is run alongside the 2025 SENKO Cup itself, which is a single-elimination tournament consisting of seven top female professional players and the winner of the previous year's World Amateur SENKO Cup. The players will compete between March 14-16, and the top prize is 10 million yen. Choi Jeong 9p from Korea, the #1 ranked female player in the world, will be returning as the reigning champion to compete. Both tournaments are primarily sponsored by SENKO Group Holdings and organized by the Nihon Ki-in.