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The Traveling Board: Beijing, China

Gordon Castanza -- former AGA Board member and EJ game recorder -- passed along this report from his friend Ernest French of the Beijing Go Club, who sends this report and a collage of photos he took at the “Second Donghu Cup Amateur Wei Qi Invitational Tournament between China and Korea," which was held on Saturday, September 7th in Beijing, China.
 “Last Saturday we played in an amateur tournament up in Wangjing in northeast Beijing. It was outside in the middle of a park, on a beautiful, cool, blue sky morning. After the opening ceremony, we started our matches against local teams - time settings of 35 minutes per player, absolute. Altogether, I'd say 100+ go players showed up in total. Participating for the BJGC were Sam, Karl, Carl, Gina, Chris, and me; each round was 5 games (1 person sitting out). The first round we had some tough games - I lost one I should have won, but we did manage to go 2 and 3. For 8 am, that's a good result. 

 Next round we faced the kids and cleaned up 4-1 despite some questionable play on their part (but what're you gonna do?) All in good fun. By this point it was heating up, and we were full of coffee and ready to go. Unfortunately, our final match-up was against the baitou team - a bunch of really good Koreans who had won every game of the day so far. My game was against an older gentleman who placed his (Chinese style) stones upside-down. He was quite good, and calmly took advantage of my questionable play. I broke into his giant moyo at the end of the game... but somehow it wasn't enough and I lost by 15. Carl was the only one to defeat that team all day. That afternoon we continued an (unofficial) match against the Beijing Capital Airport team, who gave us some fun games. Thanks to Karl for finding & organizing this, and I definitely want to do it again sometime!" Click here for more photos.