News / Articles

FINAL BYO-YOMI FOR COTSEN: Players who pre-register for this weekend's Cotsen Open in Los Angeles, CA not only save $5 but will have their entire $20 registration fee refunded on Sunday at the end of the tournament. The Cotsen also features free limited AGA memberships, prizes for solving problems and game reviews by Yilun Yang 7P as well as free catered lunches, on-site massages and more. The Cotsen is held at the Best Western Mayfair Hotel, 1256 West 7th Street, Los Angeles; 213-484-9789; http://www.mayfairla.com Cotsen info/registration: casie@thelec.com

MAY BRINGS BUMPER TOURNEY CROP: From Hartford to Seattle, Los Angeles to Brooklyn and Dearborn to Lancaster, go tournaments are bursting out across the country over the next month; see the Calendar of Events below for details and be sure to check for the latest info on our website at http://www.usgo.org/usa/tournaments.asp

JIE LI COMES TO NOVA: Jie Li 9d will give another free lecture in the metro Washington area, this one at the NOVA go club on Monday, May 9. Li presented a detailed analysis of his final-round upset against Suzuki Ayumi, 3P in last November's Seimitsu Final at a standing-room-only meeting last Friday of the Greater Washington Go Club. Li, who lives in San Diego, CA, is visiting Washington through the end of May.

GO CAMP WEST ADDS MAEDA 6P: Japanese professional Maeda Ryoo has been added to the West Coast Youth Go Camp teaching staff headed by Mingjiu Jiang 7P, reports organizer Steve Burrall. "Mr. Maeda will focus on teaching the beginners and weaker kyu players while Mr. Jiang continues working with the strong players," says Burrall. "This will be the first time at Go Camp West that beginners have had full professional attention!" If you haven't signed up your future go champion son or daughter yet, go to the Go Camp link at http://www.usgo.org and register now while there's still space!

LAST CHANCE FOR FREE YEARBOOKS: Time is running out on this month's special offer of a free copy of the brand-new 2004 American Go Yearbook for the first 50 new members to join the AGA during the month of April! The 100-page volume (a $30 value) features the best of last year's E-Journals, from game commentaries and reviews to columns and more, including a CD with all the year's EJ content (including all game commentaries!). Member benefits include the weekly Member's Edition with attached game commentaries and reviews, as well as the 2005 Yearbook, which will be published in January, 2006. If you've been thinking about joining, now's the time! Sign up now at http://www.usgo.org/org/application.asp

COMING UP IN FRIDAY'S MEMBER'S EDITION: AGA President Mike Lash welcomes James Heiney, Alan Mishlov and Ulo Tamm to national positions at the American Go Association, O Meien 9P takes a look at Game 4 of the 28th Kisei Title Match and Patrick Bridges reviews the Segoe Kensaku/Go Seigen Tesuji Dictionary. All this and the latest news updates! Non-members can sign up now at http://www.usgo.org/org/application.asp

WORLD GO NEWS

HANE NAOKI FIRST INTERNET WORLD GO CHAMPION: In the final of the 1st Pandanet Open Professional and Amateur Internet World Go Championship, Hane Naoki 9p beat Kobayashi Koichi 9p and became the first ever Internet World Go Champion. Although the tournament was open to amateurs and professionals alike, the final eight players were all professionals. The most successful amateur player was RoseDuke (Victor Guan Chow, 6-dan amateur from South Africa, IGS 7d*) who entered the 6th round and defeated two pros on his way. Instead of playing on the Internet, the final eight met face-to-face in Tokyo to play three more rounds of 30-second-per-move fast games to decide the champion. Hane Naoki 9p beat Zhou Junxun 9p, Kono Rin 7p and Kobayashi Koichi 9p to take the championship and the $28,000 US first prize. Game records can be found at http://gobase.org/games/nn/pandanet/1/

CHO U WINS LG CUP: With a 2.5 point victory in the fourth game of his match with Yu Bin 9P of China, Cho U 9P of Japan has won his first international title, taking the LG Cup by a score of 3-1. Cho is current number one in Japan, holding several titles: Honinbo, Meijin, Oza, NEC Cup, and NHK Cup. He was the challenger for the Judan last year, also. LG Cup games can be downloaded at http://www.go4go.net/v2/modules/collection/bytour2.php?tid=3 . Yu Bin won the LG Cup in 2000 and has held several other titles. Check http://www.go4go.net/v2/ for details about the game.

THE REDMOND REPORT: Michael Redmond 9-dan (B) defeated Aoki Shinichi 9-dan by 2.5 points last week in the final preliminary of the 44th Judan tournament.
- reported by John Power on the Nihon Kiin homepage

30TH MEIJIN LEAGUE UPDATE: Two games were played in the 30th Meijin League on April 14. At the Tokyo headquarters of the Ki-in, Yamashita Keigo Tengen (W) defeated Ogata Masaki 9-dan by resignation. This result keeps Yamashita in second place on 3-1, while Ogata, on 1-4, will be getting a little nervous about keeping his place. The second game was played at the Kansai Ki-in and was a win for the home player. Imamura Toshiya 9-dan (B) defeated Yamada Kimio 8-dan, who is actually also an Osaka player but affiliated with the Nihon Ki-in, by resignation. Iwamura evens his score at 2-2 while Yamada drops to 1-3.
- reported by John Power

O MEIEN KEEPS HONINBO LEAGUE PLACE: O Meien had a good week last week, with three important wins in six days. First of all, he was the only Japanese representative to survive the first two rounds of the Fujitsu Cup. Three days after the second round, he defeated So Yokoku 7-dan in the play-off to decide the fourth place in the 61st Honinbo league.
- reported by John Power

ENTE/TEUBER WIN EURO PAIR GO: Germany's Lisa Ente and Benjamin Teuber topped last weekend European Pair Go Championships, held at Hitachi in Maidenhead, UK April 23-24. Two dozen pairs from 12 countries including 12 pairs from the UK took part in the Championships. After four rounds the leaders were the Czech pair of Jana Hricova and Ondrej Silt and Germany's Lisa Ente and Benjamin Teuber. The Germans won their clash in round 5 only to lose to the second German pair Manja Lindemeyer and Michael Marz in the last round. In the last round the Czech pair lost to young Russians Natalia Kovaleva and Timur Sankin, so both German and Russia pairs ended up with five wins each. The tie was split by sos/sodos to make Ente/Teuber first, Lindemeyer/Marz second and Kovaleva/Sankin third. Results at http://www.britgo.org/results/2005/epgc.txt Winners of the handicap section by close tie break were UK's Maria Tabor and Paul Tabor. Nudged into second were Italy's Alessandra Zarcone and Davide Minieri. The other prize in this section went to Portugal's Ines Teles de Menezes and Jose Telses de Menezes. All the top board games were broadcast live on IGS-PandaNet and video streamed.
- reported by World Go

BLOCKLEY TAKES INAUGURAL TRIANGLE TOURNEY: Paul Blockley 13k won the first-ever Triangle Tournament (2 players against 1) on April 23, held alongside the European Pair Go Championships at Hitachi in Maidenhead. Fourteen players participated, so one game each round had to be 1-on-1. Since nobody won three games, the lowest graded player winning two in a pair was judged the winner, giving Paul Blockley (13 kyu Worcester) the nod, with Jonathan Englefield (8 kyu High Wycombe) in second place. Third for winning his first two games was Ed Blockley (2 kyu Worcester) and the fighting spirit prize was won by Chuwen Teng, a young lady from Hitcahi who learnt go specially to take part. Runners-up who got go baseball caps were Xinyi Lu, Daniel Debski, France Ellul and Nick Wedd.
- reported on BGA news

YOUR MOVE: READERS WRITE

BUSTED FLUSH IN MONTE CARLO? "I guess you guys were really hard up for material for the April 18 E-Journal, since you've posted a long article about a poker tournament in Monte Carlo," writes Jean DeMaiffe. "I wonder what proportion of your readers were fascinated and what proportion thought it was rather an odd article to include and what others thought it was inappropriate."

BAD LINK: The link to "Learning From the Stones" (reviewed in the 4/22 EJ) is now inoperative; you can download a PDF at http://www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/pdffiles/PUB378.pdf

THANKS FOR THE MAJORS: "I forget just when I wrote requesting that the E-Journal write an article about the major go tournaments," writes Richard Moseson, "but I wanted to thank you so much for writing them; they're just what I was looking for, and I have saved them and will start tracking who holds which titles now that the names have some meaning for me."

PROFESSIONALLY SPEAKING: International Pro Tournaments III
by William Cobb
There are a number of international tournaments that only involve Asian countries. Some of these are matches between the winners of similar titles in two different countries. For example, the Japanese Tengen winner plays the Chinese Tianyuan winner, and the latter also plays the Korean Chunwon winner. These are both best-of-three-game matches. The winners of the Agon Cup in Japan and in China play a one-game match, and there are others, such as between the winners of the NEC cups in China and Japan and the winners of the New Stars Cups in China and Korea. The Asian TV Cup brings together the finalists of the TV tournaments in all three countries for a knockout tournament, won most recently by Yu Bin of China.
A quite different type of international tournament involves teams from two or more countries. In some cases every member of each team plays all the members of opposing teams, while in others, such as the Nong Shim Cup, one game at a time is played and the winner continues playing. Losers drop out of the contest, and the team that doesn't run out of players wins the match. This format has led to some spectacular winning streaks, of which one of the most famous was that of Jujo Jiang who became a national hero in China by defeating five Japanese pros in a row in the first Super Go match between Chinese and Japanese teams in 1984-85. Lee Changho of Korea has never been defeated in the fast-play Nong Shim Cup team competition, and the Koreans have won that event every year since it began in 2000. There is also an international team tournament between Japan, China, and Korea that is limited to women pros, the Jeongganjang Cup, won most recently by Rui Naiwei, playing for Chi na.
There are of course the usual type of tournaments between groups of individual players from Asian countries. A brand new one, supported by JP Morgan and a Taiwanese company, is the Zhonghan Cup. The first occurrence included six players from Taiwan (three of whom were members of the Nihon Kiin), four from Japan, and five from Korea. The Chinese declined to participate. The winner was Park Yeonghun of Korea.
Since sponsors come and go, the mix of international pro tournaments is constantly changing, but the trend is definitely toward more of them.
Next: the main pro tournaments in individual countries.

GO CLASSIFIED

WANTED: Maeda chuu-kyu tsume-go, by Maeda Nobuaki; Maeda shita-kyu tsume-go, by Maeda Nobuaki; Maeda ue-kyu tsume-go, by Maeda Nobuaki. Dan Jaqua jaqua@rice.edu

BUY, SELL, OR TRADE equipment, books and go materials, find a go teacher, find someone to play go with! Complete go classifieds online at http://www.usgo.org/resources/classified.asp

CALENDAR OF EVENTS

April 30: Hartford, CT
CCC Weiqi-Spring Tournament
Bill Fung 860-648-1527 chiwaifung@aol.com

April 30: Middlebury, VT
Vermont Annual Spring Tournament
Peter Schumer 802-388-3934 schumer@middlebury.edu

April 30-May 1: Los Angeles, CA
2005 Cotsen Go Tournament
310-473-5873 GoTournament@thelec.com

May 1: Brooklyn, NY
Go Demonstration
Jean Claude Chetrit 718-638-2266 jc@brooklyngoclub.org

May 7: Dearborn, MI
Dearborn Go Tournament III
Danny Walters 313-336-4622 go-club@umd.umich.edu

May 8: Seattle, WA
Monthly Ratings Tournament
Jon Boley 206-545-1424 jon@seattlegocenter.org

May 12: Competing on KGS
4th Annual National K-12 Team Championship
Christopher Vu 281-480-8615 wasonlyyesterday@yahoo.com

May 15: Lancaster Go Club
Self Paired Tournament
Sam Zimmerman 717-892-1249 szimmerman@ctipc.com

May 27-30: Round Top, NY
Guo Juan Workshop
Jean Claude Chetrit 718-638-2266 jc@brooklyngoclub.org

May 28 & 29: Baltimore, MD
32nd Maryland Open (AGTC event)
Keith Arnold 410-788-3520 hlime81@comcast.net

This is a digest of events for the next month only; for a complete listing see the Tournament Calendar on the AGA website: http://www.usgo.org/usa/tournaments.asp
For the European Go Calendar see http://www.european-go.org/TOURNAMENTS/TListbyDate.htm

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