AMERICAN GO E-JOURNAL: News from the American Go Association April 17, 2001 In This Edition: - CALENDAR OF EVENTS: Latest listings! - SCOREBOARD: College Park, MD - GO NEWS: Team Championship Deadline Extended; Teaching Teachers - GO REVIEW: Tesuji and Anti-Suji of Go - Online Go: Neostone - AGA OFFICER CONTACT LIST CALENDAR OF EVENTS (U.S.) April 21: Santa Fe, NM New Mexico Spring Go Tournament Leonard Bromberg (505)263-5516 Steve Allen; steve.allen@alibi.com April 21-22: Houston, TX 2001 Houston Spring Tournament Mike Peng (281) 228-4233 pmpeng@swbell.net April 22: Boston, MA MGA Spring Handicap Tournament Don Wiener (617) 734-6316 donwiener@earthlink.net April 28: Cuyahoga Falls, OH Cuyahoga 2001 Go Tournament Joe Carl (330) 493-1663 jcarl@neo.rr.com April 28: Sandy Springs, MD Sandy Spring Scholastic K-12 Chess and Go Tournament and Pizza Bash Anand Modak (301) 869-0327 amodak@mcps.k12.md.us Apr 28/29: Brooklyn, NY Go at the Sakura Matsuri Festival in the Brooklyn Botanical Garden Marc Palmer morrsarian@juno.com May 5: Corvallis, OR Corvallis Spring Go Tournament Robert O'Malley omalley@oce.orst.edu May 5: Rocky Mountain Open Denver, CO Eric Wainwright (303) 626-0103 ewainwright@decisioneering.com June 9 & 10: Denver, CO Yang Yilun Workshop Susan Howell showel3@attglobal.net July 21-29: U.S. Go Congress York College, York PA Keith Arnold, Director; (410) 788-3520 hlime@clark.net NOTE: this listing is not all-inclusive, featuring only upcoming tournaments in the next month or events which require early registration. For a complete U.S. listings, go to http://www.usgo.org/usa/tournaments.html For the European Go Calendar see http://www.win.tue.nl/cs/fm/engels/go/tourn.html SCOREBOARD: College Park, MD April 14: University of Maryland Go Club Spring Tournament Organizer: Steve Mount Director Chuck Robbins 19 players 4 Game Winners: Steve MOUNT 5K; Alexander TSUCHIDA 25K 3 Game Winners: I-Han LUI 7D; Lars PETERSON 17K; Todd HEIDENREICH 23K GO NEWS Team Championship Deadline Extended The deadline for entries for the AGA Team Championships has been extended to midnight (central time) this Friday, April 20th. "If we do not have at least ten entries by then the tournament will be cancelled for this year," reports Tournament Director Steve Fawthrop. www.wingsgoclub.org for more information. Teaching Teachers "My space for 50 people filled up 15 minutes early, and most stayed for the whole workshop," reports Dawn Philcox, a Brooklyn Go Club member who conducted a go workshop at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics national conference held April 4 -7 in Orlando, Florida. "Maybe we got a few more people interested in the game!" AGA 2001 Summer Go Camp Sign-Up The Go Camp Organizing Committee is now accepting applications from young go players: for more information visit the web site: http://www.usgo.org/gocamp/index.html or write to Peter Rzepecki, the camp administrator: AGAGoCamp@aol.com GO REVIEW: Tesuji and Anti-Suji of Go By Sakata Eio Published by Yutopian; $17.50 Reviewed by Mike LePore Weaker players often think of tesuji as the killing moves stronger players make against them. Yet often tesuji (strongest local moves) result in no killing at all and can have profound whole-board relevance. Sakata Eio's book, while loaded with death, shows that implementing a tesuji can also mean getting to live in sente, or giving up stones in return for unconquerable influence, or turning an awful situation into a slightly less awful situation. There are three reasons this book is a valuable learning tool. First, each of the more than 60 problems is accompanied by not only the correct solution but also by the incorrect solutions (anti-suji), as well as detailed explanations. Second, some problems arise from joseki or deviations from joseki and, where applicable, Sakata shows how the problem developed. Third, in many cases the problems build off each other. A certain problem may be almost identical to a prior problem with, say, an extra stone. Sakata shows how such subtle differences on the board can dramatically affect one's ability to employ a tesuji. The presentation style of the book gives the reader more than just an ability to recognize a tesuji in a contrived example. One learns to recognize the rationale behind the tesuji and not simply the tesuji itself; a rationale that can be applied to much more than just the 60 examples in Sakata's great book. Online Go: Neostone by Terri Schurter As if we didn't have enough places to play go already with the "big five" (IGS, KGS, NNGS, the Zone, and Yahoo), today I take you on a virtual tour of a great little Korean server called Neostone at http://www.neostone.co.kr/eng_neostone/index.htm At the main page click on "download" to obtain the English language version of the Neostone software. Disconnect, close all programs and install the software. Double click the Neostone icon created on your desktop and choose "register". Supply your real last name under "name", the ID you want to use under "ID", and provide a password. Registering is quick and simple. Upon logging on, you have a choice of clicking on the following links: Playing Room, Competition, Baduk News, Baduk Clubs, Download, Mailbox, Bulletin Board, and help. Some of these links are underdeveloped, leading me to believe that this server is still a work in progress. The interface is great, with the exception of the sound of the stones, which have an unnatural metallic clicking sound, as if the playing surface is a tin can. However, the graphics more than make up for the software's auditory deficiencies. The icons that represent the players are charming wide-eyed go stones with feet. You just wanna hug these guys! Navigation through the server screens is simple, if not immediately obvious: it is easy to disconnect by closing a window rather than backing out to the previous screen. Logging back on, however, is fast and simple. Get right into the action by clicking on the "Playing Room" link where you can choose between the Korean Room, the Chinese Room, the Japanese Room, or the English Room. The Korean and the Chinese Rooms were populated during my visit, while the English and Japanese Rooms were not. Upon entering a room you can wait to be invited to a board, create a board yourself and wait for someone to join you, or invite another user to join your board (similar to the Yahoo system). Note that boards are actually called "rooms" so it is a bit confusing at first because of the National Rooms. I was immediately invited to a board (room) and challenged by CN_girlbaby: I may have been in a male domain, but I had been immediately recognized and embraced by a "sister". She was ranked 10k (translating to Korean gup, I assume). I chose 18k, the lowest rank available and halfway through the game, having been very soundly beaten, I resigned. I was immediately offered nine stones, and went on to play and lose two nine-stone handi games. The verdict on Neostone? I was entranced by the interface, and excited to scratch the surface of this interesting server, which automatically saves your games in its proprietary bdx format. Give NeoSTONE a try, and unless you are a strong player, you may end up feeling like a neoPHYTE. Terri Schurter has been playing go online since 1995. Her club, Wings Across Calm Waters [http://www.wingsgoclub.org], is a "virtual" chapter of the AGA. Wings meets week-nights on the Zone from 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm Eastern Time, and on Wednesday nights at 8P on KGS. Terri plays under the name goddess_of_go. Past columns are archived at http://www.britgo.org/gopcres/agaart/index.html The views expressed in this column are not necessarily those of the American Go Association. 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Send your tournament data to MAILTO:ratings@usgo.org AGA OFFICER CONTACT LIST: President; Roy Laird: president@usgo.org Eastern VP; ChenDao Lin: vp-eastern@usgo.org Central VP; Jeff Shaevel: vp-central@usgo.org Western VP; Larry Gross: vp-western@usgo.org Treasurer; Ulo Tamm: treasurer@usgo.org Membership Secretary; John Goon: membership@usgo.org Chapters Coordinator; Bill Cobb: chapters@usgo.org Tournament Coordinator; Mike Bull: tournaments@usgo.org Education Coordinator; None Redmond: education@usgo.org Congress Liaison Officer; Chris Kirschner: cngrsliaison@usgo.org AGA website; Gordon Fraser and Chuck Robbins: webmaster@usgo.org American Go Foundation; Terry Benson: mailto: terrybenson@eudoramail.com AGA Librarian; Craig Hutchinson: archives@usgo.org Published by the American Go Association Material published in " AMERICAN GO E-JOURNAL" may be reproduced by any recipient: please credit the AGEJ as the source. 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