AMERICAN GO E-JOURNAL: News from the American Go Association May 29, 2001 In This Edition: - CALENDAR OF EVENTS: Latest listings! - SCOREBOARD: Maryland Open - GO CLUBS: New Orleans, LA - GO NEWS: ICOB1: 1st International Conference on Baduk; Nominations for 2001 Teacher of the Year; Catskills Go - YOUR MOVE: "Keep the Guide to Go" - GO REVIEW: Get Strong at Invading - GO RESOURCES: "Teach Yourself Go" - ONLINE GO: Online Fuseki Dictionary - AGA OFFICER CONTACT LIST CALENDAR OF EVENTS (U.S.) May 31-June 3: Belchertown, MA Go Workshop with Feng Yun 9 Dan Bill Saltman (413) 323-8658 bsaltman@charter.net June 2: Davis, CA Davis/Sacramento Go Club Quarterly Tournament Fred Hopkins fred.hopkins@mckhboc.com June 9 & 10: Denver, CO Yang Yilun Workshop Susan Howell showel3@attglobal.net June 16: Chicago, IL Bloomsday Basho Bob Barber (773)467-0423 igo@uic.edu June 23: Ann Arbor Summer Go Tournament Ann Arbor, MI Don Broersma (734)487-9871 dbroersma@provide.net June 30: Virginia Open Richmond, VA Bill Cobb, wmscobb@rcn.com July 21-29: U.S. Go Congress York College, York PA Keith Arnold, Director; (410) 788-3520 hlime@clark.net ABROAD July 7-8: Scottish Open (Edinburgh) Donald Macleod; donald@sandwood.demon.co.uk http://www.faldara.co.uk/Go/Scottish.html 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: Maryland Open May 26/27: Maryland Open Catonsville, MD TD: Sam Zimmerman Players: 64 Open Section: 1st: Ke HUANG; 2nd: I-Han LUI; 3rd: Eric Lui Section A: 1st: Cheng XIANG; 2ND: Zhenying QU; 3rd: John STEPHENSON Section B: 1ST: Benny CHI; 2ND: Chuck ROBBINS; 3rd: Takaaki FUJII Section C: 1st: Charles ALDEN; 2nd: Steve BARBERI; 3rd: Mark LAING Section D: 1st: Arnold EUDELL; 2nd: Barna RUBIN; 3rd: David CARPER Section E: 1st: Kathy QIU; 2nd: Bill COBB; 3rd: Ami HUANG Section F: 1st: Raymond KAUFMAN; 2nd: David ALLEN Section G: 1st: Gregory LEFLER; 2nd: Alex TSCHIDA; 3rd: Jeremy BANZHAF GO CLUBS: New Orleans, LA Music, Food & Go in The Big Easy "The first New Orleans AGA sponsored Go Tournament hosted by the Bayou Go Club and the Genghis Khan restaurant was a bounding success," reports David Dinhofer. Ms. Xuefen Lin, 1 Dan professional from Houston, Tx, joined the open section and won the tournament with a 4/5 record. Mike Peng (Houston) came in a close second (4/5) and Dr. Kazuo Sato (New Orleans), took third (3/5). Masastugu Takano (4d), Sam Kuk (3d), Youn Han (4d) and Jeff Shaevel(3d) also participated in the open section. A dozen players participated in the handicap section, including Chelsea and Elka Dinhofer, both 8 years old, and Cydney Hedgpeth, aged 9. Cydney took first in the low kyu division(2/2). The girls didn't play much but had a lot of fun and got their pictures taken by the local newspaper. In the high kyu division, Mr. Che Cho Yun (4k, of Houston, Tx) came in first with Art Davis (15k, of New Orleans) coming a close second, both with 4/5 records. Andreas Balser (5k, of New Orleans, 3/5) came in third. "We were honored to have Ms. Lin give a pre-tournament lecture and watch a spectacular demonstration game between Dr. Shiang Xiang Lee (7D) and Ms. Lin. We plan to make the game available as a .sgf file in the near future," says Dinhofer. "Henry Lee, tournament participant and owner of Genghis Khan, deserves special credit," adds Dinhofer. "Not only did he let us abuse his restaurant(during none operating hours) but he fed us a spectacular dinner on Saturday night with live classical music and opera singers serenading us." GO NEWS ICOB1: 1st International Conference on Baduk By Charles Matthews South Korea is a country where your taxi-driver's conversation runs to the thought that, while many think that the way to improve from 3 dan is to study jungsuk (joseki) and poseok (fuseki), that's quite wrong and much better is to work on your counting. In a word, since Korean players came to the fore on the world stage a dozen years ago, the whole place has gone baduk (Go) crazy. One outward sign of this change was the founding four years ago of the Department of Baduk Studies at Myongji University, not far from Seoul. It has around 100 students, both conventional undergraduates and those taking a second degree, who take a course which now full-length. They range in playing strength from about AGA 1 dan up to very close to pro level, and are for the most part expecting to work as baduk teachers. Head of the Department is Professor Jeong Soo-Hyun, a name familiar from its appearance on the "Learn to Play Go" series. He is that rare thing, a 9 dan pro who writes. The Department has two other full professors, and many other pro and strong amateur instructors lending a hand; and is the only such university department in the world offering a complete degree course. The May 11-12 conference brought together two dozen individuals from all over the world for two packed days of lectures: computer Go experts and medics, historians and webmasters, psychologists and anthropologists, organisers and writers, and also simple players of the game. The breadth of Go and its fascination exerted in the most diverse ways can never have been quite so intensely presented. American documentary film-makers Ronald Levaco and Hyun-Ock Im attended, brought in by San Francisco's Ernest Brown, and hope to make the event the jumping-off point for a study of the culture of Go. The Envelope, Please: Nominations for 2001 Teacher of the Year The American Go Foundation invites your nominations for 2001 Teacher of the Year. This annual honor is reserved for teachers of the highest merit who have demonstrated their love for children by teaching them the game of go. The prestigious award includes free room, board, and entry fees at the 2001 U.S. Go Congress in York, PA. Nominees for Teacher of the Year must be an example to other teachers both in teaching go and drawing young people into a love of the game. For details on requirements: None Redmond at 5931 Wymore Way, Sacramento, California, 95822; chinski@inreach.com Catskills Go Play Go this 4th of July in the Catskills: It's dirt cheap, there are kids for your kids to play with, many outdoors activities and lots of singing and music playing. Jean-Claude Chetrit; jc@BrooklynGoClub.org http://brooklyngoclub.org/generic_club/cgi-bin/disp_topic.iphtml?topic_id=39 YOUR MOVE: "Keep the Guide to Go" "I like the printed Guide to Go, and urge you to keep it, if only for historical reasons," writes Bob Felice. "Paper, unlike HTML, is permanent. Want to know which clubs were active and who was the contact in 1998? Good luck using the Internet! But it's a snap with a printed copy of the Journal." Bob is responding to the query in the latest American Go Journal about whether we should continue to publish the Guide to Go listings now that the go club list is updated regularly on the AGA website. What's your vote? GO REVIEW: Get Strong at Invading Get Strong at Invading by Richard Bozulich Kiseido Publishing Company, $15 US. 150p. Recommended: 20k-2d interested in a random assortment of invasion sequences. Reviewed by: Paul Thibodeau "Get Strong at Invading" is one of the early volumes ('95) in the 'Get Strong at Go Series', and it shows. The back cover 'guarantees' it will increase a weak kyu's invading ability by as much as 6 stones, but will also 'fill in the gaps' for a 'strong dan'. It is divided into three sections, Invasions on the Side (65 problems mainly covering 3 and 4 point extensions between two stones, Invading Corner Enclosures (84 problems), and Invading Large Territories (not actually about invading large territories, but reducing large frameworks (moyos). The last section is the best, running 46 pages for 22 problems. The first two sections have a variety of useful patterns, but generally the treatment is poorly organized and scant, and this is where the book really suffers. A kyu player will learn more, and learn it properly, by studying "Attack and Defense" by Ishida and Davies, while a dan player can't do better than "Enclosure Josekis" by Takemiya and "Reducing Territorial Frameworks" by Fujisawa. GO RESOURCES: "Teach Yourself Go" Now Available Online The highly acclaimed "Teach Yourself Go" by Charles Matthews is now available online from Slate & Shell: www.slateandshell.com An excellent introductory text for the beginner, this book is a virtual encyclopedia of basic information about the tactics, strategy, history, and culture of go and will continue to be a useful resource far beyond the beginner level. ONLINE GO: Online Fuseki Dictionary by Terri Schurter An excellent companion to Jansteen's "Joseki Dictionary" page is the complementary Fuseki Dictionary at http://www.cwi.nl/~jansteen/go/fuseki/index.html The index for the fuseki dictionary is based on the Kihon Fuseki Jiten (Basic Fuseki Dictionary) edited by Rin Kaiho. The online Fuseki Dictionary is divided into two main parts, the first dealing with komoku-style openings, the second with modern hoshi style openings. The first section covers Shusaku fuseki, diagonal komoku, parallel komoku, miscellaneous komoku and low patterns. The second deals with ni-ren sei, san-ren sei, diagonal and parallel hoshi, low and high Chinese, tengen and other high patterns. A third section is comprised of what are referred to as "special requests" and covers the small Chinese fuseki, the Kobayashi fuseki, the ni-rensei fuseki Clicking on Shusaku fuseki I was presented with five boards. Once you have chosen a board to continue you have the option of clicking in the center of the board to match the entire position or you can choose to click on the top, right, bottom, or left to match one side of the board only in your search. I clicked in the center of the first board first and was presented with a listing of 30 games which matched the first six moves exactly. Going back to the first board again and clicking at the top only produced a list with 50 games. Once you have a listing of games with your chosen fuseki you can download any of them for further study. For this you must register and obtain a user name and password, which is free. Terri Schurter -- onlinego@usgo.org -- 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. GET LISTED & BOOST TURN-OUT! Got an upcoming event? Reach over 2,500 readers coast-to-coast every week! List your Go event/news In the E-Journal: email details to us at MAILTO:journal@usgo.org Ratings are on the web! 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