AMERICAN GO E-JOURNAL: News from the American Go Association September 4, 2001 In This Edition: - CALENDAR OF EVENTS: Latest listings! - SCOREBOARD: San Francisco, CA - GO NEWS: Go Gets a Boost in Montgomery County (MD); Linux PDA Go Recorder Now Available - YOUR MOVE: Readers Write: But Can It Bake a Cherry Pie? - SPECIAL REPORT: The Kid's Congress (Part 2) - GO REVIEW: Understanding How to Play Go - ONLINE GO: A Second Look At Yahoo - AGA OFFICER CONTACT LIST CALENDAR OF EVENTS (U.S.) September 6-9: Lake Andrusia, Northern Minnesota: James Kerwin Weekend Go workshop $400 includes tuition, lodging, and meals. Limited to 15 participants. Bill Petersen; 218-335-2428; mailto:peterw@paulbunyan.net September 8-9: Corvallis, OR: Go Workshop with Janice Kim Robert O'Malley 541-738-1690; mailto:omalley@oce.orst.edu Gail Cape; mailto:gailcape@home.com September 15: Lancaster, PA Jack Frost Special Sam Zimmerman (717) 892-1249 szimmerman@wareunl.com September 21-23: Gaithersburg, MD: Kerwin Weekend Workshop Gordon Fraser; (301) 540-2640; gordon@clark.net September 29: Durham, NC Joe Shoenfeld Memorial Marathon Go Tournament Paul Celmer; (919)779-7925 transwrite2@lycos.com http://www.home.earthlink.net/~transwri/shoenfeld/ October 6: Chicago, IL WE WILL, WE WILL WRECK YOU Bob Barber (773) 467-0423 igo@uic.edu October 7: Boston, MA MGA Fall Handicap Tournament Don Wiener (617) 734-6316 donwiener@earthlink.net ABROAD: September 8-9: New Zealand Go Championships Auckland, NZ Colin Grierson coling@ihug.co.nz 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: San Francisco, CA Sept. 1-2: San Francisco SF Go Club Dote Sensei Memorial Players: 41 (17 dan; 24 kyu players) Organizer: Danny Swarzman; Director: Steve Burrall Open Div (7d-5d) 1st: James Chien 7d; 2nd: Ned Phipps 7d; 3rd: Jon Wang 7d; 4th: Ruan Zihang 5d; 5th: Tony Emsenhuber 6d; Handicap: Div 1 (4d-2d) 1st: Geof Syphers 2d; 2nd: Joanne Phipps 3d; 3rd: Justin Wang 3d; 4th: Joshua Zucker 2d; 5th: Zhiwei Wang 4d; Div 2 (1d-2k) 1st: Allen Ting 2k; 2nd: Paul Tannenbaum 1d; 3rd: Kristen Burrall 1k; 4th: Louisa Chan 2k; 5th: Willard Haynes 2k; Div 3 (3k-6k) 1st: Eric Branlund 6k; 2nd: Nick Kersting 3k; 3rd: Dave Marvit 4k; 4th: Bruce Bailey 6k; 5th: Danny Swarzman 3k; Div 4 (7k-19k) 1st: Willis Liu 14k; 2nd: Kevin Liu 12k; 3rd: Karoline Burrall 18k; 4th: Raymond Chan 10k; 5th: Linda Brown 19k GO NEWS Go Gets a Boost in Montgomery County (MD) Weekly go meetings are featured at a brand new facility in Maryland's Montgomery County, reports John Goon. The Grand Opening is this Saturday, September 8, starting at 11 AM and hosted by the County Executive. Area go players are invited to join the general public at 11319 Elkin Drive, Wheaton MD, just two blocks north of the Wheaton Metro station. Public parking is close by. The Center will hold weekly go meetings every Wednesday, beginning on Sept 12, from 6 to 9 PM in its spacious Multi-Purpose room. On-site storage has been arranged for the sets and books. Thanks to generous grants from Montgomery County and the American Go Foundation, the Center is well equipped and situated to serve as a new resource for the DC area Go/Weiqi/Baduk community. Linux PDA Go Recorder Now Available "I have written (well, actually I am in the process of writing) a program to record go games on the Agenda VR3 (the Linux PDA)" writes Andreas Balser. "The first usable version (and the forthcoming more complete versions) can be found at http://www.geocities.com/goVRec Reach Andreas at a.ba@gmx.de YOUR MOVE: Readers Write But Can It Bake a Cherry Pie? "I took your 'admonition' from one of our meals at this past Congress to heart and read all of the back issues of the e-Journal," writes George Schmitten. "Informative is a good adjective for the e-Journal, helpful applies, enjoyable as well. Useful rounds off the list nicely, I think." SPECIAL REPORT: The Kid's Congress (Part 2) By None Redmond There were a number of firsts in this year's 8th annual Redmond Cup Tournament. To begin with, several of the senior league players did not finish all of their games. This left Jin Chen tied with Richard Liang for the position of playing Eric Lui for the Cup. TD Mike Bull ruled that there should be a best-of-three play-off so for the first time there were five Redmond Cup finalists at the Go Congress (Ken Koester was the TD for the Congress games). The play offs began with the Junior League game between Curtis Tang and Matthew Burrall on Sunday evening. Only two were needed, as it turned out. In spite of his obvious jet lag after flying back from China, Richard Liang won those games and on Tuesday evening he and Eric played their first game in the Senior finals while Matthew and Curtis battled it out for the second time. The winners were Curtis Tang in the Junior League and Eric Lui in the Senior League, runners up were Matthew Burrall and Richard Liang. Jin Chen qualified for what he insisted on calling the 'booby prize'. We never had one before! At the banquet there was another award. Kristen Burrall -- who had been invited to join the Cup tournament after the Redmond Handicap Tournament was scratched -- had played all of her games right to the bitter end. Winning none of them but playing on with courage and determination she won the "Fighting Spirit" award. Eric Lui, having won the Redmond Cup 5 times since he began at 7 years of age has now been graduated out with the new title of the first Redmond Meijin. He will be eligible to play in a new tournament which was announced at the Banquet by Michael Redmond. This tournament will be open to strong young players who do not play in the Redmond Cup either because they are older than 17 or because they have been graduated out like Eric. More details of this tournament will be announced in the future. In the meantime, registrations for next year's Redmond Tournaments should be submitted. To conclude I would like to thank all of the young people who took part in this tournament as well as their teachers. Special thanks to our sponsors, the Ing Foundation and the AGA, the Congress officials who host it, Ken Koester who TDed the finals and to Tim Jeans whose generosity provided the prizes. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Mike Bull who TDs the internet games so carefully, and to IGS for hosting those games. Finally of course I am grateful to my son without whose dedication and brilliance the tournament could never have taken place. Go Review: Understanding How to Play Go by Yuan Zhou (AGA 7d) Slate and Shell, 2000, 212 pp Reviewed by Michael Turk, Australian 10k For a long time there has been a need for kyu-level commentaries of games between strong players and this book hits the target dead-center. Providing blow-by blow descriptions of seven high-level amateur games, the book presents the material in a fashion designed to make all moves clear to kyu level players. Each diagram contains very few moves and most moves are commented. Variations are also discussed. I found that I did not have to set out the game on a board, but could read the book and commentary while commuting. I expect that I will read and re-read this book and look forward to the foreshadowed companion book on commented handicap games. My congratulations to the publishing team at Slate and Shell for producing yet another long-needed book that is designed not only to be read by those players destined to become strong dan level players but also for those of us who may never reach those lofty heights and who play go for the sheer thrill and enjoyment of the game regardless of our strength. Look out stronger players, us low kyu's have a secret weapon! By discussing the reasons behind virtually every move, our understanding of the game is going to grow and we are going to get stronger. ONLINE GO: A Second Look At Yahoo by Terri Schurter A year ago I started my coverage of online Go with a look at four go servers: IGS, NNGS, The Gaming Zone, and Yahoo. It was brought to my attention recently that it might be time to take a second look at Yahoo. Much remains the same on Yahoo, but there has been one very important change - the addition of a rating system. The system being used in the go rooms is the same utilized in many other Yahoo games and is similar to one used by the Chess Federation, consisting of spans of numeric ratings of 2100+, 1800-2099, 1500-1799, 1200-1499, 0-1199, and provisional classification. A system like this is totally foreign to a player such as myself, but will be familiar to those who have played chess competitively. There are now eight rooms at the Yahoo Go site. The Hamster Pit and the Hippo Swamp are still social rooms, and there are no ratings in those rooms. The rated rooms consist of one beginners' room, one intermediate room, three advanced rooms, and a ladder room. Yahoo seems to be more populated than the last time I was there, and is certainly more populated than the Zone. This may be attributed to the fact that Yahoo is a cross-platform server, whereas the Zone is still a Windows-only environment. It is interesting to note that the Intermediate room was unpopulated in my recent visits, which was the case a year ago as well. It seems no one on Yahoo wants to be "average". But there are plenty of people in the Beginner and Advanced rooms. Apparently there are enough advanced players to require three rooms now. One downside of the existence of three advanced rooms, which can easily fill, is that you can get shut out of a room where a friend is playing making it impossible to observe his games. That happened to me recently on Yahoo, and I was reminded of the days when I used to sit around and wait to get into a full AOL chat room so I could talk to a friend. But this is a relatively small problem. If, like myself, you have made yourself a stranger to Yahoo, now is a good time to stop by again to check out the rating system. 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. Easy Money Send us a 150-word review of a go book or go software and - upon acceptance -- we'll give you a $25 gift certificate to the go vendor of your choice. Tell us what you liked - or didn't like - and how it helped (or didn't help) your game. Include the book's title, publisher, cost, your name and email address. Choose any book you like, from brand-new publications to old stand-bys that you keep going back to. Also, be sure to indicate what level player is best served by the material. 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! Check the website (www.usgo.org) for the full list. GET YOUR TOURNAMENT RATED! Send your tournament data to MAILTO:ratings@usgo.org AGA OFFICER CONTACT LIST: President; Roy Laird: mailto:president@usgo.org Eastern VP; ChenDao Lin: mailto:vp-eastern@usgo.org Central VP; Jeff Shaevel: mailto:vp-central@usgo.org Western VP; Larry Gross: mailto:vp-western@usgo.org Treasurer; Ulo Tamm: mailto:treasurer@usgo.org Membership Secretary; John Goon: mailto:membership@usgo.org Chapters Coordinator; Bill Cobb: mailto:chapters@usgo.org Tournament Coordinator; Mike Bull: mailto:tournaments@usgo.org Education Coordinator; None Redmond: mailto:education@usgo.org Congress Liaison Officer; Chris Kirschner: mailto:cngrsliaison@usgo.org AGA website; Gordon Fraser and Chuck Robbins: mailto:webmaster@usgo.org American Go Foundation; Terry Benson: mailto:terrybenson@eudoramail.com AGA Librarian; Craig Hutchinson: mailto: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. To make name or address corrections - notify us at the email address below. Story suggestions, event announcements, Letters to the Editor and other material are welcome - subject to editing for clarity and space -- and should be directed to: Editor: Chris Garlock email: journal@usgo.org Voice: 202-857-3410 Fax: 202-857-3420