Just 8 days left on this special offer: through December 31, join the AGA and take
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In This Edition:
January 5: Seattle, WA
Monthly Ratings Tournament
Jon Boley 206-545-1424 go@seattlego.org
January 11: Salem, OR
Salem Winter Tournament.
levenick@willamette.edu, 503-370-6486
January 11: Arlington, VA
Winter Warner
Allan Abramson 703-684-7676 mediate8@worldnet.att.net
January 11/12: Piscataway, NJ
Feng Yun Doubleheader
Two tournaments sponsored by Feng Yun, 9P, including a 4-round rated
event and a Youth Tournament.
Details at:
http://attila.stevens-tech.edu/~lruss/feng_yun_tournament.htm
Feng Yun gotournament@yahoo.com
January 18: Baltimore, MD
Fujitsu Finals & Amateur Tournament
Keith Arnold 410-788-3520 hlime@earthlink.net
January 18-20: Evanston, IL
4th Annual Winter Workshop with Guo Juan 5P
Mark Rubenstein 847-869-6020 mark@easyaspi.com
January 19: Boston, MA
MGA Winter Handicap Tournament
Don Wiener 617-734-6316 donwiener@earthlink.net
FOREIGN
December 28-31: London, England
London Open
Geoff Kaniuk geoff@kaniuk.demon.co.uk
http://www.britgo.org/tournaments/london/
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
NEW! Now you can get the weekly game records in a new special Games Edition of the American Go E-Journal for just $20 a year! Go to http://gm12.com/r.html?c=164895&r=164505&t=46044451&l=1&d=56823119&u=http://www.usgo.org/org/application.asp&g=0&f=-1 and select "Games Edition" and you'll start getting the weekly game records!
Amateurs can observe the exciting competition, hear game commentary and
compete in a 4 round amateur tournament on Saturday, 1/18.
Info: Keith Arnold 410-788-3520 or hlime@earthlink.net
The current major professional go tournaments in China are: 1. Qisheng; 2. Mingren; 3. China Individual Championship; 4. Jiang Ling Cup (China Team Tournament); 5. CCTV Cup; 6. NEC Cup; 7. Agon Cup; 8. Lebaishi Cup; 9. Tianyuan; 10. Xinren Wang (China New Stars); 11. Qiwang; 12. RICOH Pair Championship. Current Title holders are: Oisheng: Yu Bin 9P (30+ years old) ; Mingren: Ma Xiaochun 9P (30+ years old); China Individual Championship: Xie He 5P (18 years old); Jiang Ling Cup (China Team Tournament): Chongqing Team; CCTV Cup: Ma Xiaochun 9P; 7th NEC Cup: Chang Hao 9P (26 years old); Agon Cup: Yu Bin 9P; Lebaishi Cup: Chang Hao 9P; Tianyuan: Huang Yizhong 5P (20+ years old); Xinren Wang: Peng Quan 5P (teenager); Qiwang: Yu Bin 9P. The average age of the current top 10 ranked Chinese professional players is about 20 years old. - reported by Yuan Zhou
When we hear: "Pay attention!", it usually directs us to focus on some small part of a larger whole. This suggests that being attentive, or "mindful", means narrowing our perspective to a brightly illuminated spot, and we come to regard the notion of "being in the present moment" as requiring a drawing-in of our horizons. However, this is not at all what is meant, and playing Go can help us understand why.
In recent months I have become an avid fan of "turn-based go", which involves playing games on the Internet. You make a move and the web site informs your opponent that it is his or her turn via email. Each player has a set amount of time, usually several days, to respond. Making one move at a time in this expanded timeframe encourages a way of attending to the game that we easily lose in over-the-board play, namely, paying attention to the whole board.
Since you usually have several games going at the same time, you have to stop and look over the board each time you come back to a game to be sure you remember what is going on. Unlike over-the-board play, where you can get caught up in local fights and forget about the larger picture, in turn-based Go you are continually pushed into paying attention to the entire world of the game.
And that's what it means to be really "in the moment" in a game: not absorbed in a local fight, but keenly aware of the entire situation and its myriad interconnections and possibilities. Of course, since the world of a game of Go shades off into infinity, just as in life, you can never have an exhaustive grasp of the whole, but it is essential to realize that "paying attention" requires broadening your horizons, not narrowing them.
So, even when you're playing over the board, take a deep breath before each move, glance around, and try to really be in the game.
[Check http://66.39.78.200/gopcres/playl.html for a description of various turn-based Go sites.]
The Polish Go Association's Internet Competition (PGAIC) is a worldwide Internet-based, self-paired tournament played on the Kiseido Go Server (KGS) at http://kgs.kiseido.com/index.html.lang-en, by telnet to the Polish Go Association's Aurora server from http://www.pgaic.go.art.pl/rules.tmpl, or on the World InterNet Go-kaisho (WING) at http://www.wing.gr.jp/indexe.html.
We all know the KGS server as a great place to hang out, and the PGA's server seems a little tricky to access, or maybe I just don't understand telnet. That leaves WING, a quadrilingual client-based server in Japan. This server is not connected in any way with the Wings Across Calm Water online AGA Chapter, which meets regularly on KGS
If you use any of the IGS-like client-based servers, you can just set up a new account and go to the wing site. The address is "wing.gr.jp" and the port setting is "1515." Or, just load the Java applet at the above address.
Compared to bustling online communities like IGS and Yahoo, WING is a sleepy little hamlet. On a recent evening, the "who" list on the English-speaking side contained 26 names, with 7 games in progress. People were speculating whether the white stones on the top board were really being wielded by Ma Xiao-chun. At other times, you may find more than 100 players there, with no one over 1d*.
The designers of WING are trying an unusual, very short-term solution to the problem of "escapers". If your opponent loses his connection and does not reconnect within five minutes, and you suspect that he has "escaped", you have the option to "declare" victory or "dismiss" the game. The designers ask that this command be used sparingly.
The WING rating system is explicitly similar to IGS ratings. You can tell WING your rating from other servers or life experience and start there, or take your best guess, and the system should certify a rank for you within 12 games. The best way to play a rated game is to use the "ematch" command, which automatically sets up a game with the correct handicap according to ratings in the WING system. At the start of the game, WING will tell you how likely you are to beat your opponent, and what will happen to your rating if you win or lose.
The WING server does not automatically adjust your rating. Instead you will lose your * because, having one or lost too many games, your rating percentage is less than 66%. (A perfectly balanced result, say ten wins and ten losses, gives you a 100% rating percentage.) You must change your rating so that it reflects your results, and the star will reappear. If you don't want to play rated games just set your rank to NR.
WING seems like a nice place to visit once in a while -- you'll be of the few English-speaking players there.
"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool." Touchstone, As You Like It, Act 5, Scene 1.
In "Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go," Kageyama Toshiro advises us to practice the fundamentals if we want to get stronger. In the same way that ceaseless practice enables professional baseball players to field ground balls effortlessly, go players should practice Go fundamentals until it becomes second nature for them to spot certain key moves, punish their opponents' overplays, and instantly kill commonly occurring corner patterns. Practice, practice, and more practice. And in go, that means spending time doing mental gymnastics, working one's way through problem books of all descriptions.
For Kyu-level players like myself, Richard Bozulich's new series: "Mastering the Basics," is indispensable. The second book in the series: "Volume I: Five Hundred and One Opening Problems has just been published." (Volume II: One Thousand and One Life and Death Problems was released earlier this year and was reviewed in the August 19th issue of the E-Journal). The current book is designed to develop your intuition and feel for the opening, consisting of little more than page after page of opening problems. In a brief introduction, co-author Rob van Zeijst explains the importance of playing urgent moves before big moves. He also suggests how to properly evaluate opening moves that either strengthen your own stones or weaken your opponent's. These basic ideas are illustrated and reinforced over 250 pages of problems compiled by Richard Bozulich based on positions he's collected from professional and high-level amateur games.
The book's central thesis is that by correctly applying a rudimentary set of basic go principles one can fairly easily identify the most important point to play in the opening, which later will tilt the game in your favor once the serious fighting begins. Many players simply love to fight and the temptation for us is to launch full-steam ahead into premature invasions or other such maneuvers just to initiate confrontation. This superb book encourages us to practice careful consideration and calm, qualities that all strong players certainly possess.
Consistent with an emphasis on the simple and powerful, the book's layout is elegantly straightforward, with four new problems on each right-sided page and the solutions on the back of that page, which means you never have to go hunting in the back of the book for a solution. There's also a helpful hint beneath each problem; I suppose the authors must have grappled with where to place these hints - either underneath the problems or in the solutions. My personal preference would have been to have them under the solutions and my strong recommendation is that the reader cover up the hint when attempting a problem the first time.
None of the problems are devoted to the first dozen or so moves in the game, so if you're looking for basic opening lessons check out Janice Kim's books or "Get Strong at Go Volume 1: Get Strong At The Opening," before delving into this book.
While the positions that arise in my own games rarely resemble anything remotely like the positions that show up in professional games, this book does a terrific job of hammering away at some very fundamental concepts of opening strategy that will definitely serve kyu-level players well as they look for the right move in their own games. I am sure Kageyama Toshiro would approve. - available at http://www.kiseido.com/
FOR SALE: Play Go in your holiday! 10% off for all Go players at www.shafston.com jamaica (the owner, Frank Lohmann, is 13k on KGS; players name: shafston)
FOR SALE: Refrigerator Go sets for displaying (or playing) the game on
the
large laminated board attached to the metallic surface (for example, a
refrigerator - see http://www.promptpublishing.com); $45 from Michal
Lebl,
storyspyder@aol.com
FOR SALE: Go boards made of 2.5" mahogany or pine, about 17X19", with
19X19 grid (cut with small saw, not drawn) and a 9X9 or 13X13 grid on
the back. Sanded and waxed, without feet. $260 ea or $170 ea for 10 or
more.
Jim Thomas; waldomesa@cybermesa.com
WANTED: Copy of the go novel "First Kyu."
Mark Lybrand; maryesme@shore.net
WANTED: MasterGo Team volunteer to enter data into a player biography
database. No pay but get your name on the MasterGo website and,
possibly, get a free copy of the program.
Charles G. Robbins, crobbins@ctipc.com
WANTED: Human Resources Coordinator for the American Go Association. Help write & edit job descriptions, assist the AGA to seek & screen volunteers, & guide energetic volunteers into satisfying positions. Email chrisk.aga@attbi.com. Or call 206-579-8071 between 7:30A and 11:30P Pacific time.
WANTED: "All About Life and Death, Volume 1," by Cho Chikun; "The
Breakthrough to Shodan," by Naoki Miyamoto.
John Pinkerton, john.pinkerton@watsonwyatt.com
WANTED: Issues of 'Go World' from the past couple of years. Prefer
someone who has several issues to offer.
sfragman@netvision.net.il
Got Go stuff to sell, swap or want to buy? Do it here and reach more than 5,500 Go players worldwide every week at Go Classified! Send to us at journal@usgo.org
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Published by the American Go Association
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