AMERICAN GO E-JOURNAL

News from the American Go Association

February 24, 2003

In This Edition:

• SCOREBOARD: Toronto, CANADA
• GAME COMMENTARY: Catch a Rising Star
• GO CLUBS: Milford, NH; Santa Barbara CA
• THE GO PLAYER'S GUIDE TO CANADA: Toronto
• THE EMPTY BOARD: Language Games
• GO CLASSIFIED
• AGA CONTACT LIST

CALENDAR OF EVENTS (U.S.)

March 2: Sunnyvale, CA
7th Jujo Jiang Cup Youth Goe Tournament
Mingjiu Jiang 650-969-2857

March 9: Northampton, MA
Space-Crime Continuum Spring Go Tournament
Chris Aylott 413-584-0994 go@spacecrime.com

March 13-16: Germantown, MD
Greater Washington Go Club's Yang Workshop
Anand Modak 301-513-8233 amodak@mcps.k12.md.us

March 22: Arlington, VA
Cherry Blossom
Allan Abramson 703-684-7676 mediate8@worldnet.att.net

March 29: Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia Tournament and Banquet
Phil Straus 215-568-0595 pstraus@post.harvard.edu

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: Toronto, CANADA

Division A (5d-1k): 1st: Chris Garlock, 2d (Wash., DC); 2nd: Harry Weisbaum, 1d (Tor).
Division B (2k-6k): 1st: Ziya Kadioglu, 5k (Tor); 2nd: Jia Yu, 3k (Roch., NY)
Division C (10k-17k): 1st: Justin Kramer, 11k (Roch., NY); 2nd: Timothy Lillicrap, 12k (Tor).
Division D (17k-25k): Milan Davidovic, 10k (Tor); 2nd: Ryan Dadsun, 25k.

GAME COMMENTARY: Catch a Rising Star

This game commentary is used by permission from the subscription service for games commented by Alexandre Dinerchtein at http://www.go4go.net/english/commentary/index.jsp

A special bonus problem file today is "The Squeeze Attack"

To receive the weekly game commentaries, join the AGA today at http://gm14.com/r.html?c=179200&r=178795&t=46044451&l=1&d=70738706&u=http://www.usgo.org/org/application.asp&g=0&f=70738710

GO CLUBS: Milford, NH; Santa Barbara CA

Go players in Santa Barbara CA area can email rdoctors@cox.net

Go players in the West Lafayette, Indiana/Purdue area; e-mail Chris Kubica at ckubica@insightbb.com

THE GO PLAYER'S GUIDE TO CANADA: Toronto

Spread out over a country that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans and all the way north to the Arctic Circle, Canadian go players are a rare but hardy breed. Found in places as far-flung as Saskatoon, Canadian go players are primarily concentrated in the major cities of Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver. The later two cities, thanks to substantial asian populations, support both Korean and Western go clubs.

Although undoubtedly played in the country for many years, organized go in Canada has a relatively brief history. The Canadian Go Association was founded in the mid 1970's and though there may be as many as 10,000 actual go players across the country, CGA membership has hovered around 200, as the organization has focused more on education and event organizing than membership-building, according to CGA President Philip Waldron, a young 5-dan familiar to many U.S. Go Congress attendees as a regular representative of his homeland at the Ing Cup and other major competitions.

"Toronto has by far the largest concentration of players," Waldron told me during a brief visit to Toronto last weekend. "There's a Chinese club, two or three Korean clubs and a couple of clubs run by westerners." The CGA webpage, http://www.go-canada.org/ has contact and location information on these and all Canadian clubs, as well as information on the Canadian go scene.

The Church Street go club, where Saturday's tournament was held, has been meeting in the same location "going on fifteen years now," says Waldron, who first learned the game in high school thanks to the legendary outreach efforts of Toronto go organizer Pat Thompson, who brought the game to hundreds of school-children. When I lived in Upstate New York, I used to drive up to Toronto regularly for visits to the Church Street club, as well as a smoky Korean club off of the famed Yonge Street that Waldron assures me still exists, though exhaustion and ragged throat precluded a visit there last weekend.

Toronto regularly hosts the Canadian Open, traditionally held on Labor (or, as the Canadians call it, Labour) Day weekend and the Toronto Open has been held, off and on, for many years, almost always at the University of Toronto's famed Hart House, an impressive and imposing Victorian-era oak-paneled pile of ivied granite that makes a cameo appearance in "Searching for Bobby Fischer."

Canadian go is known for a unique over-time system in which increasing numbers of stones are added for each period ( i.e. 20 in the first 5 minutes, 30 in the next, 40 in the next and so on); this ensures timely tournaments, though not nearly as well as last Saturday's "sudden death" rule, which wrapped up the tournament a full hour earlier than the scheduled 5 p.m. close.

THE EMPTY BOARD: Language Games

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said that the limits of your language are the limits of your world. There is a lot of truth in this. It is very difficult to have a clear grasp of things we lack the vocabulary to talk about. Like almost any entertaining idea, this also applies to go.

At one time American players often tried to learn as many Japanese go terms as possible. Some found it an effective way to intimidate other players, but it also made it possible to talk about the game with a kind of precision that was impossible otherwise. While a few Japanese terms have proved indispensable, such as hane, ko, and atari, nowadays we use English translations for some Japanese terms, such as "shortage of liberties" for "damezumari". Many other useful terms have simply been dropped, however, and this has led to a problem.

Of course, we don't need Japanese terms, but we do need a fairly complex go vocabulary. Take ko, for example. Without expressions that clearly distinguish different kinds of ko we easily fall into muddled thinking and poor playing. Many players don't have names for different kinds of kos at their disposal, which easily leads them to look at all kos as though they were essentially similar. This is a big mistake. There are kos where both players face the same risk (even kos) and there are one-sided kos ("flower-viewing" kos), that is, kos where one player has almost nothing at stake and the other faces a large loss. Finding one of these can let you win a lost game. Then there are kos where you will have to give the other player more than two moves elsewhere in order to win, usually called "approach move" kos-a very expensive kind of ko if you must win it to stay in the game. If these distinctions are clearly marked in our vocabularies we are much more likely to notice the difference in our games.

So sharpen up your vocabulary if you want to sharpen up your play.

[Past Empty Board columns are archived at http://www.slateandshell.com/billcobb.asp ]

GO CLASSIFIED

VETTERS WANTED!
For my new book, tentatively entitled "Progress Fast In Go, From Beginner To Intermediate".
Please email me for details.
Many thanks in advance.
Milton N. Bradley bradleym@villagenet.com

FOR SALE: copy of the video of "The Go Masters". enchantedplace@earthlink.net,

WANTED: copy of First Kyu by Dr. Sung-Hwa Hong. d-barnes@pacbell.net.

FOR SALE: Sets of old "Go World" magazines: 1-48 and 1-15; 17-25; 50-56 and individual copies #22, #40, #43, and #51. Check them out at john.hartman17@verizon.net
Or email dobe.doinat@verizon.net

Got Go stuff to sell, swap or want to buy? Do it here and reach more than 5,000 Go players worldwide every week at Go Classified! Send to us at journal@usgo.org

Ratings are on the web! Check the website; http://www.usgo.org for the full list.

GET YOUR TOURNAMENT RATED! Send your tournament data to ratings@usgo.org

AGA CONTACT LIST:

Published by the American Go Association
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