August 11, 2003
In This Edition:
- SELF-PAIRED TOURNAMENT (TD: RUSS WILLIAMS)
CHAMPION (most wins over losses): Christopher Vu;
Hurricane (most wins): Dan Micsa;
Giant Killer (kyu with most wins against dans): David Frankel;
Kyu Killer (dan with most kyu wins): Dan Micsa;
Grasshopper (biggest rating increase): Cherry Shen;
Straight Shooter (most consecutive rank wins): Martin Lebl;
Dedicated (most games): Horst Sudhoff (tied with Martin Lebl);
Sensei (most games against weaker players): Martin Lebl;
Faithful (smallest ratings change): Benjamin Morris;
Philanthropist (most losses): Martin Lebl (tied with Horst Sudhoff);
Optimist (largest ratings decrease): J. Adrian Zimmer].
- VERY SPECIAL THANKS to the Congress Team who organized this year's weeklong go marathon: Congress Director Mike Peng; Assistant Director John Eckelkamp; Staff: Robert Cordingley, Bill Holden, Hideki Innan, Roger Mills, Jessica Rhodes, Kris Rhodes, Michael Rouen, Chris Sutter, Vincent Tam, George Wang, Vincent Wang. Robert Cordingley and Ted Peterson ran the website and Chris Cordingley did the Congress logo.
SIFU HU WINS UN-CONGRESS:
A chilly day turned sunny at the "Wish We Were There"
tournament in Tacoma, WA on August 3rd as we squinted into the near
frictionless surfaces of our uber-yellow Ing boards on the verdant grounds
of Puget Sound University, amid the pings of digital clocks and the pure
analog peals of the neighboring "Cheer Camp." There certainly was a lot to
cheer about as we were greeted by the Fantastic Four of Federal Way.
Smiling and bespectacled, Xing Xiong 5d, Richard Hu 5d, Jinhe Cui 4d, and
Steve Huang 4d cheerfully picked apart our positions and patiently pummeled
through the four rounds of our ratings run. There was one, however who was
able to withstand the might of our visiting friends. Not even the Fantastic
Four was a match for the harmonious harmony and melodious miai of Steve
Stringfellow, newly minted 6-dan. Stringfellow was undefeated until being
mysteriously called away to parts unknown, just before the final round,
leaving Sifu Hu to win the day and the Sony Clie, the 1st prize generously
donated by TD Mike Malveaux. The full report, including the merely mortal
kyu players: Stringfellow, Steve, won 3/3 then dropped; $15; Xiong, Xing won
3/4; $20 of which he donated $10 back to TGC; Hu, Richard won 3/4 (beating
Xiong in his last game); $20 + Clie; Hughes, Michael won 3/4; $15; Cui,
Jinhe, won 2/4; $10; Huang, Steve won 2/4; $10; Baghboudarain, Jason, won
2/4; $10; Malveaux, Mike, won 1/4; Hatayama, Greg, won 0/4; benefactor
certificate; Castanza, Gordon, won 0/3 then dropped; benefactor certificate.
- reported by Jason Tellin
YANG XU TOPS FENG YUN TEAM TOURNEY:
Yang XU, was an 8-game winner in the
Yun Go Club Self-Paired/School Team Competition in Piscataway, NJ July 12-July 26.
Fifty two players participated in the event, directed by Steve Bretherick and Chuck Robbins.
Other winers: 6-game winner: YAN, Jasmine; 5-game winners: HUANG, Xiaoying,
HU, Ehr-Wen.
As a special feature of this tournament, Feng Yun made herself
available for free game analyses on all three days as soon as her Saturday
classes were finished. In the team competition Feng Yun's Piscataway
students won 17 games, Livingston students 9.
SMARTGO 1.3 CHARTS SCORE:
The latest version of SmartGo features two major
outstanding new features. Score graph charts the score during the whole
game; use Analyze Game to create a score graph and identify blunders in any
of your games. See sample score graphs at
http://www.smartgo.com/t_score.htm. SGF file cleanup enables you to see all
properties in SGF files and clean them up to reduce file size. SmartGo 1.3
includes other refinements, and stronger computer play. SmartGo:Player
is $59, SmartGo:Board is $29, and all 1.x upgrades are free to registered
users. See http://www.smartgo.com for more information.
CHANGHO WINS KING'S POSITION:
In game 4 of the 37th Korean Wangwi (King
Position) Tournament, Yi (Lee) Changho took Black and defeated his teacher
Cho Hunhyun by resignation with 255 moves, and thereby successfully defended
his title 3-1. Since 1995, Lee Changho has achieved 8 consecutive titles in
this event, winning against Cho Hunhyun four times.
- reported by Dennis Hardman, from gogameworld.com
PLAYERS ADVANCE IN SAMSUNG CUP PRELIMS:
Well over 250 players from around
the world participated in this year's 8th Samsung Cup preliminary, including
174 players from the host country Korea, 48 players from Japan, 32 players
from China, 11 players from Taipei and one player from the US. After five
rounds of intense fights, 7 players from China and 9 players from Korea have
advanced, and just like last year, all the Japanese players again were
eliminated. The Samsung Cup is a knockout tournament with 32 participants in
which the semi-finals are decided in best-of-three matches. Participants
come from the Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Taiwanese professional go
associations. The remaining Korean players include both Jiang Zhujiu (Jujo)
9P and Rui Naiwei 9P. The first two rounds of the 8th Samsung Cup take place
on 8/27 and 8/29 respectively.
- reported by Dennis Hardman. From gogameworld.com
NECHANICKY TOPS TOYOTA-PANDANET EUROPEAN GO TOUR:
Winner with 113.73 points
from 7 events was Radek Nechanicky. Second with 104 from 5 events was Guo
Juan. Third with 94.04 from 9 events was Marco Firnhaber. Vladimir Danek had
65.9 and Fan Hui 62. Then came Oleg Mezhov, Csaba Mero, Ion Florescu, Du
Jingyu and Dragos Bajaneru in 10th.
[from the BGA Newsletter]
BONUS FILES: 3 brand-new original life-and-death problems from the master of tsume-go, Yilun Yang. Enjoy and look for the answers next week!
DON'T MISS ANOTHER WEEK OF THE BEST DEAL IN GO: 52 weeks of up-to-date go news, reviews, original columns PLUS game commentaries and problems for just $20 a year! Sign up today for the Games Edition at http://gm14.com/r.html?c=224880&r=224443&t=46044451&l=1&d=84782028&u=http://www.usgo.org/org/application.asp&g=0&f=84782033 and start receiving your game files next week!
"Thanks to the team for the daily bulletins - it's been great following my old mate Dan Micsa's kyu killing," adds Tony Atkins.
Thanks to Mike Peng's impeccable organization and the Congress team he assembled, the program in the Youth Room went without problems. Equipment requested magically appeared and thanks to Deedee Eccles, Pros came, and taught and played, Fujiwara-sensei appeared every afternoon and even took charge of the delivery of the pizza on the final Saturday! The young people probably played more with the professional players than any of the adults at the Congress. The program followed the traditional pattern of Lightning, Youth Pair Go, Handicap and the great Grand Prix tournaments directed by Jeff Shaevel, Terry Benson, Steve Burrall and a great team of volunteer workers including Sam Zimmerman, Jim Bonomo, Terry Heidenreich, John Hogan and Ed Kao. This team also decided to include an afternoon of small board tournaments which are very popular with the young people. This year there were 20 Dan-strength young players registered at the Congress and often there were 10 or more of them present in the room. This added a feeling of excitement to the play and there was one occasion when I looked towards the simultaneous games the professional was playing with 6 strong young people to find about a dozen adult players watching the boards. There were also beginners, enchantingly young and determined. My sincere thanks to the Youth Room team without whom it could not have been such a success, to the constant attention of the professional players, to the young people who came with such enthusiasm, focus, and energy and to their teachers who are doing such a magnificent job. The children are coming. And playing. And winning !
When I was in college in Minneapolis in the early '90s, I used to spend a lot of time playing go at a place called Hard Times. I had learned from a friend of mine who'd taught in China. The staff at the café were heavily pierced and tattooed and most of the clientele primarily chain-smoked and played chess, except for a half-dozen regulars and a few hangers-on who played go. I smoked Camels, mostly, a bad habit I retained from my service as a Marine in the first Gulf War. I would usually stroll in about 5 or 6 at night, then play until 2 or 3 in the morning. I called myself a 2 kyu and was one of the strongest guys around, even giving my sensei and friend a several stone handicap.
I don't remember why I quit playing almost a decade ago, but this spring I found myself walking into the Minneapolis coffee shop where the Twin Cities Go Club meets every Tuesday. I was very proudly back from a big media tour in Manhattan, swimming with free time and nervous energy in the wake of a successful book and an unsuccessful software company. I stopped to watch a couple of the stronger dans play a few moves, then saw one of the guys from the Hard Times. He and I had been back-and-forth a decade ago, and we sat down for an even game with me playing black. I won by resignation. I was hooked again.
I signed up on IGS and quickly dropped to 12k*. I bought a couple books and was soon a 14k*. I was desperate. Nervously, I flipped the pages of the phone book, knowing that James Kerwin 1P lived in Minneapolis. A message and a week later I was sitting at his goban, clumsily placing 10mm slate stones on the board.
I kept my go jones going during my 10-city book tour, rushing back to my hotel room each night to log into IGS from my laptop. I dropped to 10k*, then 9k*, then 7k*. Shodan, baby, yeahhhhh.
When I finished my book tour near the end of June, I was disappointed to learn that I had lost out on a fellowship to a prestigious writers' conference in mid-August. No Vermont, no cocktails with MacArthur Fellows and Guggenheim judges. I remembered that the US Go Congress was in August. Houston's no Green Mountains, but what the heck - you gotta take compensation, right?
I entered as a 5k and resigned my first three games. "Trying to outsmart everybody is the greatest folly," the fortune cookie told me. It didn't matter. I was having a blast - and learning quickly. I was also tearing up the track during the Self-Paired, racking up stone-slapping win after stone-slapping win. I could feel it. Out drinking one night with a bunch of the old-timers, I challenged the entire table to a bet: "I will show up in Rochester next year as a 1 dan! If I do, you must all buy my drinks every night; if I don't, I will buy YOUR drinks every night." Only Ron Snyder 7d had the savvy to tenuki.
"This is insane!" Mr. Saijo 8P said during his commentary on one of my games. Yeah OK so I am a little crazy and a lot stubborn. But I don't plan on being the one buying the drinks next year in Rochester.
- Joel Turnipseed is the author of BAGHDAD EXPRESS: A GULF WAR MEMOIR
AVAILABLE: Lessons from an IGS 5d. 30k-1d welcome; visit http://www.angelfire.com/oh5/icarii First lesson free.
WANTED: Players in Kodiak, Alaska. Contact Seth Minyard at Sethdid@hotmail.com or 907-486-5284 for more information about times, dates and locations.
WANTED: Players in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. Wayne Page, wdpage@pinn.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
August 30: Sacramento, CA
Davis/Sacramento Go Club Tournament
Fred Hopkins 916-965-0478 fred.hopkins@mckesson.com
August 30-September 1: Montreal, Canada
26th Canadian Open Go Championship
Steven Mays smays@videotron.ca
September 13 Livermore, CA
Vintage Go Event
Held at one of the Livermore Valley wineries, this is an informal event
where all are invited to play go, taste the local vintage, and enjoy a
day in the sun.
S. C. Herric; herrick4@llnl.gov or (925) 423-7458 days, (925) 516-2617 eves
September 20: Durham, NC
Third Annual Joe Shoenfield Memorial Marathon Go Tournament
Paul Celmer pcelmer@earthlink.net
September 21: Hoboken, NJ
Hoboken Fall Tournament
Larry Russ 201-216-5379 lruss@stevens-tech.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
GET LISTED & BOOST TURN-OUT! Got an upcoming event? Reach over 5,000 readers every week! List your Go event/news In the E-Journal: email details to us at journal@usgo.org
Ratings are on the web! Check the website; http://www.usgo.org for the full list.Published by the American Go AssociationGET YOUR TOURNAMENT RATED! Send your tournament data to ratings@usgo.org
AGA CONTACT LIST:
For a full list of AGA officers, contacts & their email addresses, go to: http://www.usgo.org/org/index.asp#contactinfo
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 mailto:journal@usgo.org