November 3, 2003
In This Edition:
RATINGS UPDATED:
Updated ratings for tournaments reported through the end of
October are now posted at http://www.usgo.org/ratings.asp. The following
events were included in this update: Florida Open Championship, Orlando, FL,
July 2003; Chicago Fall Handicap Tournament, IL, September 2003; Joe
Schoenfield Memorial Marathon, Durham, NC, September 2003; Massachusetts Go
Association Fall Handicap Tournament, MA, October 2003; Dote Memorial, San
Francisco, CA, October 2003; Feng Yun Team & Self Paired Tournaments,
Piscataway, NJ, October 2003; Pumpkin Classic, Arlington, VA, October 2003;
UPS Fall Tournament, Tacoma, WA, October 2003. If you played in a tournament
that you think should have been included but is not in this list, please
contact the tournament organizers and ask them to send us their data.
Tournament data for rating should be submitted by e mail to
ratings@usgo.org. The next scheduled ratings update will be December 1.
- reported by Paul Matthews, Ratings Statistician
YUAN ZHOU AT GWGC:
Yuan Zhou 7d continues his regular first Friday teaching
sessions at the Greater Washington Go Club this coming Friday, Nov. 7 at
8:30P in the basement of the Cedar Lane Unitarian Church, 9601 Cedar Lane,
Bethesda. Bring game records to participate ($5), or observe for free.
Don't have a game? Come early (official opening time 7P) to play and record
a game.
- Haskell Small; haskellsmall@starpower.net
BOARD MEMBERS TO FACE RECALL VOTE:
The four AGA Executive Board members who
recently voted to oust AGA President Chris Kirschner now face a vote on
their own futures. Last Wednesday, AGA Secretary Susan Weir informed Acting
Board Chair Bob O'Malley and President Dee Dee Eckles that the required
number of AGA chapters had submitted petitions calling for a recall of Board
members O'Malley, Chen-dao Lin, John Stephenson and David Dinhofer. AGA
Database Manager Sam Zimmerman, who has supervised past AGA elections, has
been asked to oversee this one as well, and is expected to announce a voting
plan and timetable soon. In related news, Weir also reported that 32 chapter
representatives have now signed onto the open letter urging the Board to
reconsider the October 16 decision to replace Kirschner.
GARLOCK TOPS EMPTY SKY:
Former Rochesterian Chris Garlock 2d won last
weekend's Empty Sky Go Club Ing Tournament in Rochester, New York.
Thirty-four players competed in the 5-round event November 1-2, which was
organized by ESGC President Greg Lefler and directed by Chuck Robbins (who,
despite driving all the way up from Lancaster, PA, generously byed himself
out two rounds to keep the field even). "We'd like to thank the Ing
Foundation for its support," said Lefler. "Using the Ing grant for prizes
allows us to use the registration fees for discounts for students, morning
refreshments, etc. We really appreciate it...thanks!" Complete results:
SECTION A (1d-3d) - 1st: Chris Garlock, 2d, $90; 2nd: Chuck Robbins, 3d,
$80; 3rd: Jia Yu, 2d, $70. SECTION B (1k-4k) - 1st: Nathan Curtis, 4k, $65;
2nd: Saul Lapidus, 1k, $55; 3rd: Jim Fienup, 3k, $45. SECTION C (7k-10k) -
1st: Yuan Yuan Wang, 9k, $65; 2nd: Ed Brannin, 7k, $55; 3rd: William
Baretsky, 8k, $45. SECTION D (12k-15k) - 1st: Scott Agnew, 12k, $65; 2nd:
Ben Spillers, 12k, $55; 3rd: Carrie Gustavson, 13k, $45. SECTION E
(16k-26k) - 1st: Becky Mulligan, 18k, $65; 2nd: Stephen Ranger, 20k, $55;
3rd: Steve Person, 18k, $45
PHOTO OF THE WEEK:
Be the first to name the players in the Go Photo of the
Week on the AGA's homepage at http://www.usgo.org/ and win a prize! Email
us at journal@usgo.org
O MEIEN HOLDS IN OZA, YAMASHITA UPSETS IN TENGEN:
The first games of the
best of five Oza and Tengen title matches were played on October 30th with
the title holder winning one and the challenger winning the other. In the
51st Oza, title holder O Meien 9p played Black and defeated challenger Cho U
9p by resignation. In the 29th Tengen, current title holder Hane Naoki 9p,
playing White, lost to challenger Yamashita Keigo 9p by 1.5 points.
Yamashita's win comes on the heels of his 4:1 loss to Yoda Norimoto 9p in
the most recent Meijin title match. Cho U, on the other hand, could be a bit
distracted by his recent engagement to Women's Honinbo title holder
Kobayashi Izumi (see story below). Game records can be found at
http://www.go4go.net.
- reported by Dennis Hardman
HONINBO TITLE HOLDERS LINK STONES:
Men's Honinbo title holder Cho U 9p and
Women's Honinbo title holder Kobayashi Izumi 5p have announced that they
will be engaged to be married on November 9th and will marry in the spring
of 2004. Cho, born in 1980 in Taipei, China, defeated Kato Masao 9p in July
of this year to become the current Honinbo and also became the youngest 9
dan pro. Kobayashi, born in 1977 in Tokyo, Japan, is the eldest daughter of
Kobayashi Koichi 9p and the late Kobayashi Reiko 7p. Her grandfather was the
legendary Kitani Minoru 9p.
- reported by Dennis Hardman
KOREANS ELIMINATE OPPONENTS IN 8TH LG CUP:
On October 28th, in Shanghai,
Koreans Mok Chin seok 7p, Cho Han seung 6p,
Yi (Lee) Ch'ang ho 9p, and Won
Seong chin 5p overpowered their opponents to take all four semi final spots
in the 8th Annual LG Cup World Baduk Championship. In this quarter final
round, both Wang Lei 8p and Chang Hao 9p of China were defeated by their
younger Korean opponents, Mok and Won respectively. This will be the fourth
year in a row that a Korean player has won this championship. All European,
Japanese, and North American players were eliminated in the first round in
June. The semi finals will take place on February 9th in Cheju Do, Korea and
will pit Ch'ang ho against Seong chin and Han seung against Chin seok.
- reported by Dennis Hardman
KOBAYASHI MAKES IT 2:1 IN WOMEN'S HONINBO:
The third game of the 22nd
Women's Honinbo was played on October 29th in Tokyo, with Kobayashi Izumi 5p
(playing White) winning against Yashiro Kumiko 5p by 7.5 points. Kobayashi
now leads the best of five title match 2:1. The next game will be held on
November 5th, again in Tokyo, and can be viewed live at
HTTP://www.nihonkiin.or.jp.
- reported by Dennis Hardman
OTHER ASIAN GO NEWS IN BRIEF
(compiled from HTTP://www.kyoto.zaq.ne.jp/momoyama/news/news.html)
Today's bonus file is a problem is selected from Volume III of "Learn to Play Go" by Janice Kim, published by Good Move Press and available from http://www.samarkand.net
Christmas is coming! Get yourself the gift that keeps on giving year-round: join the AGA or sign up for the Games Edition today at http://postsnet.com/r.html?c=250636&r=250135&t=46044451&l=1&d=84911219&u=http://www.usgo.org/org/application.asp&g=0&f=84911226 and get game commentaries and problem files PLUS the E-Journal's go news, reviews and columns. And you won't even have to wait for Christmas: your game files will start arriving next week!
At an early lesson, I asked James Kerwin 1P whether he preferred that I call him "Mr. Kerwin," "Jim" or the traditional "Sensei." He turned the question around, "What would you like to call me?" A part of me deeply wanted to call him "Sensei," but only if compelled to, since the rest of me found the idea risible. I am a child of DIY, early 80s Minneapolis punk, and hey, in the Marine Corps I had been a corporal three times and a lance corporal four. So I call him "Jim."
Which isn't to say that I don't blush when he rails at me, or that I didn't feel deep pride when he finally moved me down from nine stones to eight. His authority is a given, a part of the deep eros between master and disciple that is ineradicable by even the deepest of ironies-such as that between Socrates and his interlocutors in the Platonic dialogues. Or in Toshiro Kageyama, one of the writers I spend plenty of time with in the form of his "Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go." I love this pithy charmer from one of his teachers: "I know Kajiwara lost, but the way you play is so asinine that it makes your opponents light-headed, that's all." We crave resistance.
Ultimately, this is the basis of our great desire for human teachers, as against all the possibilities in books. Books can give you an idea -- even a very good one -- but they cannot show up your misapprehensions or provide you with the ability to react to resistance to that idea. The ancient Greeks distrusted the written word for this very idea: it's fixity meant it was unable to pay attention to the moment at hand.
Kerwin and I once talked along these lines after a lesson, and his words apply to much more than go: "Any move that isn't perfect is a mistake. Go is the pursuit of perfection. If you think of variance from perfection, 30 kyu is very wide. as you get better, the gap gets smaller. A top level player is concerned with these variances - mistakes -- in a way that may not be perceptible. If you listen to their criticism, it's very harsh and seems a bit curious. But it is only by investing in that difference that you get to their level. In this way, a go player's struggle is with himself, his habits. Habit is by nature an imperfect action -- it must be to function in complex world -- perfect is being fully attuned to what is actually going on."
How lucky I count myself then, to have a teacher who does not fall into his habits with me, but instead pays attention to my own incomprehensions, struggles and wrong headedness, drawing me toward previously invisible nuances and new lines of thinking. How I honor my teacher is shown, not in the names I call him, but in the manner in which I strive to alter my play and my self.
This book deals with the rather narrow (but valuable) techniques of winning
localized life-and-death fights occurring between groups of stones where it
is a race to see which group lives and which group dies. The book describes
the basics of what actually counts as a liberty, categories of liberties
(e.g., inside vs. outside), how these liberties figure in the fight, and the
types of fights that can occur (Type 1, Type 2 with a Ko on the outside
liberties, etc.). It provides the reader with "formulas" for evaluating a
fight without having to explicitly read out every line of play. The trick is
to correctly count the number and type of liberties to determine the type of
fight so that one can ultimately apply the "formula". Later chapters show
how the techniques are used in realistic fighting situations, and provide
about 50 problems and several commented professional games to drive the
concepts home. Well written and nicely laid out, I would recommend this book
to players of all strengths, particularly those with a mid-kyu ranking.
However, this book should be valuable to even the strongest player because,
as the preface points out, "Many players, even quite strong ones, have a
poor grasp of these fundamentals."
http://www.slateandshell.com/
FOR SALE: 7mm glass stones & half-inch folding board, both Japanese. $45, plus shp. Will sell separately. Anton Ninno, Syracuse, NY: antonninno@yahoo.com (10/20)
WANTED: Hackensack, NJ area go players of moderate to high strength willing to do a demonstration some time later in the school year. milkyway_locomotive@yahoo.com (10/20/)
WANTED: Look for go/weiqi/baduk players in the Schaumburg IL area who can teach a beginner (like me) or maybe hold regular sessions in Barnes and Noble, Schaumburg Library or Caribou coffee. I'll help in forming a club in the area. Email asian_dude@yahoo.com (10/13)
WANTED: Professional go player and American Go Journal contributing editor James Kerwin is now accepting game records for a new E-Journal feature. Kerwin will review selected games online with both players and the game, with commentary, will then appear in the E-Journal. There is no cost to players, but at least one must be a member of the American Go Association. Please send .sgf game records to E-Journal Assistant Bill Cobb at wmscobb@comcast.net (10/6)
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
November 9: Lancaster, PA
Hobgoblin's Self-Paired Go tournament
Sam Zimmerman szimmerman@wareunl.com
November 15 & 16: College Park, MD
15th Mid Atlantic Regional Go Championship
Ken Koester 412 267 0487 kkoester@riva.net
http://www.wam.umd.edu/~smount/MidAtlantic.html
November 15 & 16: Houston, TX
2003 Houston Go Club Fall Tournament
Mike Peng 281 228 4233 pmpeng@swbell.net
November 22: Princeton, NJ
Princeton Fall Self Paired
Rick Mott 609 466 1602 rickmott@alumni.princeton.edu
January 17 19, 2004: Evanston, IL
James Kerwin Workshop
Mark Rubenstein 847 869 6020 mark@easyaspi.com
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
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 MAILTO: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
Published by the American Go Association
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