January 5, 2004
In This Edition:
MEMBERSHIP, READERSHIP SET RECORDS IN 2003:
Membership in the American
Go Association ticked up again last month, extending the unbroken string
of increases to 19 months. The AGA ended 2003 with 1,963 members,
another new all-time record and an increase of 329 members for the year.
The E-Journal ended the year with 6,246 subscribers, up 1,225. "This
record growth continues to reflect the growing popularity of the game of
go in the United States, as well as a vote of confidence in our efforts
to support the go-playing community" said AGA President Chris Kirschner.
LATEST RATINGS POSTED:
Updated ratings for tournaments reported through
the end of December are now posted at http://www.usgo.org/ratings.asp.
The following event was included in this update: Rocky Mountain Winter
Tournament, Denver, CO, December 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 February 1.
OZA DEADLINE LOOMS:
Have you registered for the Oza yet? Now's the
time! Pre-registration is REQUIRED, so don't wait till the last minute.
Register by January 10 and get a free souvenir item, your choice of a
T-shirt, cap or tote bag. Who else has registered? Check
http://www.usgo.org/usa/oza.asp
to see lists of registered players in New York, alphabetically and by rank.
Don't miss the biggest tournament of the year!
SCHAUMBURG MOVES:
The Schaumburg (IL) Go Club has a new venue at the
Caribou Coffee Shop, 1183 N Roselle Rd in Hoffman Estates, IL. The club
meets Thursdays from 6-9P.
FENG YUN AT PRINCETON:
Feng Yun 9P will be teaching a series of seven
lessons at the Princeton Go Club on Wednesday evenings this spring,
roughly every other week starting Feb. 5. For more info, contact Rick
Mott, rickmott@alumni.princeton.edu
YUAN ZHOU IN DC:
Yuan Zhou, 7 dan, continues his regular first Friday
teaching sessions at the Greater Washington Go Club this Friday, January
9 at 8:30P in the basement of the Cedar Lane Unitarian Church, 9601
Cedar Lane, Bethesda (disregard any notices saying the next event is in
March). 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
MCKEE PHOTO QUIZ WINNER:
James McKee correctly identified last week's
homepage photo as the oversized go board on the outside of the Seattle
Go Center. Collecting his bonus points for explaining the significance
of the game, McKee reported that "The game itself depicts the position
of the championship game played seven miles outside Hiroshima on August
6, 1945." One of the most famous games in go history, the "Bomb Game"
featured Iwamoto Kaoru and Hashimoto Utaro in the second game of the
third title series for the Honinbo. McKee goes on to quote from
AsianWeek: "The title match ended amid shattered windows and streams of
injured refugees fleeing the blast of the first atomic bomb. What
Iwamoto saw that day affected him so deeply that he shifted his life's
focus from playing go at the highest levels to becoming a unique
ambassador for the game." Iwamoto went on to dedicate his life to
teaching go and founded both the Seattle and New York Go Centers.
THIS WEEK'S PHOTO QUIZ: tell us at which go club this week's photo was
taken and you could be the next Photo Quiz winner! Bonus points if you
can identify the players. Check it out at http://www.usgo.org/index.asp
CHINESE DOMINATE CHUNLUN CUP:
After two rounds, the Chinese team is
dominating the 5th Chunlan Cup. Six out of the eight third-round seats
are taken by Chinese players, who managed to eliminate many strong
opponents. The remaining players are Wang Lei 8p of China, Peng Qiang 8p
of China, Yi Changho 9p of Korea, Chang Hao 9p of China, Gu Li 7p of
China, Zhou Heyang 9p of China, Cho U 9p of Japan, Hu Yaoyu 7p of China.
Michael Redmond 9p lost to Gu Li and Guo Juan 5p lost to Hu Yaoyu in the
first round. Also eliminated were Cho Hunhyun 9p of Korea, Yi Sedol 9p
of Korea, Yu Bin 9p of China, Cho Chikun 9p of Japan, and Hane Naoki 9p
of Japan, among others. Game records can be downloaded at
http://igo-kisen.hp.infoseek.co.jp/5cl.html
IT'S GOOD TO BE PRO:
According to www.gogameworld.com, the ten highest
paid professional go players for 2003 (yearly income) are: 1: Yi
Ch'ang-ho 9p, Korea - $862,000; 2: Yamashita Keigo 9p, Japan - $756,000;
3: Cho U 9p, Japan (b. Taiwan) - $685,000;
4: Yoda Norimoto 9p, Japan - $587,000; 5: O Rissei 9p, Japan (b.
Taiwan) - $483,000; 6: Yi Se-tol 9p, Korea - $430,000; 7: Cho Chikun 9p,
Japan (b. Korea) - $404,000; 8: Hane Naoki 9p, Japan - $404,000; 9: Cho
Hunhyun 9p, Korea - $363,000; 10: Ryu Shikun 9p, Japan (b. Korea) - $289,000.
- reported by Dennis Hardman
WENHAO LI WINS LONDON OPEN:
The 30th London Open, a major stop in the
Toyota-Pandanet European Go Tour, had 127 players, of whom several had
traveled from abroad including four from the USA, three from China, two
from Korea, and two from Japan. After seven rounds, there was a four-way
tie for first place with six wins each! After an SOS tie-breaker the
order became: 1: Wenhao Li (5d China), 2: Email Nijhuis (6d
Netherlands), 3: Radek Nechanicky (6d Czechia), 4: Li Shen (5d China),
5: Ning Li (6d USA), 6: Benjamin Tauber (5d Denmark) and Lionel Fischer
(4d France), 8: Matthew Cocke (5d UK), 9: T. Mark Hall (4d UK), 10:
Young Kim (5d UK). Players with seven wins out of eight were Dominic
Schuhmacher (9k Switzerland) and Janne Jalkanen (4k Finland), while
Hichem Aktouche (12k France), Thomas Pototschnig (6k Germany), Uwe
Glauch (4k Germany), Esa Seuranen (2k Finland), and Per Schachter (1d
Germany) left with 6 wins. Players winning six or more games received a
wooden go stone and all players on 5 wins got a certificate. David
Frankel (1k USA) got the "furthest traveled" prize, and Ken Dackombe
(25k UK) was the youngest player attending.
There were five winning pairs in the Rengo played on the 29th of
December: Michael Marz (3d Germany) / Manuela Lindemeyer (1d Germany),
Jasmin Grossmann (4k Germany) / Tobias Klaus (1k Germany), Madeleine
Roth (unknown) / Benjamin Teuber (5d Germany), William Brooks (3k UK) /
Hichem Aktouche (12k France), and Thomas Pototschnig (6k Germany) /
Dominic Schumacher (9k Switzerland). The winner of the Lightning
competition was Emil Nijhuis (6d Netherlands), beating Radek Nechanicky
(6d Czechia) by just one point in an exciting match. Three players
dominated the continuous 9x9. Using the Leiden Squareroot Formula Hichem
Aktouche (12k France) won with 27.5/36, Jiri Keller (3k UK) was second
with 23/36 and third place was taken by William Brooks (3k UK) with
21/35. Tim Hunt (3d UK) put his game up for the public to enjoy and
criticise, led by Radek Nechanicky (6d Czechia). Afterwards it was off
to a Mediterranean restaurant or various New Year celebrations.
- from the British Go News, reported by Ethan Baldridge
EURO GO UPDATED:
The web address we've been listing for European go
tournaments is out of date, reports European Go Federation President
Tony Atkins. For the latest list of, check out
http://www.european-go.org/TOURNAMENTS/TListbyDate.htm
"We are hoping to replace this with an even better listing soon!" adds Atkins.
Today's bonus files include a commentary by Noriyuki Nakayama (from his popular "What's Wrong With That Move?" series), the clever solution to last week's "2004" life-and-death problem by Yilun Yang and a useful discussion by James Kerwin 1P on how to deal with the taisha joseki.
GET STRONGER IN 2004: Get the weekly game commentaries and problem files PLUS the E-Journal's go news, reviews and columns AND the brand-new 2003 American Go Yearbook! All for just $30; join the AGA today at http://www.usgo.org/org/application.asp
Galactic Go is about 3- stone handicap games. Why? It's never explained. Even though this seems like a narrow subject for such a grand title, the subject is narrowed even further with white's first move limited to the 3-4 point in Volumes 1 and 2. In Volume 2, Black's move of the one space high approach (5-4) is examined in most of the chapters. The book mentions a possible target audience ranging from 4k to 4d but this seems a bit of a reach.
"Galactic Go Volume 2" offers no discussion of strategic concepts for 3-stone handicap games, just in-depth analysis of 20 games between amateur and professional players. The analysis is very detailed in the openings with at times complicated joseki analysis. But the level of detail goes down sharply as you progress through the middle game, with next to no attention for the endgame.
The book uses a problem/answer style to move through the games which made the book difficult to follow. There are a large number of diagrams, usually several to a page with a couple sentences of explanation for each. The game and problem/answer diagrams are all mixed together and the actual game sequences are rarely marked as such. Once I started approaching each chapter/game as a series of problems and not as a game, it became easier to follow but I still felt lost sometimes.
Production problems such as bad page numbering and spelling errors plague "Volume 2" and on some pages diagrams repeat with no added value. At least once, I could not find the number move that the explanation mentioned.
Final word: I came away from "Galactic Go Volume 2" with some interesting ideas but the narrow subject and the difficultly of extracting those ideas became big negatives. Unless you have an interest in detailed analysis of high level 3 stone games, I cannot recommend Volume 2.
Good news for Janice Kim fans! Janice's "Learn To Play Go" series has attracted thousands of fans. The first four volumes appeared between 1994 and 1997, but since then readers have had to make do with occasional columns in the American Go Journal and E-Journal. The six-year wait has ended with the publication of Volume V: "The Palace of Memory," the largest volume yet in the series. We learn to create "Templates of Fighting . . . assemblages of seemingly unrelated 'good shapes' that I've found constantly recurring in positions between skilled players," like "martial art forms." Available from Janice Kim at http://www.samarkand.net or from Amazon.com.
Another long wait has ended, as Tuttle Publishers retires its
fifty-year-old title "Go: The National Game of Japan." Replacing Arthur
Smith's archaic analysis is "Go! More Than A Game," Peter Shotwell's
blow-by-blow expedition through the wild and woolly history of go around
the world. Relying on professionals like Boston-based pro Huiren Yang
and Feng Yun, the former World Women's Champion now living in New
Jersey, Shotwell offers a clear, game-oriented introduction to the
details of the game itself, but what sets this book apart is the depth
of detail in the last forty pages. Only "The Go Player's Almanac"
offers more detailed information. Get it at http://www.amazon.com for
30% off!
- Roy Laird
AVAILABLE: Hotel room at OZA go tournament. Are you coming to the big Oza go tournament in NY? I have reserved a hotel room with two beds in the same hotel in which the tournament is being held. Looking for a non-smoker to share the room. See http://www.usgo.org/usa/oza.asp for tournament and hotel details. Eric Osman ericosman@rcn.com 781-893-5513
SEEKING SVACHA & THE WATSONS: Peter Shotwell is looking for Shawn Svacha and Michael and Diana Watson to give them their reviewers' copies of 'Go! More Than a Game' He doesn't have their current email addresses.
FOR SALE: Exotic Go Stones for the serious collector. Semi-precious
10mm x 21.5mm; lapis, jade, carnelian, jasper and more.
http://www.algorithmicartisan.com/gostones
(NOTE: the E-Journal is very interested in reader reviews of these stones; email us at
journal@usgo.org)
WANTED: Go-playing/teaching K-12 educators to share ideas and plans for promoting go within schools. Contact Brian J. Olive at oliveb@ocps.k12.fl.us
Got go stuff to sell, swap or want to buy? Do it here and reach more than 6,000 Go players worldwide every week at Go Classified! Send to us at journal@usgo.org
January 17 & 18: Seattle, WA
2nd Toyota/Denso North American Oza Championship
Jon Boley 206-545-1424 jon@seattlegocenter.org
January 17 & 18: New York, NY
2nd Toyota/Denso North American Oza Championship
Roy Laird 212-662-5501 roylaird@nyc.rr.com
January 17-19: Evanston, IL
James Kerwin Workshop
Mark Rubenstein 847-869-6020 mark@easyaspi.com
January 18: Boston, MA
MGA Winter Handicap Tournament
Zack Grossbart 617-497-1232 zack@grossbart.com
January 23 & 24: Houston, TX
Winter 2004 Tournament
Christopher Vu 281-480-8615 wasonlyyesterday@yahoo.com
January 31: Gainesville, FL
3-Board Team Tournament
Devin Casadey igoclubuf@yahoo.com
http://plaza.ufl.edu/lavigne/
REGISTRATION DEADLINE: January 10
For the European Go Calendar see http://www.european-go.org/TOURNAMENTS/TListbyDate.htm
GET LISTED & BOOST TURN OUT! Got an upcoming event? Reach over 6,000 readers 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; 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
Text material published in the AMERICAN GO E JOURNAL may be reproduced by any recipient: please credit the AGEJ as the source. PLEASE NOTE that attached files, including commented game records, MAY NOT BE published, re-distributed, or made available on the web without the explicit written permission of the Editor of the E-Journal. Please direct inquiries to journal@usgo.org
Articles appearing in the E-Journal represent the opinions of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the American Go Association.
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