It was a beautiful Saturday in Tacoma, March 29, 2003. 30 go players from
Seattle, Federal Way, Tacoma, and Oregon met at University of Puget Sound
for our first AGA-rated tournament, and it was good. Heartfelt thanks to
everyone who came for supporting our fledgling AGA chapter, and kudos to
Steve Stringfellow for doing such a good job his first time out as
Tournament Director.
Special thanks are due to organizers from other go clubs who greatly
contributed to the tournament's success -- David Ma of the Seattle
Chinese Go Club (now in Federal Way) for bringing go sets and strong
competition; Jon Boley of the Seattle Go Center
for bringing the clocks and a carpool of players, and for publicity; and
Glenn Peters for trekking up from Portland with Peter Letts and
Matt Saffell, and for publicizing our event on his
Oregon Go website.
One interesting feature of this tournament was the rating distribution.
As best we can remember, this was the strongest tournament fielded in the
Pacific Nortwest recently. 20% of the players were 6-dans, and more than
50% of the players were 1-dan or stronger. I hope that our tournaments
always attract such strong players, while filling in the weaker ranks a bit
too.
(The Corvallis Spring Tournament
on May 3, 2003, promises to have a similarly strong group of players...
Exciting times for Go in the Pacific Northwest!)
Here are pictures from the tournament. Clicking a picture will open
a larger image. I'm sorry they're so dark -- my digital camera seems
to set the exposure only for the immediate foreground. If I ever get
some kind of image manipulation software, I'll lighten them up.
Thanks to Sgt. Troy Ballard and Korean amateur 5-dan Kyung Hui Ballard,
who have recently moved near Tacoma, for wielding the camera while I
was otherwise occupied.
Here is the table of tournament results. Steve Stringfellow only got to play one game because he was Tournament Director, poor guy. Pairing was mostly done by hand, by Steve, with some assistance from Christoph Gerlach's MacMahon software. The kid who won, Jeffery Wang, is a player to watch. He is only about 18 or 19 years old, and currently a student at Bellevue Community College.
| Place | Name | Rating | Club | MMS | r1 | r2 | r3 | r4 | Pt | SOS | SOSOS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wang, Jeffrey | 6d | SEA | 38 | 7+ | 4+ | 2+ | -- | 3 | 108.5 | 329.0 |
| 2 | Ma, Dong | 6d | FW | 37 | 3+ | 7+ | 1- | -- | 2 | 110.0 | 328.0 |
| 3 | Boley, Jon | 6d | SEA | 37 | 2- | 8+ | 6+ | -- | 2 | 108.5 | 326.5 |
| 4 | Ham, Chang | 6d | SEA | 36.5 | 8+ | 1- | -- | -- | 1 | 108.0 | 324.0 |
| 5 | Stringfellow, Steve | 5d | TAC | 36 | -- | -- | 8+ | -- | 1 | 102.0 | 314.5 |
| 6 | Xiong, Xing | 5d | SEA | 35.5 | -- | 11+ | 3- | -- | 1 | 106.0 | 311.0 |
| 7 | Hubbell, Rick | 6d | SEA | 35 | 1- | 2- | 9- | -- | 0 | 111.0 | 321.5 |
| 8 | Cui, Jinhe | 6d | SEA | 35 | 4- | 3- | 5- | -- | 0 | 110.5 | 318.5 |
| 9 | Dong, Chungrei | 4d | FW | 34 | 14- | 12- | 7+ | -- | 1 | 103.0 | 302.5 |
| 10 | Hu, Richard | 3d | ? | 34 | 11- | 16+ | 12+ | -- | 2 | 101.0 | 291.0 |
| 11 | Huang, Steve | 3d | SEA | 34 | 10+ | 6- | 16+ | -- | 2 | 100.5 | 301.5 |
| 12 | Letts, Peter | 2d | OR | 33 | 15+ | 9+ | 10- | -- | 2 | 96.0 | 300.0 |
| 13 | Kim, Paul | 2d | SEA | 32.5 | 16- | 14+ | -- | -- | 1 | 95.0 | 283.0 |
| 14 | Hayashi, Roy | 1d | TAC | 32 | 9+ | 13- | 15+ | -- | 2 | 95.5 | 294.0 |
| 15 | Horn, Jeff | 1d | SEA | 31 | 12- | 17+ | 14- | -- | 1 | 96.0 | 281.5 |
| 16 | Fukuda, Frank | 1d | SEA | 31 | 13+ | 10- | 11- | -- | 1 | 94.5 | 296.5 |
| 17 | LePore, Mike | 1k | TAC | 30 | 18+ | 15- | 19- | -- | 1 | 90.0 | 272.0 |
| 18 | Boscole, Jeff | 2k | SEA | 29 | 17- | 19+ | 20- | -- | 1 | 91.0 | 255.0 |
| 19 | McKee, James | 3k | SEA | 29 | 21+ | 18- | 17+ | -- | 2 | 85.0 | 263.0 |
| 20 | Saffell, Matt | 4k | OR | 29 | 24+ | 22+ | 18+ | -- | 3 | 80.0 | 252.0 |
| 21 | Peters, Glenn | 4k | OR | 28 | 19- | 23+ | 22+ | -- | 2 | 82.0 | 241.0 |
| 22 | Hogan, John | 3k | SEA | 27 | 23- | 20- | 21- | -- | 0 | 88.0 | 230.0 |
| 23 | Malveaux, Mike | 7k | TAC | 25 | 22+ | 21- | 29+ | -- | 2 | 68.0 | 207.5 |
| 24 | Sato, Akira | 7k | SEA | 24 | 20- | 25- | 26+ | -- | 1 | 73.0 | 213.0 |
| 25 | New, Gordon | 8k | SEA | 24 | 26+ | 24+ | 27- | -- | 2 | 72.0 | 181.5 |
| 26 | Brown, Frank | 11k | SEA | 20 | 25- | 29+ | 24- | -- | 1 | 61.0 | 182.5 |
| 27 | Hatayama, Greg | 16k | UPS | 17 | 28+ | 30+ | 25+ | 29+ | 3 | 47.5 | 132.0 |
| 28 | Baker, Peter | 17k | TAC | 14 | 27- | -- | -- | 30+ | 0 | 41.0 | 125.5 |
| 29 | Anscher, John | 20k | UPS | 11 | 30+ | 26- | 23- | 27- | 1 | 37.5 | 148.0 |
| 30 | Castanza, Gordon | 25k | GH | 5.5 | 29- | 27- | -- | 28- | 0 | 28.0 | 85.0 |
|
MMS = McMahon Score; SOS = Sum of Opponents' Scores; SOSOS = Sum of Oppnents' SOS. | |||||||||||
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Round 4 ("r4") was an optional round for fast finishers, in actuality played between round 1 and round 2. Round 4 was not included in the points calculation. | |||||||||||
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SEA = Seattle (Seattle Go Center); FW = Federal Way (Seattle Chinese Go Club); TAC = Tacoma (Tacoma/UPS Go Club); OR = Oregon; UPS = University of Puget Sound (Tacoma/UPS Go Club); GH = Gig Harbor. | |||||||||||
All in all, it was a great event. We are planning another tournament in October; hopefully it will be as good, or even better!