AMERICAN GO E-JOURNAL: News from the American Go Association March 31, 2003 In This Edition: CALENDAR OF EVENTS SCOREBOARD: Philadelphia, PA YOUR MOVE: Readers Write U.S. GO NEWS: Another Game Database WORLD GO NEWS: Redmond Advances In Honinbo; Sedol Defeats Changho; Sayonara Oteai; Dark Horse Wins NHK GAME COMMENTARY: An Unusual Move GO REVIEW: Go as Communication GO CLASSIFIED AGA CONTACT LIST CALENDAR OF EVENTS (U.S.) April 4: Bethesda, MD Yuan Zhou Game Commentaries at GWGC 8:30-10:30P; Cedar Lane Unitarian Church, 9601 Cedar Lane Bring game records; $5 per participant, free for observers. 202-244-4764; haskellsmall@starpower.net April 5-6: College Park, MD University of Maryland Spring Tournament Steve Mount 301-405-6934 smount@umd.edu April 5-6: San Francisco, CA San Francisco Go Club Spring Tournament Steve Burrall 916-685-1504 sburrall@attbi.com April 13: Boston, MA MGA Spring Handicap Tournament Don Wiener 617-734-6316 donwiener@earthlink.net April 19: Middlebury, VT George Sporzynski Memorial Go Tournament Peter Schumer 388-3934 schumer@middlebury.edu April 26: Houston, TX 2003 Houston Spring Tournament University of Houston George Wang 713-780-8282 imshy@wt.net 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: Philadelphia, PA March 29: Philadelphia, PA 2003 Philadelphia Tournament 25 players Organizer: Phil Straus; Director: Chuck Robbins 1st: LEFLER, Greg, 2k, 4-0 $60; 2nd: LU, Ke, 4d, 3-1, $20; BERNSTEIN, Ben, 1k, 3-1, $20; BANZHAF, Jeremy, 3k, 3-1, $20; WALKER, Mead, 5k, 3-1, $20; DOBBINS, Michael 6k, 3-1, $20; WINTERS, Andrew 13k, 3-0, $20; ROFE, Amanda, 16k, 3-1, $20. NOTE: Rochester's Empty Sky Go Club fielded a whopping 7 players who drove down overnight and then headed home (some with prizes!) after the traditional Saturday evening banquet. YOUR MOVE: Readers Write ALL ABOUT JANICE: "Is Janice Kim an American pro of Korean descent or an American playing for Korea?" asks Michael Quintero in response to a reference last week in Online Go. "I always thought she was on of 'our' few pros." Michael is correct, says Online Go columnist Roy Laird. "Janice was born and raised in New Mexico. Her dad is Korean-American and her mother is of Western ancestry. She spent large chunks of her junior high and high school years in Korea, becoming the first Westerner ever admitted to the Korean pro system in 1987." For nearly ten years she had the distinction of being the only Korean pro of Western origin, which is still rare: only one other Korean pro was born in the US, and as of this writing, no European has ever earned Korean pro status. (Source: The Go Player's Almanac 2001) GO IN THE AIR: "Has anyone heard of people playing go via amateur (ham) radio?," wonders Anton Ninno. "Hams have been playing chess for decades." Email him at aninno@cnyric.org KOREAN RULES CORRECTION: Last week's link for the Korea Baduk Association's official rules should have been http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~barryp/kiwigo.htm And then select "Korean rules" from the menu on the left. U.S. GO NEWS ANOTHER GAME DATABASE: "It turns out that the research for my last column, 'A World of Game Records', was incomplete," reports Online Go columnist Roy Laird. "When I called the MasterGo database the ultimate source for professional games, I neglected to mention another contender for that sobriquet. GoGoD, a game database available from Yutopian Enterprises, contains over 20,000 pro games with identifying information, in sgf format for easy export to other applications. Learn more about it at https://www.yutopian.com/yutop/cat?product=EAGOD&category=EGD Although these two programs contain large, and presumably similar, databases, they are different products. GoGoD's records are in sgf format, which makes them easy to export to other applications. MasterGo is more expensive, and offers the ability to search by pattern, but games cannot be exported to your Palm Pilot or your screen saver. The GoGod page is a bit confusing. Along with the product itself, you will find more than $400 worth of separate collections on offer; however, Yutopian informs us that all those collections are inlcuded in the basic database. I hadn't visited the Yutopian site in a while, and it seems to have expanded or reorganized lately. It appears that my research for a previous column, "Good Looking" also failed to turn up interesting material on the Yutopian site. Go to http://www.yutopian.com/go/gallery/goarts.html for some fascinating images you won't see anywhere else, including photographs of ancient Go equipment -- and when they say ancient, they mean over 1000 years old! WORLD GO NEWS REDMOND ADVANCES IN HONINBO: On March 13th, Michael Redmond 9P, playing White, beat Kurotaki Masanori 7P by resignation in the second preliminary section of the Honinbo tournament. SEDOL DEFEATS CHANGHO: Yi Setol (Lee Sedol) 3P has defeated Yi Ch'angho (Lee Changho) 9P three to one to take the 7th LG Cup, his second International title (he won the Fujitsu Cup last year, beating Lee Changhao in the semifinal). This victory also earns Lee Sedol a promotion to 6 dan in the Korean Baduk Association. The 20 year-old now seems to pose the only real threat to Lee Changhao's iron grip on his fistful of world titles. Download the LG Cup games at http://www.kyoto.zaq.ne.jp/momoyama/news/5lg/7lg.html . - reported by Yuan Zhou & Bill Cobb SAYONARA OTEAI: The new Japanese professional promotion rule that replaces the oteai (promotion tournament) goes into effect on April 1st. Three players who are among the first to benefit are: Yamashita Keigo 7P, who won the 27th Kisei title and will be promoted to 9P; Ryu Shikun 7P, who won the Tengen Title for the fourth time and will advance to 9P; and Cho U 7P, who won the right to be the challenger for the 56th Honinbo title and will become 8P. - http://www.GoGameWorld.com DARK HORSE WINS NHK: The 50th NHK Cup was won by a dark horse: Mimura Tomoyasu 9P, who defeated O Rissei 9P by resignation in a great fighting game. Mimura took an early lead, but O Rissei managed to get back into the game. In the end, it seemed likely there would be no result because of a triple ko, but under time pressure O Rissei apparently suffered a hallucination and connected one of the kos, which left him with an unfavorable approach move ko and he resigned. Mimura is a solid, orthodox player who favors thickness. This win is Mimura's biggest achievement to date. - reported by John Power on the Nihon Kiin's home page. GAME COMMENTARY: An Unusual Move Black's unusual first move on the 6-3 point starts off this week's commented game, a Round 1 match from this year's North American Fujitsu Qualifier Tournament between June-Ki Beck, 6d and Jung Hoon Lee, 8d. Liping Huang, 4P, provides commentary for the game, which was played January 6 on the IGS. In this week's bonus file, Nakayama Noriyuki shows the best way to handle a pesky but common play. The problem is translated from Nakayama's book "Joseki Hazure" by Robert McGuigan. To view the attached file(s), simply save to your computer and then open using an .sgf reader such as Many Faces of Go or SmartGo. Readers who need .sgf readers can get them for most platforms at Jan van der Steen's http://gobase.org/sgfeditors.html GO REVIEW: Go as Communication by Yasuda Yasutoshi 9-dan Slate & Shell Reviewed by Simon Goss "Am I the only one who feels that people, children and adults alike, look tired?" So writes Yasuda Yasutoshi 9-dan in the preface to Go as Communication. Yasuda's attention had been caught by a news report of the suicide of a bullied school child, and he had become "... obsessed by the notion that I had to do something about the social problem in addition to simply popularizing Go." The first part of Go as Communication describes Yasuda's visits to kindergartens, schools, homes for the mentally disabled, day care centres for the elderly and a school for the deaf. Almost all those he writes about have some kind of difficulty communicating with others. Many are, to a greater or lesser extent, socially excluded as a result. In the second part of the book, Yasuda gives advice on how to teach go to children of different ages in large groups, and how to teach it in the other kinds of institution he has visited. Part three gives a brief account of similar work that has been done in the Netherlands, Romania, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and the USA. Yasuda is well known as the inventor of Capture Go, and what he says about it came as a bit of a surprise to me at first. I had always been led to believe that Yasuda's main aim was to popularise go, and that beginning with Capture Go was basically a technique to lead people to it gently. Nothing could be further from the truth. "Popularizing Go" is a phrase that is used occasionally in the book, but it isn't the objective. Yasuda states his objective in terms such as "help change society" and "do something about the social problem". He teaches Capture Go as a game in its own right. He recognizes that a few people will move on to regular go, but doesn't get excited about it. If most people stick with Capture Go and enjoy it, that's fine with him. Indeed, he explains that some of the mentally handicapped people he meets will probably never understand even the capture rule, but will anyway enjoy and benefit from the even simpler game of just placing go stones on intersections, and that's just fine too. Will this book do anything for you? Well, if you want to improve at tesuji or joseki, definitely not. It contains a basic explanation of the capture rule, but if you're any stronger than 36-kyu it will teach you nothing at all about the game. If you want to teach go to bright people who are able and willing to give you ten minutes of their attention, it may not help you much either. If you want to teach go to large groups of people with low or mixed abilities and/or motivation, then it will certainly give you food for thought and may even help you. But the people I'd really like to see reading this book aren't go players at all, but school teachers and care workers. If you can think of a person like that to whom you could give a copy of this book, I think you'd be doing them, and go, a huge service. (A longer version of this review originally appeared in the British Go Journal, #129, Winter 2002) GO CLASSIFIED WANTED: players in the Toledo (Ohio) area. Contact David43515@hotmail.com WANTED: Go players in Boise, ID; email David Bogie (25-20k, former AGA member) at bogiesan@mac.com (posted 3/10) FOR SALE: Goban from the Meiji period with beautiful lacquered sides. The bowls are decorated in similar style and include the original slate and shell stones. Price to be determined by interest. Email Geoffrey Gray at gray@hardnet.com.au (posted 3/10) FOR SALE: Goban, 250 years old made of Yew wood. original black lacquer lines (lines are in perfect shape); Has large water stain on top and crack on side. Lance@KemperPainting.com (posted 3/10) WANTED: info on organizations dedicated to promoting go among business people. I need the info for a book I'm writing using go as a metaphor and practice for paradigm shifting in business; I'd appreciate any assistance. Gay Hendricks; gay_h@hendricks.com (posted 3/10) WANTED: Jade bowls and stones in very good condition. Contact mattman30yrs@hotmail.com (posted 3/3) 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 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 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: President: Chris Kirschner: president@usgo.org Secretary Susan Weir: Secretary@usgo.org Treasurer Ben Bernstein: Treasurer@usgo.org VP - Communications: Chris Garlock Journal@usgo.org Archivist Craig Hutchinson: Archives@usgo.org Chapter Management: Paul Celmer chapterservices@usgo.org Nicole Casanta: Chapters@usgo.org Community Outreach: John Goon Outreach@usgo.org Congress Liaison: Judy Debel Congress@usgo.org Education Coordinator: Lee Anne Bowie Education@usgo.org Equipment Distribution: Paul Celmer Equipment@usgo.org HR & Recruitment: Terry Assael Hr@usgo.org Membership Services: Tom Hodges, Joel Gabelman membership@usgo.org Policy & Governance: Keith Arnold Governance@usgo.org General Counsel: Michael T. Brockbank legal@usgo.org Professional Players' Representative: Zhu-jiu (Jujo) Jiang Professionals@usgo.org Ranking Issues: Jeff Shaevel Rank@usgo.org Ratings Coordinator: Paul Matthews Ratings@usgo.org Tournament Coordinator: Chuck Robbins Tournaments@usgo.org Tournament Regulations: Duane Burns Regulations@usgo.org Webmaster: Roy Laird: webmaster@usgo.org Youth Coordinator: Noné Redmond youth@usgo.org American Go Foundation: Terry Benson terrybenson@nyc.rr.com Database Manager: Sam Zimmerman database@usgo.org AGA BOARD OF DIRECTORS Dave Weimer (Chair): weimer@lafollette.wisc.edu Chen-dao Lin: cdlin5@yahoo.com John Stephenson: Jcs@wingsgoclub.org David Dinhofer: David.dinhofer@alum.mit.edu Harold Lloyd: Hlloyd@core.com Bob O'Malley: omalley@coas.oregonstate.edu Jon Boley: Jon@airsltd.com Published by the American Go Association Text material published in " AMERICAN GO E-JOURNAL" may be reproduced by any recipient: please credit the AGEJ as the source. PLEASE NOTE that attached files, including game records, MAY NOT BE published, re-distributed, or made available on the web without the explicit written permission of the Editor of the Journal. 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 email: journal@usgo.org Voice: 202-857-3410 Fax: 202-857-3420