AMERICAN GO E-JOURNAL: News from the American Go Association August 5, 2003 IN THIS EDITION: JIANG AND YUN TO FACE OFF IN ING PRO CUP FINAL FIELD NARROWS IN ING AMATEUR U.S. OPEN UPDATE GUAN & TANG LEAD IN REDMOND LEBL DOMINATES SELF-PAIRED SPEED KILLS! ABRAMSON, LLOYD & O'MALLEY WIN SEATS ON AGA BOARD JIANG AND YUN TO FACE OFF IN ING PRO CUP FINAL: Feng Yun and Mingjiu Jiang will battle it out Tuesday morning for the $2,500 first-place prize in the 2003 AGA/ING Pro Cup. Feng Yun, 9P defeated Huiren Yang, 1P in Monday's 2nd-round bout, while Mingjiu Jiang, 7P beat Yilun Yang, 7P. Yilun Yang, incidentally, had defeated two (not one, as previously reported) opponents Sunday night (Xiaoren He and Xuefen Lin) in lightning rounds held to determine the fourth slot in the second round. The Feng Yun Mingjiu Jiang match promises to be a hard-fought battle and we hope to be able to bring it to you next week. - reported by Bill Cobb FIELD NARROWS IN ING AMATEUR: The field narrowed in the North American Amateur Ing Cup when four players notched their second wins in Monday night's round. Defending Champion Jie Li, 6d, defeated Yongfei Ge, 6d by 3 points on the top board, while wins were also posted by Joey Hung, 6d (Yuan Zhou, 6d), Ned Phipps, 6d (Ke Huang, 6d) and Moon Chong Kim, 6d (Michael Zeng, 6d). Also winning Monday night were Jung Hoon Lee, 6d (I-Han Lui, 6d), Thomas Hsiang, 6d (Jon Boley, 6d), Jong Moon Lee, 6d (Eric Lui, 6d) and Lianzhou Yu, 6d (James Sedgwick, 5d), who all improved their records to 1-1. - reported by Bob Barber U.S. OPEN UPDATE: Five players in the top section are undefeated after the first two rounds of the 2003 U.S. Open. Jie Li, Lu (Jeffrey) Wang, Ke Huang, Joey Hung and Mozheng Guan are all 2-0 going into Tuesday's third round. The 242 players in the Open make this the largest field of the year, with 100 dan-level players (nineteen 7-dans alone!), 94 single-digit kyu players, 48 double-digit kyu players and five complete beginners. - reported by Joe Carl GUAN & TANG LEAD IN REDMOND CUP: Sixteen year-old Mozheng Guan, 7d won the first round in the 10th Michael Redmond Cup Senior Division, defeating 12-year-old Zhiyuan (Andy) Liu, 6d. In the Junior Division, the 10-year-olds duked it out as Curtis Tang, 5d beat Johnnie Li, 5k. LEBL DOMINATES SELF-PAIRED: Eight-kyu Martin Lebl leads in nearly half of the categories in the Self-Paired Tournament. Players may challenge each other at any time in this rated event, and games often begin early in the morning and continue late into the night. Lebl, a perennial contender in the Self-Paired, leads in the Champion (5 more wins than losses), Sensei (10 games vs. weaker players), Straight Shooter (5 consecutive ranks defeated), Hurricane (8 wins), and Dedicated (11 games) categories. David Frankel, 1k, is the current Giant Killer with 5 victories over dan players. Horst Sudhoff, 3d, another perennial contender in the Self-Paired, is once again leading for the coveted Philanthropist award with 6 losses. Nicole Casanta,4k on the other hand, is the current Grasshopper, having improved her provisional ranking by five stones. The appropriately named Dan Micsa 3d, holds the Keith Arnold (formerly known as Kyu Killer) award for the moment, having vanquished three kyu-level opponents. James Pickett has remained most faithful to his rank, rising just 0.0210 stones in strength, while Benjamin Morris, 11k is, for now, The Optimist, having fallen 1.672 stones in strength so far. With just 100 games reported so far, however, there's a long way to go before anyone can claim these titles for 2003. - reported by Jeff Miller SPEED KILLS! They say speed kills and that was certainly the case at the Lightning Tournament Monday night when there was plenty of dying happening on 47 boards. With a brisk, no-nonsense style that matched the tournament name, Keith Arnold once again successfully directed the madness as 94 people crowded into the main playing hall for this ever popular un-rated event. Quickly shuffled into groups of six, the stones began to fly and the hall soon resounded with the thunder of hastily-played stones. With just ten minutes per player and no overtime, losing a big group doesn't necessarily affect the outcome if your opponent is behind on time. The groups played round robin with the group winners playing single elimination as time permits during the week to determine dan and kyu champions. Group Winners: Dan Winners - Zipei Feng 6d, Tsutomu Ota 4d, Hiroshi Yoyama 3d, Jesse Chao 1d, Greg Lefler 1d, Matthew Burrall 2d. Kyu Winners: Jonthan Englander 2k, Jarett Pon 14k, David Din! hofer 2k, William Zhou 6k, Lionel Zhang 4k, David Montoya 10k, Felix Chao 17k, Stephen Sun 6k, Hunter Peress 14k, Stanley Sun 29k. - reported by Michael Heinich ABRAMSON, LLOYD & O'MALLEY WIN SEATS ON AGA BOARD: Allan Abramson and Harold Lloyd won seats on the AGA Board of Directors in this year's election. When the new Board was elected last year, four were elected to 2-year terms while three were elected to 1-year terms. Two of the three elections held this year were contested, as Allan Abramson ran against John Stevenson in the East and Jeff Shaevel ran against Harold Lloyd in the Central Region. Bob O'Malley ran unopposed in the West. While Abramson defeated Stevenson convincingly with a 28-16 vote, Harold Lloyd once again squeaked past Jeff Shaevel in a tie-break when the chapter votes were deadlocked at 9 each. The 84-78 tie-break was determined based on the number of members in each club voting. The winners, whose terms begin in January, join incumbents Dave Weimer, Chendao Lin, Jon Boley and David Dinhofer. E-JOURNAL GO CONGRESS EDITION STAFF: Chris Garlock, Bill Cobb, Bob Barber, Joe Carl, Mike Heinich, Jeff Miller. FORMATTING NOTE: We apologize if there are formatting problems with the Congress Edition of the E-Journal, which is filed from a Palm PDA.