AMERICAN GO E-JOURNAL: News from the American Go Association September 1, 2003 In This Edition: U.S. GO NEWS: AGA Passes 1,800 Mark; Updated Ratings Posted; Memphis Blues; BAAFled In Manhattan; Yuan Zhou Resumes DC Lessons; Memphis Blues; Felice Congress Photos Posted WORLD GO NEWS: World Amateurs Cancelled; Euro Go Tour Goes Live On IGS; China Extends Lead To 3-0 In Cyber 5x5; Yoda Wins Gosei; Yashiro v. Yoshida for Female Honinbo Challenger; 2004 Euro Congress Set; Song T'ae-Kon Wins Korea Cup; Koreans Dominate Samsung Quarterfinals GAME COMMENTARY: The Grasshopper’s Revenge YOUR MOVE: Go Software & Toronto Clubs; USS Monitor Go Revisited CONFESSIONS OF A KYU PLAYER GO CLASSIFIED CALENDAR OF EVENTS U.S. GO NEWS UPDATED RATINGS POSTED: Updated ratings for tournaments reported through the end of August (including the U.S. Go Congress!) are now posted at http://www.usgo.org/ratings.asp. The following events were included in this update: Cleveland, OH, July 2003; Feng Yun Go Club Self-Paired, Piscataway, NJ, July 2003; Wish We Were There, Tacoma, WA, August 2003; Congress Children Handicap, Houston, TX, August 2003; Congress Die Hard, Houston, TX, August 2003; North American Amateur Ing Championship, Houston, TX, August 2003; U.S. Open, Houston, TX, August 2003; Congress Self Pair, Houston, TX, August 2003; Davis/Sacramento Quarterly, Sacramento, August 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 October 1. - Paul Matthews, AGA Ratings Statistician AGA PASSES 1,800 MARK: Membership in the American Go Association hit another watershed last month, passing 1,800 members for the first time ever. Thirty five new members joined in August, along with 90 renewing members. The AGA has now enjoyed 15 straight months of steadily-increasing membership and at the current 18% annual growth rate could well hit 2,000 members by the end of the year. BAAFLED IN MANHATTAN: Last weekend, while most of us were barbecuing by the pool (or wishing we were), several thousand teens and young adults descended on the Marriott Marquis in Times Square for the Third Big Apple Anime Festival (BAAF). For three days these festive adventurers took over four floors of the hotel, viewing films, shopping for DVDs and various branded items, admiring each other's costumes -- and learning to play go. Viz LLC, which will begin publishing the popular Japanese Hikaru No Go manga series in English this December, was not present, but nonetheless, they had requested a go exhibit. Marc Palmer of Brooklyn spent most of the week organizing the exhibit, and was joined on-site by Todd Heidenreich, this year's AGF Teacher of the Year, and David "Bippy" Boyer of Rochester, a cartoonist who offered his opponents caricatures of themselves. Todd had prepared a special version of the downloadable AGA brochure featuring local resources, and I dropped off some other materials including "Asia and the Game of Go", a handout for children published by the European Go Federation. To draw traffic into the room, Marc set up a demo board in the hall, and I set the Summer Go Camp video on a loop on my laptop (downloadable at http://www.usgo.org/gocamp/index.asp. The zippy sound effects did their job, catching the attention of passers-by. While I've introduced go at a fair number of public exhibits like this, I’d say that these zany anime fans are particularly smart, determined and eager to embrace the intricacies of go. The only thing is, how do you play against a six-foot pink creature with piggy ears and a long, white wig? - reported by Roy Laird YUAN ZHOU RESUMES DC LESSONS: Yuan Zhou 7d will resume regular teaching sessions at the Greater Washington Go Club beginning this Friday, Sept. 5, at 8:30P, in the basement of the Cedar Lane Unitarian Church, 9601 Cedar Lane. Bring game records or come early and record a game. $5 per participant, free to observers. Info: Haskell Small, 202-244-4764 or haskellsmall@starpower.net MEMPHIS BLUES: “I am sorry to inform you that our most active member Charles Rinehart has passed away,” writes Memphis Area Go Organization’s John Lowe. “He will be missed.” Lowe is the new contact for MAGO at 901-274-9885 or bevlowe@bellsouth.net FELICE CONGRESS PHOTOS POSTED: “I've put up some pictures from the Houston Go Congress,” reports Bob Felice. “I'll be keeping them up for the next week or so. You are invited to stop by and browse. Feel free to download a copy of anything that you like.” http://mysite.waymark.net/bfelice/2003%20Go%20Congress%20Pictures/ WORLD GO NEWS WORLD AMATEURS CANCELLED: The World Amateur Go Championship, sponsored by the Nihon Kiin through the International Go Federation, has been canceled for 2003, due to problems connected with the SARS epidemic. The Koreans are holding an alternative international amateur championship from September 26th to October 4th at In Cheon city, near Seoul. The AGA has selected Jung Hoon Lee to be the US representative. He will be accompanied by Chris Kirschner, AGA president, as a guest official. EURO GO TOUR GOES LIVE ON IGS: The top board in each round of the Toyota Pandanet European Go Tour tournament in Brno, Czech Republic, will be carried live on IGS starting September 5th. Guo Juan 7d, along with at least ten 6 dans, will be among the players.For details see: http://panda igs.joyjoy.net/English/toyota/toyota_cz.html . CHINA EXTENDS LEAD TO 3-0 IN CYBER 5X5: In game two of the China-Japan Cyberspace 5x5 Team Match held on August 25th, China's Zhou Heyang 9p playing White defeated Japan's O Meien 9p by a score of 14.5 points. Game three, played today, brought further disappointment to the Japanese team as Takao Shinji (playing Black) 8p resigned against Gu Li 7p after 179 moves. Gu Li is the recent winner of the 7th China-Korea Tengen match. Game 4 will be played on September 11th, 2:00pm (Japanese time) and will feature Kobayashi Koichi 9p against Wang Lei 8p. Game 4 can be viewed live at www.nihonkiin.or.jp/pub/web_goweekly/nicchu/index-e.htm. -reported by Dennis Hardman. YODA WINS GOSEI: Challenger Yoda Norimoto 9p won the 28th Gosei title by defeating Kobayashi Koichi 9p in a very close final game on August 27th in Tokyo. Yoda, who played white, won the 5th game by 3.5 points to achieve a final match score of 3-2. Kobayashi wrested the title from Yoda in 1999, also by a score of 3-2. These two great players have met several times in the Gosei, and overall, in professional tournament play, Kobayashi leads in wins by a record of 21 to 17. Yoda, the current Meijin title holder will defend that title against Yamashita Keigo 7p beginning September 11th. Game records can be found at http://www.go4go.net/english/bytournament2.jsp?id=48 . - reported by Dennis Hardman. YASHIRO V. YOSHIDA FOR FEMALE HONINBO CHALLENGER: Yashiro Kumiko 5p will play Yoshida Mika 7p on September 4th to determine the challenger for the 22nd Female Honinbo title currently held by Kobayashi Izumi 5p. Yoshida, who held the Female Honinbo for four years in the 1990s, is the younger sister of professional Yashiro Shoji 7p. - reported by Dennis Hardman. 2004 EURO CONGRESS SET: The 2004 European Go Congress will be held in Tuchola, Poland. Keep posted on developments at http://poland.european-go.org/ SONG T'AE-KON WINS KOREA CUP: Song T'ae-kon 5p won the 3rd Korea Cup tournament 2-0 by defeating Pak Yeong-hyeon 4p on August 31st in the second game of the 3rd Korea Cup best-of-three final. Song, who played White, won by resignation. Baduk TV hosts this tournament. You can download the game records at http://www.kyoto.zaq.ne.jp/momoyama/news/kr/tv/tv.html . - reported by Dennis Hardman. KOREANS DOMINATE SAMSUNG QUARTERFINALS: The second round of the 8th Samsung Cup, played on August 29th, has resulted in 4 Korean, 2 Japanese, and 2 Chinese players advancing to the quarter finals. The quarter finals will be held October 15th and 16th and feature the following games: Hu Haoyu 7p (China) vs. Yi Se-tol (Lee Sedol) 9p (Korea), Xie He 5p (China) vs. Yi Ch'ang-ho (Lee Changho) 9p (Korea), Cho Chikun 9p (Japan) vs. Cho Hun-hyeon 9p (Korea), and Park YuongHoon 5p (Korea) vs. Yamada Kimio 8p (Japan). - reported by Dennis Hardman. GAME COMMENTARY: The Grasshopper’s Revenge Today’s commented game is the exciting decisive game that determined the winner of the 2003 Ing Cup. Joey Hung, taking black against his teacher and friend Jie Li, pulled off a surprise win in the 4th round of the Ing Cup on August 7 in Houston, Texas. “I taught him too well,” a stunned but smiling Jie Li told the E-Journal. The thorough commentary is by Yilun Yang 7p. BONUS FILE: Today’s problem file is selected from "Get Strong at the Opening", by Richard Bozulich. This collection of 175 whole-board opening problems, with commented correct answer and failure diagrams, is available from http://www.kiseido.com To view the attached file(s), simply save the file to your computer and then open it 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 YOUR MOVE: Readers Write GO SOFTWARE & TORONTO CLUBS: “I do not have the necessary software to open the E-Journal attachments,” writes Ike. “Can you please suggest what (free) software I should download and where I can get it? I've just recently moved to Toronto, Canada,” Ike adds. “I want to learn how to play go and thought the best way will be to join a go society/club. Can you please recommend any in Toronto?” For all kinds of go software check out http://www.usgo.org/resources/computer.asp There are two go clubs in Toronto; find contact info and more on the Canadian Go Association at http://www.go-canada.org/ USS MONITOR GO REVISITED: “How go came to be played by sailors on the Monitor in 1862 is easy to deduce, if not so easy to prove,” suggests Milton N. Bradley in response to last week’s item about the IGS Art Gallery’s entertaining photo purporting to depict members of the crew of the USS Monitor playing go on board on July 9, 1862. “In 1853, just 9 years previously, Comm. Matthew Perry and his fleet ‘opened’ Japan to the western world after centuries of isolation, and it's quite logical that some of the Monitor's crew were part of that earlier US naval enterprise and brought back knowledge of go with them.” Danny Dowell tracked down the original photo at http://home.att.net/~iron.clad/gibson_photos.htm and points out that while “the board is not clearly seen, the caption says they’re playing checkers.” Yet another version of the photo at http://www.mariner.org/monitor/07_life/photo_monitor.html is better quality but the board is still difficult to make out clearly. CONFESSIONS OF A KYU PLAYER by Jonathan Englander Even though I have haunted the kyu ranks for a decade, it was not until this year’s U.S. Go Congress that I finally began to glimpse a faint light at the end of the long tunnel. Enlightenment flickered after my first game in the U.S. Open, a typical, three-stage game of the sort every kyu player has played countless times. Stage One: in the early middle game, my opponent spanks me for an ill-conceived corner invasion, killing off my feeble group and making text-book thickness in the process. Stage Two: I respond by slamming down a series of bullying overplays, eager to demonstrate that I am not a player to be trifled with, despite all appearances to the contrary. Stage Three: My overheated play infects my opponent with sufficient anxiety that he makes his own, late-game foul-up. There’s no time for him to recover, and it goes in the “W” column for me. On the ugly way to victory, I had stumbled across the Competing Colossal Blunders Theory of kyu level go. According to this theory, all kyu players make colossal blunders and whoever does so first probably wins. Actual skill, I realized with a sinking heart as I dropped off my winning game slip, plays a relatively minor role in kyu play, since the Colossal Blunder is virtually the defining characteristic of the kyu game. Fellow kyu players, can you think of a game where some hasty tenuki hasn’t left you sealed in like some David Blaine magic stunt about to go horribly wrong? Can you count all those 20-stone invasions that suddenly find themselves clinging to ko for life with a fervor that would have embarrassed Kate and Leo at the end of Titanic? ‘Nuff said. Because go is an additive game in which board positions crystallize with each play, players that makes their Colossal Blunder the earliest, while situations are still fluid, actually stand the best chance of mitigating the damage, coming back and outlasting the other guys, whose own Colossal Blunders are still just dark clouds on the horizon. Indeed, there is a huge difference, not just strategic but emotional as well, between (for example) a middle game foray into an opposing moyo that turns out badly, and rudely discovering in the end game that the center clump of stones you thought was connected to your side group by a keima was in reality attached only by the gossamer wisps of your dreams. When you screw up early on, you don’t just fight back, you fight back furiously, snorting and chuckling and full of bravado. If go is a game of hand talk, this is where we crack our knuckles, throw gang signs, flip our opponent the bird. When our Colossal Blunder comes late in the game, though, we sag almost immediately: mortally gutted, our eyes giving a panicked, disbelieving flutter one last time about the board, hoping desperately to find a similar, leveling oversight on our opponent’s part, before the resignation escapes our lips with our last, agonal breath. Like me, you may well wonder “At what cost victory if we become graceless boobs in the process?” Amateurish play, after all, does not excuse amateurish etiquette, and, in “The Treasure Chest Enigma,” Noriyuki Nakayama writes perceptively about the insult both to our opponent and the game itself in persisting in the face of a hundred-point deficit. On the other hand, as Janice Kim once put it so very succinctly, “never resign an amateur game because you never know what your opponent might do.” Both Nakayama and Kim are right, depending on your level of play. Nakayama and Ishiguro move in the exalted world of professional play, where the twin gods of logic and reason have banished the Colossal Blunder. I, on the other hand, am still thumping around the amateur kyu fields, where myriad lesser imps and demons conspire to unleash veritable hordes of Colossal Blunders right up until the very end of the game. The pros rely on their skill, while we amateurs, unfortunately, can reasonably expect a bit of diabola ex machina help from our adversaries on a regular basis. So while I admire the pros, I accept my fate as a kyu player, doomed to screw up early, fight back hard, and pray for the shodan. 2-kyu Jonathan Englander lives and works in New York City. GO CLASSIFIED WANTED: Moving to the Spokane, Washington area for college, and want to get in touch with go players, especially any with connections to Whitworth College Sean R; weyounsix@hotmail.com WANTED: Anecdotes about how a particular strategy, go problem or set of moves may have surfaced in your life away from the go board. Recently, when discussing a particular go strategy or problem with a friend in the middle of a difficult life problem, I was surprised how easily I could relate the go problem as an analysis or analog of my friend’s problem. Please email any anecdotes to ddinhofer@msn.com WANTED: Interested Go players from the Guam area to form Guam's first local go club for fun, teaching and tournaments. Please contact Ed at: edp96912@yahoo.com WANTED: Beginning players in Santa Clara, California. Tired of playing only on the computer, I'd like to meet up with an actual human sometime for evening/weekend games. Lenny: briandamage@att.net WANTED: Moving to Callao, Virginia soon and would like to get in touch with go players on the Northern Neck. Contact Bob at shinebob@verizon.net WANTED: teacher to teach and meet online once or twice a week, to play a game and review it. I am 15-16k. I can meet anytime at night on weekdays, or almost anytime on weekends. josh87102@yahoo.com AVAILABLE: Lessons from an IGS 5d. 30k-1d welcome; visit http://www.angelfire.com/oh5/icarii First lesson free. WANTED: Players in Kodiak, Alaska. Contact Seth Minyard at Sethdid@hotmail.com or 907-486-5284 for more information about times, dates and locations. WANTED: Players in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. Wayne Page, wdpage@pinn.net 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 CALENDAR OF EVENTS September 6: Chicago, IL Fall Tournament Bob Barber 773-467-0423 komoku@earthlink.net September 13: Denver, CO Fall Classic Eric Wainwright 303-534-1515 ewainwrightWcrystalball.com September 13: Livermore, CA Vintage Go Event S.C. Herrick 925-423-7458 herrick4@llnl.gov September 20: Durham, NC Third Annual Joe Shoenfield Memorial Marathon Go Tournament Paul Celmer pcelmer@earthlink.net September 20: Tacoma/Parkland, WA Tournament at Pacific Lutheran University Mike Malveaux 253-906-0095 tacomagofiend@yahoo.com http://www.hilltopgo.com/evrep/plufall2003/ September 21: Hoboken, NJ Hoboken Fall Tournament Larry Russ 201-216-5379 lruss@stevens-tech.edu http://attila.stevens tech.edu/~lruss/hoboken_spring_tournament.htm September 28: Amherst, MA Western Mass Fall Go Tournament David Dawidowicz 413-546-0095 ddawidow@student.umass.edu http://www.cookwood.com/personal/go/wmgt/2003fall.html October 10-13: Roundtop, NY Guo Juan Workshop Jean-Claude Chetrit zorglub@brooklyngoclub.org October 17-19: Germantown, MD James Kerwin Workshop Gordon Fraser 301-540-2640 gordon@wui.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 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: 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 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 mailto:journal@usgo.org