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Report from Shanghai
April 26, 2004
By Chris Kirschner
KIRSCHNER, PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN GO
ASSOCIATION, WAS IN SHANGHAI APRIL 18-26 FOR THE
FIRST ROUND OF THE ING CUP, AS A GUEST OF THE ING
FOUNDATION.
The big news is that Jimmy Cha, the U.S.
representative to this year's Ing Cup, lost his
first-round game by 3 points to Zhou Hayang 9p of
China, who also won his next game, defeating Otake
Hideo 9p of Japan.. Cha's game was an exciting one
in which he had a very good position after
capturing a good-size invading group, but his
opponent managed to handle a complex endgame a bit
better and pulled it out (see attached game file:
2004.04.26 Ing championship Cha Vs Zhou)
Meanwhile, my own "peak" experience so far is the
obligatory defeat by a 7-year-old. At the other end
of the age spectrum, Go Seigen is in attendance, a
striking sight. His age is certainly showing, but
he seems to be having a lot of fun, particularly
when you see him talking over opening positions
with pros (see the AGA homepage for a photo of go:
http://www.usgo.org/index.asp).
At the start of each round, there is a great
milling of photographers in the playing room. The
pros arrive, sit at their table and impassively
allow pictures to be snapped by pro and amateur
shutterbugs alike. When the second player arrives
there is a minimal greeting, usually silent, though
it is difficult to be sure amidst the cacophony of
circling photographers.
Shortly, each player flips the stone container
built in on each side of the game table and
designed to ensure the presence of exactly 180
stones of each color. The person with the white
stones takes out a handful, the other selects
either one or two stones, to select color.
Play begins immediately, and differences of style
are immediately apparent. Some games will have half
a dozen stones on the board within a minute or two,
others may still have only a single stone. The
cameras continue to swirl about, a vortex forming
at one high-interest game, then moving on to
another, miraculously avoiding bumping players or
game tables, but often each other.
After a few minutes, the signal is given, and all
leave for the analysis room, where large TV sets
line one side of the room, each displaying one
game. In the middle is a row of tables lined up
with the TV sets so it is easy to replicate each
game on screen and experiment with variations.
One of the most enjoyable sights is watching pro
analysis of a game in progress. A game is chosen, a
board set up and vigorous analysis and debate
begins. The seated players are usually dominant,
but often a standee will reach in, grab stones and
make a point. Long sequences are hypothesized,
analyzed, accepted, or rejected and removed to
investigate another possibility. Not withstanding
the obvious language barrier, the pace of analysis
is so rapid that I think any amateurs would be
hard-pressed to keep up.
Interestingly, the actual players frequently come
up with plays never considered by the professional
analysts. This doesn't mean their moves are
necessarily bad, it merely demonstrates the
magnitude of difference between watching and
actually playing. The tension and intense focus
stimulates a much higher level of creativity in the
competing players.
When such a play occurs, it induces an immediate
outburst of frenetic analysis by the pros who
suddenly realize they have entirely missed an
important element in the game, which is often true
even if the move turns out to be a mistake.
It is of course, a pure joy to watch this process,
even with limited understanding. In fact, it is
such a good natured, joyful process that feeds off
the pleasure of continual discovery that one could
easily imagine non-players becoming entranced just
seeing the interactions between the
analysts.
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