CHANG HAO WINS CHUNLAN: Chang Hao 9P of China has defeated Lee Changho 9p of Korea 2-0 to win the international Chunlan Cup. Chang also defeated Lee in the ’07 Samsung. That year, Chang was runner-up to fellow countryman Gu Li 9P in the Chunlan, so Chinese representatives have won this biannual event twice in a row now. Lee won it in both 2003 and 2005. He and Chang are both in their thirties, which is beginning to seem like an "older" player in the modern context, but they are still top contenders, although Lee holds no current international titles and this is Chang's only current title. Chang holds no current national titles, while Lee holds only one, the KBS Cup. An invitational, the Chunlun is sponsored by a Chinese company and the Chinese representatives have the advantage of numbers, eleven to four in terms of the Korean representatives. Of the five Japanese representatives, only one, Takao Shinji 9P made it to the second round, where he lost to China's Kong Jie 9P.
- Bill Cobb

PRE-TEEN YEO WINS CHI TOURNEY: Sung Yeo 2d won the June 20 Don't Go in the Water! Tournament in Chicago, IL. Yeo topped 37 players in an event that was forced to relocate at the last moment when the playing site was closed for construction. “Yeo is 12 years old, and in serious need of a promotion,” reports TD Bob Barber. “We were very pleased to see Bill Chen 6d join us after an absence of  14 years, and James Li graciously donated his cash prize to the Evanston Go Club.” Winner’s Report: 1st Place Dan:  YEO, Sung, 2d; 2nd Place Dan:  HU, Thomas, 5d; Tie First Place High Kyu:  LI, Henry, 2k & LI, James, 4k; 1st Place Low Kyu:  MEI, Brian, 20k.

AMERICAN LEE SWEEPS FREIBURG: "American 3d Joshua Lee won Freiburg impressively" (5-0), reports German go journalist Tobias Berben. Lee is currently living in Baden in south-west  Germany. Hwang In-seong 7d, invited to teach at the event, urged players to "Play like a tiger, not as a hare" which resulted in the destruction of many groups. Click here for complete results.
- Peter Dijkema, based on Berben’s report
tourney photo available!

U.S. GO CONGRESS RATES INCREASE 7/1: “Beat the July 1 rate increase and register now for the 25^th annual U.S. Go Congress!” says Congress Director Todd Heidenreich. Click here for full details on the August 1-9 event in Fairfax, Virginia. Nearly 400 have signed up so far, and nearly 1 dozen professional go players – including Takemiya Masaki 9P – will be attending as well. “The Congress now has a Twitter account,” Heidenreich adds; click here to get your Congress tweets.

JANICE KIM 3P COMING TO SF: There’s still space in Janice Kim 3P’s weekend workshop July 11-12 in San Francisco, CA. “Janice has a knack for explaining concepts in ways that players of all levels can relate to,” says organizer Roger Schrag. Kim is co-author of the award-winning Learn to Play Go book series and her entertaining lectures at the 2008 U.S. Go Congress in Portland, OR drew big and enthusiastic crowds. Kim was born in the US, studied go in Korea and lately has been active on the professional women’s poker scene. The workshop will include lectures, game analysis, interactive exercises, and question and answer sessions. “Saturday night there will be an optional no-host dinner with Janice at a nearby restaurant,” notes Schrag. The workshop is being held a short distance from the San Francisco Go Club; rooms are available at the Hampton Inn hotel at $85 per night. Click here for details and to register.

NETFLIX CONTEST MAY TURN ON GO: “In a sense, formulating equations for collaborative filtering is like the game of Go,” Electrical engineer Martin Piotte told Wired in a June 17 report on the million-dollar contest to improve Netflix’s recommendation engine. “Although the rules are the simplest possible, the depth and the complexity of the game is phenomenal,” he explained.” The team of Piotte and software engineer Martin Chabbert is now leading the contest, “having nearly achieved the contest’s objective of creating a recommendation engine 10 percent more accurate at predicting user ratings than the company’s own Cinematch system,” reports Eliot Van Buskirk. Click here for the full Wired report.

FREE GO STONES: Shodan Imports is running another drawing of free shell and slate go stones. The drawing is open only to full members of the AGA, and will take place on July 20th. Click here for entry form and rules. 

CHO U TAKES FIRST GAME IN GOSEI DEFENSE: Cho U 9P defeated challenger Yuki Satoshi 9P in the first of their best-of-five-games Gosei title match. Cho has held this title for the last two years. Yuki has challenged for it three times previously, but has not been able to win. Yuki's only titles were the Kakusei and the JAL Cup fast play event in 2003. Cho has been the dominant title winner in Japan for a while now, holding six national titles currently, including five of the top seven. He also held the Honinbo for two years, 2003-2004, but has never won or even challenged for the number one title, the Kisei. Cho also won the international LG Cup in 2005, was runner-up in the World Oza in 2006, and won the Asian TV Cup fast game tournament in 2005.
- Bill Cobb

HAYNES TOPS DAVIS/SAC TOURNEY: Willard Haynes 1d led the upper division of the June 27 Davis/Sacramento Go Club Summer Quarterly Rating Tournament, topping a field of sixteen players, including two new AGA members. Haynes – who serves as the Western representative on the AGA Board of Directors -- was followed by Linden Chiu 1d, and Jeff Newmiller 1k. Warren Kyle 5k, one of the new AGA members, won the lower division with a perfect four wins. Allen Louderback 8k and George Herrmann 6k were second and third.

CANADA LEADS U.S. 4-2 IN TEAM TOURNEY: Canadian Tiger Gong won his fourth game against Kevin (Seung Hyun) Hong from California, stretching Canada’s lead in the ongoing online US-Canada team tournament to 4-2. Hong's teammate Yue Zhang stopped Tiger's winning streak by killing a 16-stone dragon. Hank Xie will challenge Yue at 5P (EDT) on July 4. Click here to download the most recent game record.

AUSTRALIAN GO UPDATES: The Australian Go Camp at Ballina, New South Wales in May was a success, with Korean pro An Young Gil 6P teaching a varied audience from all across the eastern seaboard, and requests coming in already for another one in early 2010. Daniel Shen 5d won the 13th NEC Cup on April 18-19 in Melbourne. Guyu Liu 7d won the New South Wales Go Championships on 6 June in Sydney. Upcoming tournaments in Australia: the ACT Championships on 25-26 July in Canberra (run by the Canberra Go Club), and the 4th Korean Ambassador's Cup in Sydney on 8 August (run by the Sydney Ki-won). Players are wanted in: Melbourne Go Lovers Club (meets Thursday nights from 7pm onwards at 80 Ludstone St. Hampton, contact James Kaaden and Canberra Go Club (meets Wednesday evenings from 6.30pm, Asian Studies Building 4, Australian National University campus, playing group is very strong but very small, all beginners most welcome, contact Neville Smythe
- Horatio Davis, Australia/New Zealand correspondent for the EJ 

TURKEY HOSTS EVENTS & PROS: Guo Juan 5P attended the third annual Bursa tourney June 13-14 where Goksoy Tolga 3d (Izmir) won, ahead of Bilan Bertan 1d and Aksut Husrev (both 1d, Ankara), also at 4-1. Fifty players took part in Bursa. Only Altunsu Dogacanege (12k, Izmir) won all 5 games. Click here for results. The 4th Izmir tourney will be held July 3-4, and the third annual go camp – also in Izmir – is scheduled for August 15-22. The camp will host professional players Kim Seung Chun 9P and Diana Koszegi 1P. - Peter Dijkema

REHM RULES RAPID: Robert Rehm 5d swept the Midsummer Rapids In The Night TOURNEY June 27-28 in the Amsterdam Westerpark, winning the handicap event set in a former farm. The tourney emerged five years ago as a memorial for Micha Leuw and later also for his colleague and friend Gert-Jan van Opdorp. Gert-Jan came up with the idea for a search-engine for opening patterns in pro games in gobase.org. Harry Weerheijm of EuroGoTv was TD, while photographer Judith van Dam provided catering from her Indonesian kitchen.- Peter Dijkema

OH WINS GOLD IN WARSAW: Oh Chimin 7d of Berlin won gold at Warsaw University’s June 26-28 Pandanet tourney, despite losing in the last round to Li Ting 6d from Vienna; Li finished fourth. Csaba Mero 6d (Hungary) won silver and Ondrej Silt 6d (Czech 6d) took bronze. Oh took the lead with his 3^rd-round win over Ondrej Silt; click here for the game record. Another former European insei, local Leszek Soldan 5d was also on his way to a sound 4-2 finish, but was stopped by young Polish hope Mateusz Surma 4d in the last round. Soldan was still the best Polish player at 5th place. 67 players participated in the Warsaw event. Click here for results.- Peter Dijkema

SLOVAK FESTIVAL REDUX: Czech professional photographer Martin Chrz – whose photos were featured in the EJ’s coverage of the 2007 European Go Congress – has sent us his photo-gallery of the recent Slovak Go Festival. - Peter Dijkema

MITCHELL STOPS ROEVER: Noel Mitchell snapped Claas Roever’s winning streak in the top-8 round robin in Ireland on June 24 in the Pembroke tournament. Roever still leads the race 3-1, with Mitchell and the undefeated Cao Tong Yu at his heels, while Ian Davis is at 3-2. Click here for results. - Peter Dijkema

PROMOTING GO IN CYPRUS: When the Cyprus Youth Board organized an event last Friday to promote activities to keep kids off addictions, the Cyprus Go Association (CGA) took part, presenting the game to children and parents alike. Hundreds turned up for the June 26 event, and the CGA handed out promotional leaflets, go CDs and CGA t-shirts to those who stopped by and played. The Cyprus Go Association was formed in September 2003 and is a member of the European Go Federation (EGF) and the International Go Federation (IGF). Its members – and visitors -- meet every Saturday at Oktana (6 Aristides Street, Nicosia) to play, improve their game and socialize.
- Nicholas Roussos, Cyprus correspondent for the EJ; photo by Marios Koudounias

FINALISTS SELECTED FOR REDMOND CUP: The 16th annual Michael Redmond Cup preliminaries are now complete, and four talented youngsters have won a trip to the US Go Congress to compete in the finals. In the Senior Division defending champion 14-year-old Gan Sheng Shi 7d, placed first with four wins and one loss. He was undefeated in this event last year, and would have done the same this year but for a surprise loss to Vincent Zhaung 3d in the 4th round. Two-time Redmond finalist Cherry Shen 6d, and Zhongxia Zhao 7d, tied for second place with 4-1 records. Zhao won the playoff match and will now advance to the finals where he and Shi will play for the best 2-out-of-3 matches to win the title. Four-time Junior Division champion Calvin Sun 7d was edged out by the older players in this event, but he defeated Zhao to capture the USYGC Championship in the Senior Division of that event, this was his first time competing as a senior (over age 12) in both events. In the Junior Division, 11-year-old Andrew Lu 6d was undefeated, while Jerry Shen 3d and Yun Xuan Li tied for second with 3-1 records. Shen emerged as the victor in the playoff, so he will advance to the finals to compete with Lu for the Jr. Division title. Lu is the current USYGC Champion, and will represent the US at the World Youth Championships in China in August. Shen is the younger brother of star youth player Cherry Shen, and looks to be following in his sister's footsteps. The E-J will be broadcasting all six games of the Redmond Finals live from the US Go Congress. Dan level players who are interested in broadcasting games should contact the E-Journal, volunteers who are conversant with KGS are always needed. - Paul Barchilon, Youth Editor