A team from Los Angeles has joined the Chinese city league for the 2019 season,reports Steve Burrall from China. “The expense of fielding a team has historically been prohibitive for most non-Asian countries, but team leader Peter Chang has stepped up with funding for the first-ever team from the US to participate.” There are 32 teams including 24 from Chinese cities and eight international cities. Teams can have up to 12 players, but for each match, teams can be 3 to 6 players who confer on strategy during the match while each takes a turn playing a series of moves against the other team; international teams must include one native player, one female player and one amateur player.“Mr. Chang has filled these slots with Michael Redmond 9P, Shirley Lin 1P and amateurs Cheng C C 7d, Wang Yi Hsin 7d and Luo Qi Peng 7d. Completing the team are Captain O Rissei, Hsu Chia Yuan 8p and Liu Dhin Shin 3p,” Burrall reports. The first series of matches is currently underway in the city of Liuzhou. Los Angeles is 1-1 as of Saturday night May 25.
photo: team members discuss strategy while one player is playing on a board off to the right. Captain O Rissei 9p is in the center, seated at the board next to Michael Redmond 9p. photo by Steve Burrall
Over 60 people turned out for the San Diego Go Club’s 2019 Spring Soiree at the San Diego Chess Club in Balboa Park. Forty youth go players competed in either a 13×13 tournament or a 19×19 tournament which were run by Hai Li, a Chinese 5-dan professional. Kevin Charles Yang won the 19×19 tournament with 3-0 record over Evan Tan on tie-breakers. Five players in the 13×13 side earned four victories out of the 5-round non-handicapped competition. Adults playing self-paired games were put in a separate playing room. Both groups combined at 5 p.m. to partake of free pizza provided to both players and spectators. The San Diego Go Club will host the Second Annual 5-Round California Go Championship on the Saturday and Sunday after Thanksgiving (November 30 and December 1, 2019). There will be a prize pool of over $800.
Report/photo by Ted Terpstra, President, San Diego Go Club; photo: Hai Li, Chinese 5P, and his wife, Ya Wen giving awards to some of the twenty 19×19 players.
The final round of the 26th Redmond Cup Preliminaries has just started, and the race for the finalist spots in both the Junior and Senior divisions are still up for grabs, with no guaranteed finalists yet. In the Senior division, 3rd Redmond Meijin Aaron Ye 7d remains undefeated at 5-0, but will have to overcome 2018 AGA Girls Cup runner-up Melissa Cao 3d (currently 4-1) to guarantee a spot in the finals. Cao has had a fantastic tournament so far, defeating 4-time Junior Redmond Cup Champion Ary Cheng 6d and 2018 US Open Champion Brandon Zhou 5d in the previous two rounds. 2018 Redmond Cup runner-up Jeremy Chiu 6d and Richie Lou 5d also have a 4-1 record as well, and will play each other to move into a likely finalist position. A victory for Melissa Cao in this round would result in a 3-way tie for first place, so a playoff would determine the two finalists the week following the final round. For both Ye and Chiu, this is the last year that they are eligible to compete in the Redmond Cup as both will turn 18 in 2020. Both of them have participated in the Redmond Cup since 2011 and combined taken 9 of the 16 finalist spots over their 8 years of competing. Should they both qualify for the finals this year, it would be Chiu’s final chance to defeat Ye in this tournament, having lost the two previous encounters in 2014 and 2018.
The Junior division preliminaries is about as exciting as it can get. After Ary Cheng 6d’s four-year reign over the tournament before graduating to the Senior division, the field has been left wide open for new blood to take the throne. After 5 rounds, no player is undefeated and there is potential for a 6-way tie at a 4-2 score. Currently, Kevin Huang 6d and Ben Gong 3d lead the pack at 4-1, but Yuxin Fu 5d, Frederick Bao 4d (2018 Junior Redmond Cup runner-up), Kosuke Sato 3d, Duc Minh Vo 2d, and Alex Qi 2d are all chasing them at 3-2 records. The final round will pit Huang against Fu and Gong against Bao, and it will be up to Fu and Bao to force a tiebreaker playoff with victories.
When the dust settles, four finalists will be invited to the 2019 US Go Congress in Madison, Wisconsin in July to compete in a best-of-3 Finals. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of this year’s preliminary tournament. – Justin Teng, AGA Youth Coordinator
The Evanston Go Club taught scores of first-time go players at Anime Central (ACen) over two days last weekend. ACen is the largest anime, manga and Japanese popular culture convention in the Midwest, with over 30,000 attendees.
“This event is the most fun we have all year!” said club president Mark Rubenstein. “This is our 11th year at ACen. We teach all day Friday and Saturday and run a 9×9 tournament exclusively for beginners. Our mission is to impart our enthusiasm for Go to as many people as we can, and to get new-comers playing as quickly as possible. Most of the people we teach stay long enough to play a few games, but some stay for hours!”
Rubenstein is directing the Teacher’s Workshop at the U.S. Go Congress this year, which will be taught by two professionals from the Nihon Ki-in. Scholarships are available for participants who have not previously attended a Congress Teachers’ Workshop and teach, or have plans to teach, beginners. For more information contact Mark at mark@evanstongoclub.org.
“If you are interested in teaching Go, don’t miss the Teacher’s Workshop at the Congress!” said Rubenstein.
Four-game winners Yunshe Zhang 6d and Benjamin Gunby 2k tied for first place in the Massachusetts Go Association’s annual Don Wiener Memorial Tournament held April 7, at the Boylston Chess Club in Cambridge, MA. Two dozen players competed. Six three-game winners tied for third place: Javier Gonzales 1d; Sean Patrico 2k; Katerina Hrycyna 3k; Igor Pikovets 5k; David Kahn 8k; Albert Brox 9k. The players ranged in age from seven to octogenarian. “Five women participated (that includes you, Zooey),” says organizer Eva Casey. “We had one foreign visitor, Nils van der Blaar of Germany.” Click here for photos. This report got lost in our system; apologies for the delay.
