News from the American Go Association
March 18, 2005
In This Issue:
LATEST GO NEWS: HS Tourneys Expand; Lee Changho Recovers In Chunlan Cup; Li Shen Wins Cambridge Trigantius; Shodan Challenger Improves; Weekend Tourney Action
GAME COMMENTARY: Fuseki to Yose
GO REVIEW: Dictionary of Basic Tesuji, Vol 1 Tesuji for Attacking
ATTACHED FILES: 2005.03.18 Yang Commentary, Shodan Challenge; 2005.03.18 Go Review Problem
HS TOURNEYS EXPAND: High School online go competition in North America has now expanded to Canada, reports organizer Christopher Vu. "Through the success of the National K-12 Team Tournament, Canada recently held their inaugural tournament with the same format." To mark the occasion, Clear Lake HS of Houston, TX faced off against Archbishop MacDona ld HS of Canada in a best-of-five board match. The US team dominated, scoring a 5-0 knockout of Canada. Registration has now opened for the 2005 tournament to determine the best school team in the United States: go to http://ali.bakasan.com/go/tourneys.html#4 for more details or email Christopher Vu at wasonlyyesterday@yahoo.com
LEE CHANGHO RECOVERS IN CHUNLAN CUP: After losing the first game in the title match for the Chunlan Cup by a half point to Zhou Heyang 9P of China, Lee Changho 9P of Korea came back to take the second game by resignation on Wednesday, March 16th. The decisive game in the best-of-three match will be played on Friday. Details in Monday's edition.
LI SHEN WINS CAMBRIDGE TRIGANTIUS: Li Shen 6d of London triumphed again in the Cambridge Trigantius, which had an overall turnout of nearly 100 players. Details Monday.
SHODAN CHALLENGER IMPROVES: "I have improved from around -14 to -10.8 over the past two tournaments here in Oregon (Portland Fall, Salem Spring) and I feel like I'm continuing to get stronger," reports Shodan Challenger Josh Gum. "I've been reading books, reviewing my own games, studying pro games, going to my local club meetings occassionally, and doing tsume-go as often as I can." Josh says he may not be able to attend the whole weeklong US Go Congress in Tacoma, WA "But I am still going to try and make it there for at least one weekend! I'd love to have another game reviewed by Yilun Yang, the first review has helped me quite a bit as I read it every couple of weeks and learn new things and get new ideas." (See this week's game commentary for a thorough analysis by Yilun Yang of a recent game by Gum)
WEEKEND TOURNEY ACTION: 4 EVENTS!
March 19: Edmunton, Alberta, Canada
Grant MacEwan Open
Jason Morris 780-497-5479 J5@mymail.macewan.ca
March 19: Ann Arbor, MI
Spring Tournament
Eric Jankowski 734-417-5547 erjank@umich.edu
March 19: Raleigh, NC
Spring Fuseki
Troy Hurteau 919-515-3318 jthurteau@ncsu.edu
March 20: Sunnyvale, CA
9th Jujo Jiang Cup Youth Goe Tournament
Mingjiu Jiang 206-545-1424 mingjiu7p@hotmail.com
LEI NI ALERT READER WINNER: Lei Ni is this week's Alert Reader winner, winning a $10 go vendor gift certificate for spotting our Alert hidden in our March 3 game commentary. Honorable Mentions this week to Peter Nassar (who say's "These commentaries are wonderful - thanks so much for including them!"); James McKee, Dan Jaqua, Matthew William Bengtson, Billy Hand, Adam Bloom, Philip Ulbrich, Shai Simonson, Ted Terpstra, E Morse, Jason Preuss, Josh Gum ("Excellent game reviews!"), Alpha Chen, Kerry Donny-Clark & S Cowling. Winners are drawn at random from those who correctly report the Alerts. Keep a sharp eye out and you could be a winner too!
GAME COMMENTARY: Fuseki to Yose
Shodan Challenger Josh Gum 10k has been improving fast in recent months and today Yilun Yang takes a move-by-move look at one of Josh's recent games on KGS. The commentary provides a thorough examination of almost every aspect of the game, from influence in the opening to middle-game fighting and end-game calculations. Shodan Challengers are kyu-level players who have publicly accepted the challenge of trying to achieve 1-dan by this year's U.S. Go Congress in Tacoma, Washington. The E-Journal is following the progress of each Shodan Challenger and has arranged for professional game analysis to help the Shodan Challengers improve their games. See photos of some of the Challengers at http://www.usgo.org/photos/ Want to take the Shodan Challenge? Email us today at journal@usgo.org
&nbs
p; Our bonus file today is a challenging life-and-death problem from Go Review.
To view the attached .sgf file(s), simply save the file(s) to your computer and then open 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
GO REVIEW: Dictionary of Basic Tesuji, Vol 1 Tesuji for Attacking
by Fujisawa Shuko, 9 Dan
published by Slate and Shell
Reviewed by Michael Heinich
Shuko's Dictionary of Basic Tesuji is published across four volumes, the first one concentrating on tesuji for attacking. I really enjoyed this book and found the format useful for my style of studying. Each chapter is dedicated to a type of attacking tesuji; instea
d of using chapter numbers, the table contents lists the types such as Separating, Pressing Down and Probing, along with an example diagram and a diagram with the primary answer. I like the tesuji type category concept but I am unsure about the usefulness of the example diagrams in the Table of Contents, especially the initial diagram.
Each chapter starts with a basic introduction to the concept along with simple examples that even a 20k would understand. A couple times Shuko mentions that his examples are not exactly tesuji, but provide a simpler demonstration of the idea. The rest of the chapter is dedicated to problems or professional game examples, on average 15-20 per chapter, each page containing one problem or example. The pages have an initial diagram with a brief introduction, then three diagrams below that show common wrong answers, a close answer and the best answer along with some possible var
iations by the use of letters. This method works for me.
This is really a learning dictionary, as the title suggests, rather then a problem book. At the same time though, you could block the bottom portion of the page with a piece of paper if you wanted to try and figure out the problem yourself first. This book seems to be aimed toward to high double digit kyu's to middle single digit kyu level players, 13k - 5k. Players below 13k would benefit as well from this book. The only problem I had was the book cover. The lettering style is hard on the eyes and it's use on the binding is worse. The first couple times I had to look at it for a second before the words focused. Overall this is an wonderful book and I will be waiting for the other volumes with high hopes. These should be coming out 4-6 months apart. Vol 2 covers defensive tesuji and volumes 3 and 4 cover openings, capturing races a
nd yose.
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