News from the American Go Association

November 11, 2005
Volume 5, #98

CHO U KEEPS MEIJIN TITLE
YAMASHITA TAKES FIRST GAME IN TENGEN DEFENSE
ERIC LUI GREAT PUMPKIN
MILE-HIGH PAIR GO
VIRTUAL NARA
BOLEY TAKES ON CHALLENGERS
LAST CHANCE FOR '05 TOURNEY REPORTS
GOODELL WINS ALERT READER
WEEKEND GO ACTION: Syracuse, Cleveland & Edmonton
GAME COMMENTARY: Yang on The High Cost of Greed
GO REVIEW: GoSuite For Pocket PC And SmartPhone
ATTACHED FILES: 2005.11.11 Challenge, Bengtson-nene, Yang.sgf

CHO U KEEPS MEIJIN TITLE: Cho U 9P held on to the Meijin title in Japan by a score of 4-3 over Kobayashi Satoru 9P. Details on Monday.

YAMASHITA TAKES FIRST GAME IN TENGEN DEFENSE: In the defense of his Tengen title against Kono Rin 7P, Yamashita Keigo 9P has won the first game by 6.5 points. Details on Monday.

ERIC LUI GREAT PUMPKIN: Eric Lui 7d topped the NOVA Pumpkin Classic tournament on October 29 in Arlington, VA. "The pumpkins and gourds used for prizes were unusually good this year," reports organizer Allan Abramson, "and were eagerly sought" by the 36 players who took part.
     Complete winner's report: First Prize: Eric Lui, 7d, 4-0; Paul Celmer, 1d, 3-1; Wei Mao, 3k, 3-1; Bob Ehrlich, 7k, 3-1; Keith Leung, 8k, 3-1; Dave Hogarty, 17k, 4-0; Christopher Long, 21k, 4-0. Second Prize:Kuo-Ping Ho, 6d, 3-1; Scot Waldron, 1d, 3-1; Matt Bengston, 4k, 2-2; John Gipson, 6k, 2-2; Robert Ferguson, 8k, 3-1; Yiyu Wang, 16k, 3-1; Tianren Tan, 20k, 3-1. Third Prize: Xin-Mu Tan, 4d, 2-2; David Wong, 1d, 3-0; Raymond Yeh, 6k, 2-2; Kevin Chin, 18k, 2-2; Hanyuan Ban, 20k, 2-2

MILE-HIGH PAIR GO: The US' first non-Congress Pair Go tournament is being held Saturday, December 3 in Denver Colorado. The tournament is presented by Fiery Rain of Go Stones and Samarkand and directed by Jasmine Sailing. Janice Kim (3p Korea) will host a demo of Pair Go basics at the start, and an awards ceremony, with a variety of prizes, will be held at the end of the tournament. Pairs of all ratings are welcome. The tournament will be held at the Downtown Denver Ramada, 1150 E. Colfax, beginning at 10A. For more information about the tournament and Pair Go, go to:
http://cyberpsychos.netonecom.net/PairGo or contact Jasmine Sailing at jsailing@netonecom.net or 303-388-4666

VIRTUAL NARA: If you can't get to Japan to see the go treasures at the Nara National Museum (Rare Go Treasures in Nara, 11/7 EJ), you can check them out online at
http://www.narahaku.go.jp/exhib/2005toku/shosoin/shosoin-1_e.htm  which features photos and descr iptions of many of the go items described by Peter Schumer. Thanks to Michael Hansen in Salt Lake City for the link!

BOLEY TAKES ON CHALLENGERS: Jon Boley 6d will take on a dozen Shodan Challengers in two online simuls over the next month. The simuls are another benefit for the more than 30 Challengers who have publicly accepted the challenge of trying to achieve a specific goal by next year's U.S. Go Congress August 12-20 in Black Mountain, North Carolina. Challengers are also entered in a drawing for a free copy of SmartGo this month. For more details on how to qualify for the Challenge, email us today at journal@usgo.org  (Deadline for application: December 1, 2005)

LAST CHANCE F OR '05 TOURNEY REPORTS: If your tournament was not reported in the E-Journal this year, you can still get the Winner's Report into the 2005 American Go Yearbook, which is now in production. Reports sent to ratings@usgo.org go into the ratings system and are separate from Winner's Reports for the E-Journal (and Yearbook), which must be sent to journal@usgo.org and include: Tournament name, date(s), location (city/state), TD name, # of players and names/strengths of winners (by division, if applicable). Photos are also welcome; be sure to identify the photographer. Reports and photos are due no later than 11/15.

GOODELL WINS ALERT READER: Daniel Goodell of San Francisco, CA is this week's Alert Reader winner, winning a $10 go vendor gift certificates for spotting our most recent Alert hidden in a game commentary. Winners are drawn at random from those who correctly report the Alerts. Keep a sharp eye out in ALL our game attachments; you could be a winner too!

WEEKEND GO ACTION: Syracuse, Cleveland & Edmonton
- November 12: Syracuse, NY
Syracuse Fall Ratings Tournament
Richard Moseson mosesons@earthlink.net 315-682-7720
- November 12: Cleveland, OH
Case Western Reserve University Fall Tournament
Paul Jacobs pxj18@cwru.edu 216-402-3071
- November 12-13: Edmonton, Alberta
Sabaki Go Championship 2005
Luke Chung yaonchung@gmail.com 780-489-5736

GAME COMMENTARY: Yang on The High Cost of Greed
       In today's game commentary, Yilun Yang 7P applies his usual thorough analysis to a game by Shodan Challenger Matthew Bengtson 4k. Bengtson lives in Philadelphia and is co-president of the Penn Go Society, which is co-sponsoring a tournament with the Philadelphia Baduk Association on December 4. See if you can spot how many times Yang catches White being too greedy.

GO REVIEW: GoSuite For Pocket PC And SmartPhone
by Roy Laird 3k
       When I switched from the Palm platform to a Pocket PC a few years ago, my only regret was losing the ability to record games and review sgf files with PilotGone. Now I have no regrets -- in fact, quit e the contrary, not only can I do all that, I can even play against my PDA! I just downloaded and installed Ashley Feniello's GoSuite, available at no charge from http://senseis.xmp.net/?GoSuite. The handsome graphics, especially in "Oversized Board" mode, made it easy to get involved in a game, but more on that later. I'll probably spend a lot more time viewing sgf files and recording games, and that's where GoSuite really excels.
       GoSuite has all the usual bells and whistles -- toggles for coordinate markers, move numbers on the stones, and so on -- and more. The "Comment Cleanup" feature is especially cool. When the commentary uses coordinates to refer to points on the board, "Comment Cleanup" converts them automatically to marks (for stones) or letters (for vacant intersections), on the board and in the text. There are lots of nice recording features too, like being able to drag a stone if you tap the wrong intersection by mistake. And if you know the difference between a "sibling" and a "child" variation, or between a "branch" and a "node", you'll find many more features too numerous and complex to describe here. In addition, users who want Asian character sets will be pleased to know that GoSuite reads/writes properties in UTF-8 encoding.
       GoSuite also functions as a "front end' for Sid Liu's implementation of GnuGo CE. There are ten strength levels, and the strongest plays rather slowly, so it can be a little like playing on a turn-based server: check in, see if a move has been made, play your response, then back to what you are doing (like writing a product review). I abandoned my first game after GnuGo spent seven hours trying to come up with a move -- I'm still not sure if it was stumped or working overtime -- but I've got one going now. As an AGA 3K, I've played weaker humans, and weaker computer programs. Here's a cute little feature; if you can't decide what to do next, tap the little light bulb at the bottom, and GnuGo will suggest the next move. It's annoying when humans do that - you know who I mean! -- but GnuGo is refreshingly polite, and only suggests when asked.
       On everything from manners to graphics, ease of use to range of features, GoSuite gets top marks, especially as a playing and recording tool, and the ability to play against it is a nice little extra. It's also available for your SmartPhone, but since I don't have one, if I hadn't switched to Pocket PC before, I might do so now!
       Laird is webmaster for the AGA website.      

Published by the American Go Association
Managing Editor: Chris Garlock
Ass istant Editor: Bill Cobb

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