News from the American Go Association

January 20, 2006
Volume 7, #7

FUJITSU QUALIFIER BEGINS
HIKARU NO GO DVD RELEASED
OZA WEST OPEN RESULTS
COMPLETE OZA RESULTS
CHINESE TRIUMPH IN 4TH WOMEN'S WORLD CUP
YAMASHITA TAKES FIRST GAME IN KISEI TITLE MATCH
BLOW-BY-BLOW ON THE "LITTLE PIG"
WEEKEND GO ACTION: Richmond to Kalamazoo
GAME COMMENTARY: January Harvest
GO CLASSIFIED
GO REVIEW: BiGo As sistant
ATTACHED FILES: 2006.01.20 Oza NYC Round 3 Board 1 Feng Yun-Huiren Yang UPDATED Comments by Feng Yun; 2006.01.20 Oza NYC Round 4 Board 1 Feng Yun-Zhaonian Chen UPDATED Comments by Feng Yun; 2006.01.20 Pro Game, Gu-Qiu, Weiqi World; 2006.01.20 Pro Game, Lee-Lee, go4go

FUJITSU QUALIFIER BEGINS: Round 1 of the 2006 U.S. Fujitsu Qualifier will be played online tomorrow, Saturday, January 21 on KGS at 1P EST. Sixteen top players from across the United States will vie for the right to be the 2006 U.S. Fujitsu representative. The players are: Jeffrey Fung, Kwo-Ping Ho, Thomas Hsiang, Mingjiu Jiang, Edward Kao, Edward Kim, Moon Chong Kim, Young K. Kwon, Jung Hoon Lee, Zhi Yuan (Andy) Liu, Eric Lui, I-Han Lui, Hui Ren Yang, Hosuk Yi, Johnny Yoon and Yuan Zhou. Jeff Shaevel is the TD. Look for player bios to be published online at http://www.usgo.or g/news/

HIKARU NO GO DVD RELEASED: VIZ Media has announced the highly anticipated launch of its latest anime series with the release of Volume 1 of HIKARU NO GO on DVD. The debut volume contains four episodes, is rated "A" for All Ages, will retail for $24.98 and is available now. The HIKARU NO GO anime series follows the manga counterpart written by Yumi Hotta and illustrated by Takeshi Obata which is also published domestically by VIZ Media and serialized in SHONEN JUMP Magazine. In Japan, HIKARU NO GO has achieved tremendous success as a manga and anime series since its debut in 1998 in the Weekly Shonen Jump comics anthology. Twenty-three volumes of the manga have now been published and the corresponding animated series features 75 half-hour episodes. The success of HIKARU NO GO spurred a nationwide interest in the game among children in Japan. This success has similarly begun to take shape in North Amer ica since VIZ Media began publishing the manga series in 2004.

OZA WEST OPEN RESULTS: 1st: Ming Jiu Jiang; 2nd: Jie Li; 3rd: Xuefen Lin; 4th (tie): Seung Hyun Seung, Wei-Yu Chen, Moon Chong Kim, Jung Hoon Lee, Kuo-Ruey Han, Dong Wang.

COMPLETE OZA RESULTS: The names of all place-winners at both the Oza East and Oza West will be published online over the weekend at http://www.usgo.org/news/ and will appear in Monday's EJ.

CHINESE TRIUMPH IN 4TH WOMEN'S WORLD CUP: Ye Gui 5P won the last game in the Jeongganjang Cup to give the Chinese their second] title in a row. Details on Monday.

YAMASHITA TAKES FIRST GAME IN KISEI TITLE MATCH: Yamash ita Keigo 9P won the first game in the best-of-seven Kisei title match against current title holder Hane Naoki 9P. Details on Monday.

BLOW-BY-BLOW ON THE "LITTLE PIG": As reported in Monday's E-Journal, Lee Chang Ho, who has dominated the game for the last 10 years, was upset in the Samsung Cup by Luo XiHe, a Chinese player known as "the king of Ko," who plays very fast. "Nicknamed 'little pig,' Luo XiHe loves territory," reports the Brooklyn Go Club's Jean-Claude Chetrit. You can check out Guo Juan 9P's blow-by-blow descriptions of the matches at http://www.audiogolessons.com

WEEKEND GO ACTION: Richmond to Kalamazoo
- January 21: Richmond, VA
Slate & Shell Open
William Cobb wmscobb@comcast.net 804-740-2191
- January 21: Kalamazoo, MI
Kalamazoo's 4th Tournament
Benjamin Sch ooley benjaminschooley@hotmail.com 269-672-7466
- January 21: Boulder, CO
Rocky Mountain Winter Go Tournament
David Weiss dweiss51@yahoo.com 720-904-3524
- January 22: Iowa City, IA
Iowa Snow Grade Tournament
Jacob Uptain muchodelcrazy@yahoo.com 319-329-5344

GAME COMMENTARY: January Harvest
     In an embarrassment of riches, we have a bumper crop of four game commentaries today. Feng Yun 9P revisits two of her games from last weekend, providing new and expanded commentary on the very tough and complicated Round 3 game with Huiren Yang and the 44-move win over Zhaonian Chen. We also have two pro games today: a November 22 game between Gu Li 7P and Qiu Jun 7P from the 7th Chinese Agon Cup (with commentary by Liu Shizhen 6P) and the January 3 Game 2 of the 49th Kuksu Challenger Finals between Lee Changho 9P and Lee Sedol 9P with commentary by Alexandre Dinerchtein 1P.
 & nbsp;     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 CLASSIFIED

PLAYERS WANTED: Washington Heights, NYC: Looking for players in the Washington Heights/Inwood neighborhoods of New York to start a new go club, or at least to have some regular games. Contact sigfried@sigfried.org, or 718-924-5065

GO REVIEW: BiGo Assistant
Reviewed by Philip Waldron 6d
       In addition to the many go books on my shelf, I now find an ever-increasing number of go programs on my computer. I have always found the most useful programs to be databases that allow me to examine how professionals have played in various situations. The latest program in this category is the BiGo Assistant.
       The deluxe version of BiGo, BiGo Full, comes with an incredible million-game database, including strong-amateur games from online servers. I was afraid the number of games would overwhelm me, but BiGo does a superb job of data presentation. Common variations and winning percentages are shown cleanly and are color-coded by player strength to distinguish between pros and amateurs.
       In addition to its search tools, BiGo comes with several other interesting features. My favourite is the "Fuseki Analyzer", which allows the user to examine variations on a full board and all corners and sides simultaneously, perfect for highlighting the differences between local play and global play. BiGo allows user-defined "subbases", which can be used to c ollect the games of a favourite player into a single database.
       While BiGo has some nice features, it isn't perfect. The help system that comes with the program is lacking. Only the most common features are explained, and even then with little detail. I still remain clueless about several parts of the program, even after several weeks of use. BiGo's search speed can also be frustrating slow. Finding common fuseki and joseki patterns usually takes just a few seconds, but other searches took me a full five minutes.
       BiGo comes in three versions, each with a different database: BiGo Full ($199), BiGo Profi ($75) and BiGo Tiny, a trial version. With its hefty price tag and poor documentation I can't give BiGo a great recommendation, but I do think it has great potential. With a little work, I think the next version BiGo could turn out to be a winner.
       ; BiGo is available from the authors at http://bigo.ufgo.org

Published by the American Go Association

Managing Editor: Chris Garlock
Assistant Editor: Bill Cobb

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