News from the American Go Association
April 3, 2006
Volume 7, #28
ERIC LUI WINS NOVA CHERRY BLOSSOM
UPENN TEAM WINS CHAPTER TEAM LEAGUE
CHOI & LEE IN MAXIM CUP DEAD HEAT
WANG XI UPSETS CHANG HAO IN RICOH CUP
HONINBO CHALLENGER TOURNAMENT HOTLY CONTESTED
HARD TIMES AT THE GOBAN: Goin' Fishin'
CALENDAR
ATTACHED FILE(S): 2006.04.03 Choi-Lee, Maxim, go4go
LAST CHANCE: GO WORLD OFFER EXTENDED THRU MIDNIGHT! Due to popular demand, we've extended our March Go World offer through tonight at midnight. Join the AGA - or renew your membership - by midnight on Monday, April 3 and get a free copy of Go World! Get a 2 or 3-year membership and double or triple the fun with 2 or 3 free Go Worlds. Plus of course you'll get the Member's Edition of the E-Journal every Friday, including reviews, games and more. AGA chapters who join or renew are eligible too, and get double the current offer for new or renewing members (i.e. 2 Go Worlds for 1 year, 4 for 2 years and 6 for 3 years). The English-language quarterly from Kiseido provides in-depth coverage of top tournament games along with a wealth of terrific instructional material. Join now at http://www.usgo.org/org/application.asp
ERIC LUI WINS NOVA CHERRY BLOSSOM: Eric Lui 7d swept all his games to take top honors in the March 25 NOVA Cherry Blossom tournament. Eighty-two players participated in the tournament, held at the historic Sumner School in Washington DC. "Two came all the way from Japan," reports organizer Allan Abramson. "Tadashi Kohmoto 6d, and Susumu Hyodo 4d. We hope that this is the beginning of an ongoing exchange with our Japanese friends." Players from Rochester, NY, North Carolina, and Ohio also made the trip. The full Winners Report:
First Place: Eric Lui, 7d, 4-0, XInmu Tan, 4d, 3-1, Ray Hunley, 1d, 3-1, Adam Bridges, 2k, 4-0, Neil Bernardo, 3k, 3-1, Todd Blatt, 5k, 3-1, Yiyu Wang, 6k, 4-0, Nicholas Blake, 7k, 4-0, Neil Bernstein, 8k, 3-1, Kei Kawabata, 9k, 4-0, Samantha Fede, 13k, 3-1, Jennifer Lin, 15k, 3-1, Todd Sprang, 18k, 4-0, and Matthew Harding, 30k, 4-0.
Second Place: Tadashi Kohmoto, 6d, 2-2, Keith Arnold, 5d, 2-2, Chuck Robbins, 4d, 3-1, Scott Waldron, 2d, 3-1, Wei Mao, 2k, 3-1, Matt Bengston, 2k, 2-2, John Lancaster, 5k, 3-1, John Gipson, 6k, 3-1, Ching-Sung Chin, 7k, 3-1, Alpha Chen, 8k, 2-2, Allen Giles, 8k, 2-2, Bob Bacon, 9k, 3-1, Keiju Takehara, 12k, 3-1, Deidre Golash, 15k, 3-1, Chris Long, 20k, 3-1, and Stephanie Xu, 29k, 2-2.
Third place (for those with winning records): Sung Yoon, 1k, 3-1, David Hough, 20k, 3-1, and Vi Cao, 20k, 3-1.
CYCLONE DOMINATES IOWA CUP: Iowa State University's new Cyclone Go Club wrested the Iowa Cup from the Cedar Rapids Go Club at the Spring Forward Iowa Go Tournament on April 2 in Iowa City, Iowa. The Ames-based Cyclones - a new AGA chapter -- dominated the high-kyu divison, winning first, second, third and fourth places, and racking up a total of 11 points. Cedar Rapids had a player in fifth place in the high-kyu division and placed first and third in the low-kyu division for a total of 10 points. Iowa City garnered 5 points, Fairfield 4, and Waterloo, 2. Waterloo was represented by only one player, 6th-grader Will Shirey 15k. Jizhou Chen 17k (Cyclone Go Club) conquered the high-kyu division by winning all four of his games; Ramon Mercado 17k (Cyclone Go Club) placed second with 3 wins. Jacob Uptain 8k (Cedar Rapids) won the low-kyu divison with 3 wins, wh
ile Matt Pinkston 12k (Iowa City) placed second, also with 3 wins. Prizes for the top five players in each division were books donated by Slate & Shell, and cash prizes. Five tournament attendees joined the AGA at the tournament, plus one renewal. The next Iowa Cup tournament is scheduled for May 20th in Des Moines.
- reported by Duncan H. Brown
UPENN TEAM WINS CHAPTER TEAM LEAGUE: The UPenn Go Okatu team - the only one to qualify for prizes -- completed 11 matches in the abbreviated second season of the AGA Chapter Team League. "UPenn captain Peter Nassar won the Goliath Prize of a $100 gift certificate for go books or equipment for the largest number of individual wins minus losses (7-4)," reports League Director Bill Saltman. The team, which included Richard Gray and Matthew Bengston, also wins the Devoted and Hustler prizes ($100 gift certificate each) for playing the most games and matches, as well as individual Fighting Spirit prizes ($25.00 gift certificate) for each member. "Watch for news of a new AGA online tournament," promises Saltman.
HIKARU'S SWEATY PALMS: In this month's SHONEN JUMP, the biggest English-language manga magazine, Hikaru no Go's Hikaru gets sweaty palms as his next game approaches, the ghost mentor Sai mourns the loss of his physical form, and one particularly intense match gets downright physical. . And in her "Getting Go" column, Janice Kim 3 dan answers the question, "Who is stronger at Go, women or men?" All this and more in the May 2006 issue of SHONEN JUMP, on newsstands April 4.
AGA GO CAMPS 2X: Young go players once again have two opportunities to attend Go Camp: the West Coast Camp is at the Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA from July 15 - 22 and the East Coast Camp is August 5-12 in Delaware Water Gap. PA, just before the Go Congress. Visit www.usgo.org/gocamp to see a video about Go Camps.
CHO ONE AWAY FROM JUDAN WIN: Cho Chikun 9P has won the second game in his best-of-five Judan match against Yamashita Keigo 9P to take a 2-0 lead in his battle to hold onto his only current title. Cho won both games by resignation. Yamashita recently regained the Kisei title by defeating Hane Naoki 9P, who took it from him two years ago. He won that match 4-0, but is not in a good position to add a second title to his current holdings. Yamashita did take the Tengen in 2004, but has held no others among the top seven Japanese titles. Cho has held all of them, most several times, but he has fallen on hard times lately. Winning the Judan last year was a refreshing change for him. The tournament to determine the challenger for the winner of the Judan this time is all set up, and includes Michael
Redmond 9P of the USA.
CHOI & LEE IN MAXIM CUP DEAD HEAT: Choi Cheolhan 9P took the second game of the Maxim Cup title match against Lee Sedol 9P by 1.5 points to tie up the best-of-three match at 1-1. We have attached an SGF file of their first game, courtesy of the go4go.net site. Lee won this title last year, and Rui Naiwei 9P took it the year before that. Lee is having a very good start this year: with twenty wins and only four losses and six losses he is at the top of the list of Korean pros in terms of games won. Choi is tied for third with fifteen wins. Speaking of Rui, she is tied for seventh on this list with fourteen wins and four losses.
WANG XI UPSETS CHANG HAO IN RICOH CUP: In what has to be seen as something of an upset, young Wang Xi 7P has defeated Chang Hao 9P to take the Ricoh (Liguang) Cup. This is Wang's first title, while Chang is one of the top performers among Chinese pros. The possibility of Wang's breaking through while still in his early twenties had to be seen when he defeated Gu Li 7P, China's current number one player, to get into the finals with Chang Ho, and in the round before that Wang defeated Luo Xihe 9P, recent winner of the international Samsung Cup. Wang won all these games by resignation. Definitely a player to keep an eye on.
HONINBO CHALLENGER TOURNAMENT HOTLY CONTESTED: The League to determine the challenger for Honinbo title holder Takao Shinji 8P has ended in a three-way tie and will require a two-step playoff. Three players ended up with 5-2 records after League play. The first match in the playoff will be between Hane Naoki 9P and Yamada Kimio 9P. The winner of that game will play Yoda Norimoto 9P and current Gosei to determine Takao's challenger.
HARD TIMES AT THE GOBAN: Goin' Fishin'
by Joel Turnipseed 5k
Trout season is now open in Minnesota and I just picked up a new Winston rod that I can't wait to try out. I spent a few hours the other day tying up some blue wing olives and griffith's gnats. E-mails are already out to pals scheduling a first day on the stream.
What has this got to do with go? Nothing and everything. I'm back on a win some lose more kind of streak and I can't help wondering whether I'd rather be reading a stream than a board just now. When you add in a kid, wife, job, yard (okay, to hell with the yard) and pals with projects that need time and beers to talk through, you quickly realize the need to find some balance among your frustra-I mean, pleasures.
Maybe it's appropriate that my biggest weakness in go right now is that I'm subject to enclosure josekis-I see those big moyos building up and feel helpless to tear them down. Approaching middle age, life can feel like that and one feels the need to spend some time in the chase after different things. So far I've resisted other women and, for the most part, excessive booze. But a trout is a pretty non-controversial chase, if you ask me, especially since I let them go when I'm lucky enough to land one.
So I'm going fishing. Shodan is still out there-somewhere in that limbo between the receding hopes of my youth and the promises that inhere in continued good work-but it can wait for a trout or two.
Joel Turnipseed is the author of Baghdad Express and blogs about books, film and go at www.hotelzero.com
CALENDAR
April 7: Bethesda, MD
Yuan Zhou 7d Teaching Session
8:30P; basement (room 15) of the Cedar Lane Unitarian Church, 9601 Cedar Lane, Bethesda. Bring game records to participate ($5), or observe for free. Don't have a game? Come early (official opening time 7P) to play and record a game.
April 8-9: College Park, MD
John Groesch Memorial Go Tournament
Stamp Student Union (Benjamin Banneker Room), University of Maryland.
http://usgo.org/AGAChapters/UMD/Spring.html
April 9: Cleveland, OH
Case Western Reserve University Spring Tournament
Paul Jacobs pxj18@cwru.edu 216-402-3071
April 15: Piscataway, NJ
The 4th Feng Yun Annual Go Tournament
Feng Yun, Golesson@yahoo.com 973 992 5675
April 22-23: Houston, TX
Spring Handicap Tournament
http://www.houstongoclub.org/HSGT2006.html
Preregistering by email required by April 20th; Free box lunch included.
Published by the American Go Association
Managing Editor: Chris Garlock
Assistant Editor: Bill Cobb
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