News from the American Go Association
February 2, 2007
Volume 8, #9 (Member's Edition)
N.A. FUJITSU
QUALIFIER KICKS OFF TOMORROW
REDMOND BEATS SAKAI IN TENGEN
PRELIM
BENSON
RECOGNIZED BY DIRECTOR'S GUILD
LI HE WINS BAILING CUP IN CHINA
RUI NAIWEI REPEATS AS
WOMEN'S MYEONGIN
WEEKEND ACTION:
New York, NY & Arlington, VA
GO
QUIZ: A Man To Be Envied, A Man To Be Remembered
GO REVIEW: Get Strong at the
Opening
GAME COMMENTARY:
Amateur Q&A on the 2006 Honinbo & Latest Yang
ATTACHED GAME(S):
2007.02.02 Honinbo (61st) Yamada-Takao, Go World; 2007.02.02 Yilun Yang's
February Puzzle
EJ UPGRADING: The E-Journal will implement a
format change soon that will enable us to significantly upgrade our look and
feel, enabling us to include photos and graphics for the first time. Make sure
you don't miss a single issue of the new EJ by whitelisting
journal@usgo.org to avoid problems with sensitive spam
filters.
N.A. FUJITSU QUALIFIER KICKS
OFF TOMORROW: Thomas Hsiang 7d will take on defending champion
Mingjiu Jiang 7P in tomorrow's North American Fujitsu Qualifier Round 1. Other
pairings include Wei-Yu Chen-Dong Wang, Huiren Yang-I-Han Lui, Yuan Zhou-Calvin
Sun, Jie Li-Young Kwon, Jung Hoon Lee-Gus Price, Andy Liu-Joseph Wang and Eric
Lui-Liang Yu. The action begins online on IGS starting at 10A PST. Round 2 will
be on Sunday. For pairings, schedule and standings, click on http://www.usgo.org/tournaments/Fujitsu/2007/games.html
REDMOND BEATS SAKAI IN TENGEN PRELIM: Michael Redmond 9P has defeated Sakai Hideyuki 7P in the first round of the preliminary tournament for the Japanese Tengen. Details on Monday.
BENSON RECOGNIZED BY
DIRECTOR'S GUILD: Longtime go player, organizer and former AGA
President Terry Benson will receive the Director's Guild of America's 2006
Franklin J. Schaffner Achievement Award this Saturday. The award - which will be
presented at the 59th Annual DGA Awards Dinner in Los Angeles tomorrow night --
is given to an Associate Director or Stage Manager in recognition of career
achievement in the industry and service to the Directors Guild of America. More
details Monday, or click on http://www.dga.org/news/pr_expand.php3?484
LI HE WINS BAILING CUP
IN CHINA: Li He 1P defeated Ye Gui 5P 2-1 to take the Bailing Cup,
a Chinese women's event. Details on Monday.
RUI NAIWEI REPEATS AS WOMEN'S
MYEONGIN: Rui Naiwei 9P has again won the Women's Myeongin (Meijin)
Tournament in Korea. Details on Monday.
Coming up Monday: The latest installment of Motoko
Arai's "Can't Stop the Monkey Jump - A Beginner Studies the
Pros."
WEEKEND ACTION:
New York, NY & Arlington, VA
- February 4: New York, NY
Super
Sunday Pre-Game Games
http://www.nygocenter.org/020407.htm
Palani
Vel, TD nygc@usgo.org 212.223.0342
- February 3: Arlington,
VA
The 1st Chinese New Year Tournament
Allan Abramson allango@igc.org
703.684.7676
Chung-Sung Chin chin8673@yahoo.com 703.706.4311
GO QUIZ: A Man To Be Envied, A Man To
Be Remembered
Congratulations to
those (3/6) who successfully alphabetized Paul Anderson (1965-66) and WD Witt
(1935) as our AGA Presidential bookends. Paul Anderson took lessons from Takao
Matsuda in Greenwich Village in the 1960-61 and then went to Japan in 1961-62
where he swapped go lessons for English lessons with Reiko Kitani. "Every
Saturday, I was invited to have dinner with her family, including her father
Minoru Kitani Sensei," Paul reports to an envious quizmaster. He served on the
British Go Association's Board of Governors (there goes another quiz question)
while living in London, and was instrumental in getting his employer, IBM, to
sponsor a major tournament in Japan. Today, along with fellow ex-president Roy
Laird, he is doing wonderful work at the resurgent New York Go Center. WD Witt
was one of the first documented Caucasian go players in 1909. He held the first
known tournament, in 1912 in Philadelphia, and became the AGA's first president
in 1935. In researching the early history of American go, Craig Hutchinson
concludes, "Since WD Witt organized the first Caucasian Go Club and Go
Tournament in the U.S., suggested the organization of the AGA, taught many
people to play go, it can be said he had done more than anyone else to spread go
in the U.S. since Arthur Smith prior to August 1934" He was the first Westerner
to examine issues in the Japanese and Chinese Rules. He died in April, 1945
(source - AGA 1995 Historical Book - available on the AGA website) This week's
winner, selected at random from thos answering correctly, is Phil Waldron of
Gloucester, Ontario (Canada).
THIS
WEEK'S QUIZ: In honor of the Fujitsu Qualifier beginning this weekend
-- watch the games online! - here's a Fujitsu question. Michael Redmond 9P and
Jimmy Cha 4P battled for the right to represent the U.S. during the 1990s. Name
the only player, other than Cha, to defeat Redmond in the Qualifier - was it
Thomas Hsiang, James Kerwin, John Lee or Yuan Zhou? Vote here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=330212370809
-
Go Quiz Editor: Keith L. Arnold, hka
GO REVIEW: Get Strong at the
Opening
by Richard Bozulich
Reviewed by Dammy Osoba,
11k
This book is part of the "Get
Strong At Go" series from Kiseido. The book has about 172 problems. The first 80
or so problems are fuseki problems that deal with niren-sei, sanren-sei, the
Chinese opening and the Shusaku opening. The second part of the book deals with
general opening problems, problems more to test positional judgment. I would say
that 30k-5k would find the first half of the book more useful. I was able to go
through all the problems in the first half.
A downside to the book is that it does
not have a comprehensive theory section. In the first couple of pages, the book
explains relevant go terms and it has a very short section on explaining basic
opening patterns. However, there is no comprehensive theory section, nothing on
what to look for in the opening or guiding principles. It does not explain fuzzy
terms like "big point" or concepts like nullifying influence. Particularly in
regards to the shusaku opening, the book has an all too brief blurb about it. I
found myself not being able to understand the solutions of the shusaku problems
especially with newly learned moyo ideas floating in my
head.
The first 80 problems, I found
incredibly useful. Problems focused on moyo based strategies. I was able to
learn pretty quickly mechanics of building of a moyo in first 20 moves. Most of
the problems were focused on where black would play, which is also a downside. I
feel that I can play black pretty well with a moyo strategy but playing white is
another matter. I would have liked more problems on how white can foil black's
moyo strategy. Again shusaku problems I found difficult to understand; either
way, I won't be playing the shusaku opening anytime
soon.
The third part of the book I found
incredibly opaque. I guess I am simply not strong enough to understand the
problems. I would guess that these are dan-level problems. The problems required
an attention to detail, and finesse that I could not simply understand what the
point was. Especially since the problems did not give a list of possible of
answers, the most obvious answer to me would often not be explained in the
solutions, which seemed quite arbitrary to me.
Fuseki is hard, it requires both reading
and positional judgment. A lot of the principles are fuzzy and hard to grasp. I
do think that this book helped me with the big picture view of the board. It is
a certainly a book that I would review again as I get stronger. I would
recommend that readers study a more thorough book on fuseki theory and then look
at this book to test
understanding.
Osoba is a 2007 Shodan
Challenger, one of more than 50 go players working to attain goals by this
year's US Go Congress in Millersville, PA. This review was submitted as part of
the Challenge's ongoing study program, in this case an assignment to review
books about the opening.
GAME
COMMENTARY: Amateur Q&A on the 2006 Honinbo & Latest
Yang
Yamada Kimio 9P takes on Takao
Shinji 9P and Honinbo in the fourth game of last year's 61st Honinbo title match
in today's game commentary. The game was played June 13-14, 2006 in Karatsu
City, Saga Prefecture, Japan. The commentary up through move 65 takes the form
of a professional answering questions posed by an amateur. The main theme that
emerges is the differences between professional and amateur perception,
especially about which groups are important and which areas are important for
fighting. The aim is to help readers develop their strategic perception. The
discussion was written up by Oshima Masao and is translated by John Power from
the Nihon Kiin's Monthly Go World for August 2006. Go World is a quarterly
English language go magazine that contains a wealth of pro commentaries and
additional instructional
material.
Our bonus file
today is Yilun Yang 7P's final life and death problem based on the months of the
year; be sure to turn off Next Move before opening the file. Look for a new
series from Mr Yang starting in
March!
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
Published by the American Go Association
Managing Editor: Chris
Garlock
Assistant Editor: Bill Cobb
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