American Go E-Journal

When David Ormerod (l) and a friend saw the film “Pi” in 2002, they thought that go looked like an interesting game, so they found a go board and taught themselves to play, eventually hooking up with a go club in Melbourne. They started a small go club in the university and later on Ormerod began his own company selling chess and go equipment online. Although he had no difficulty selling chess equipment to schools — for a while he worked teaching chess in school — selling go equipment and teaching go, proved difficult because no one had ever heard of it. Ormerod met his wife Jing Ning Xue at university in Melbourne, and the two recently married and moved to Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory, where they both work for the Australian government. In addition to playing go together, the two enjoy biking and Latin dancing. While they were part of a community of several hundred go players in Melbourne, Canberra, is a much smaller place and it’s a good thing it just takes two to play, as often Ormerod and Australian Go Association President Neville Smythe are the only attendees at the local go club.
– None Redmond, special correspondent for the E-Journal; photo by John Pinkerton