American Go E-Journal » 2011 » January

Over 20 players remained undefeated after first two rounds of Young Kwon National Online Tournament, held January 22-23 on KGS. Topping the all-time largest AGA online tournament in the 7d+ division are Dae Hyuk Ko, Zhanbo Sun, Jie Liang and Jing Guo. Suo and Sun are first time players in an AGA national event. In other dan and kyu sessions, AGA rookies Tommaso Mason 12k, Tengxiao Yang 6d and Travis Neil 2k have perfect scores thus far. Click here (ngol.us/Downloads) for complete results and Round 3 pairings. YKNOT resumed last weekend on KGS; watch the AGA website (www.usgo.org) for latest updates.

After a year-long hiatus, the Tacoma Go Club is resuming meetings. The Washington state go club will be hosted by the Tacoma Art Museum’s Workz Cafe on the second and fourth Saturday of each month from 11a to 5p. “This new offer allows the TGC to resume meetings in one of the most sought-after venues in Tacoma,” brags local organizer Gordon Castanza. “Come and enjoy the fine art collection of this museum, which includes the world-famous Dale Chihuly glass sculptures.” Free parking is available at the Tacoma Dome Transit Center, from which you catch the fare free Tacoma Link light rail and get off at the Tacoma Art Museum.

Could stronger go-playing programs draw their inspiration from ants? A recent article in the Journal of Experimental Biology showed that Argentinian ants were able to solve a maze generated by the Tower of Hanoi mathematical puzzle, working together to optimally find their way to food, and researchers hope that computerized optimization algorithms can adopt the ant’s biological algorithm. Israeli go player Shavit Fragman, in turn, wonders “What can we learn from biological systems to solve the go maze?” Seeking to bridge the gap between the Towers of Hanoi and solving a life and death problem, Shavit offers a challenge to “translate a tsumego into a problem of finding the shortest path in a maze and program an algorithm mimicking the ant’s behavior to find the solution.” Click here to read more about this.

Discussing China on CNN Sunday, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said that “One has to understand the Chinese intellectual game, which is what we call go (and) they call weiqi.” Explaining that “it’s a game of strategic encirclement,” Kissinger said that “our intellectual game is chess. Chess is about victory or defeat. Somebody wins.” Kissinger contrasted chess in which “all the pieces are in front of you at all times, so you can calculate your risk” with go, where the pieces “are not all on the board, and your opponent is always capable of introducing new pieces.” Historically, Kissinger said, the Chinese use strategic analysis based on “the go way.” Despite Kissinger’s cogent understanding of the game, CNN mistakenly used video of Chinese Chess to illustrate the segment. Click here to see the interview; the comments about go begin at 7m32s.
Thanks to the many readers who alerted us to this interview.
UPDATE: Noting that “The goal is less victory than persistent strategic progress,” Kissinger made similar comments in a 2004 Newsweek column. (Thanks to Roy Laird for finding this)

Hanxi Zhang has organized a Canadian online super go competition on KGS between top players in Ottawa/Gatineau and Montreal/Quebec City. The next game — round 3 — will be this Wednesday, January 26 at 9p EST, when Yingzhi Chen (Yingzhi) will play Pascal Tremblay (Pasukaru). You can follow the games online on KGS and on Twitter.