Boyi Cui 4d upset Karl Wei 5d to win the Chinese New Year Festival Go/Weiqi tournament February 12 in Columbus, OH. Wei had won the dan division the previous two years and was expected to repeat again this year, but in the second round, he came up against Boyi and in a hard-fought game that came down to time, Boyi took the victory and ultimately 1st place in the dan division. This year marked the third year that the Tesuji Go Club of Columbus has partnered with the the Central Ohio Chinese community to organize the Chinese New Year Festival Go/Weiqi tournament. “This is one of the premier go events in Ohio every year and we had a good turnout of 19 players including road warriors Chris and Peter Martin, John Adams, and Asha Nakaiya who all drove 4 hours from Louisville, KY to participate,” reports organizer Corey Sanders. The event was played over four rounds with players competing for trophies in 2 divisions (dan and kyu), including a strong showing of dan players and a very competitive kyu division. “We had a large cluster of players all around the 10k range, which allowed for a lot of even or close to even games,” reports Sanders. Newcomer Rohit Prabhavalkar survived a tight first round game with a .5 point victory over fellow newcomer Jon Berg and was able to ride the momentum to a perfect 4-0 record and 1st place. Other top finishers included Karl Wei 5d in 2nd and Dajiang He 3d in 3rd in the dan division. Asha Nakaiya 5k took 2nd in the kyu division and Justin Giglio 10k took 3rd.
