American Go E-Journal

Since the New York Go Center closed in 2010, New York City’s go scene has ironically been experiencing a bit of a go renaissance, reports local organizer Boris Bernadsky. “Perhaps it’s due to people no longer taking having a go club for granted that encouraged the go community to become more active in going out to play,” Bernadsky tells the E-Journal. The most notable addition to New York go is the mostly go club on meetup.com.  “This 2.0 style go club allows people to very easily organize go meetings all over the city, anytime they want,” says Bernadsky. “A lonely go player now needs very little organizing skill or experience to put together a fun day playing go in the park, or in a cafe.” The New York go resurgence was very apparent is mid-December when two tournaments were held on the same weekend. On Friday December 16th there was a “Traditional Drinking Tournament” at the Fat Cat jazz lounge. In this type of tournament, all games are self-paired, and each player has 4 hours to drink and win as many games as they can. Matthew Hershberger (right) out-drank and outplayed the 10-player field, collecting the Orange Juice trophy, “a prize chosen for its healing powers in the morning,” says Bernadsky. On Sunday December 17, 30 players re-gathered at the Fat-Cat for the Thailand Relief Tournament, run by Go Rebuilds., a new organization with the motto “Go tournaments with a cause.” The tournament was run entirely using Goclubs.org, which “helped make the time from ‘Check in’ to ‘Round One’ very short,” Bernadsky says. Over $450 was raised by the New York go community to help Thailand, still suffering from floods last summer. Prizes included a $60 gift certificate to the Rhong Tiam Thai restaurant, one-month membership to Alexander Dinerchtein’s online Insei-league and a private lesson from professional Stephanie Yin. Additionally, all attendees received a $10 coupon to slateandshell.com as well as a free online lesson from Kazunari Furuyama kazsensei.com.  Kerstin Bergstrom 1D, Tawan Newton 4k, David Chow 7k, and Joe Suzuki 10k won all three of their games to tie for first place.