American Go E-Journal » 2013 » February

U.S. pro Andy Liu 1P will play Lee Sedol 9P this Sunday, Feb. 24 (10a EST) in the latest round of the 10-game series between the AGA-Europe pro team and Lee, sponsored by go9dan.com.
– photo: Andy Liu (right) receives his 1-dan professional certificate from Myung-wan Kim 9P at the 2012 AGA-Tygem Pro Tournament; photo by Steve Colburn

Long-time go organizer and mentor Don Wiener passed away on February 21 after a struggle with lung cancer. “We will miss one of American go’s true spirits,” said American Go Association President Andy Okun. Wiener (left), a 6-dan player, was one of the stalwarts of the Massachusetts Go Association, and an organizer of countless tournaments over a span of more than 30 years. At the beginning of each tournament, he always announced – with a straight face – the “special MGA rule” that “if you touch a stone you must play that stone.” Wiener taught so many players with so many high-handicap games that he often said “I don’t know how to play an even game.” He was also an important member of the New York group which powered the growth of the AGA in the late 70s and 80s. Beside his speed go and quick wit, Wiener’s speed typing was a huge asset as an Assistant Editor of the American Go Journal from 1977 to 1987 when all of the text was done on an IBM Selectric typewriter. Wiener is survived by his mother and a sister in California. No memorial service is planned, but donations may be made to the American Cancer Society.
– Bill Saltman; photo: Wiener at the 1987 U.S. Go Congress; photo by Phil Straus

At Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), Stan Aungst is employing the ancient Chinese game of go to help students gain new insight and new methods for countering attacks — cyber and physical, both foreign and domestic — and to hone new cognitive skills for the 21st century.

“We’re using the game as a training ground to think strategically and tactically,” said Aungst, a senior lecturer for security and risk analysis (SRA) and senior research associate for the Network-Centric Cognition and Information Fusion Center in a Penn State press release February 7.

The course that Aungst is teaching, “Using Serious Games to Promote Strategic Thinking and Analysis,” introduces students to thinking visually about attacks, attack patterns, spatial analysis with individual performance evaluation via interactive virtual scenarios/missions and gaming. Paul Wright, president of the State College Go Club, recently demonstrated the game for the students in the class.

John Hill, a lecturer at the College of IST who is assisting Aungst with the course, said that the class is a “significant departure” from any other courses that the college has offered. “During the course, go is used as the means for analyzing widely divergent problems, and for developing effective tactics and strategies to address those problems by means of conversion rather than elimination,” Hill said.

Joe Cho, a sophomore SRA major who is also in the class, said the objective of the Go game is “more about efficiency” than other board games such as chess, since the goal is to capture territory using as few “stones” as possible. “The lessons are more applicable to today’s military situation,” he said.

A test will be used to measure individuals’ ability to predict cyber and physical attacks. About 100 intelligence analysts have taken the test, Aungst said. After the students in the “Go” class take the test, he added, their scores will be compared to the students who took the test last year.
– photo by John Pinkerton; effects by Chris Garlock

Despite the simplicity of its rules, go remains something of an open problem for the game AI community. In Playing Go with Clojure, Bay Area software developer and go player Zach Tellman discusses the inherent difficulties of the problem, provides a survey of current approaches, and explores how they can be efficiently implemented in Clojure, a dialect of the Lisp programming language.
– Thanks to Steve Colburn for passing this along.

The Princeton Go Club will host the 54th annual New Jersey Open the weekend of March 2-3, reports co-director Rick Mott. The 2-day, 5-round event has been running for more than half a century, and on the Princeton campus for 23 years. Registration is 9-10A Saturday, March 3. Email co-director Mott for full details at rickmott@alumni.princeton.edu.

Go has a long history at Princeton. The Princeton club was founded by Professor Ralph J. Fox of the Department of Mathematics in 1945, who continued to promote go in Princeton until his untimely death in 1973. Professor Fox brought a number of Japanese professionals to visit Princeton, and often hosted them at his house. His late wife Cynthia bequeathed some of his books, photographs and papers to the club archives.

Perhaps the most famous association of Princeton with go is an opening scene in the film “A Beautiful Mind”, depicting the life of Nobel laureate John Nash Jr., in which Nash is challenged to a game by a fellow graduate student.

The Princeton club hosted the fifth US Go Congress in 1989. The following year, the long-standing New Jersey Open, one of the earliest regional events in the US, moved to the Princeton campus where it continues to be held. The tournament has drawn up to 120 players from Virginia to Massachusetts, with occasional visitors from as far away as Europe and Asia.

Past NJO winner and former club president Zhaonian (Michael) Chen ’11 (AGA 7D) is the highest-rated player to date to be part of the Princeton community. He was part of the first group of students from the nearby Feng Yun Go School to reach college age. Freshman Zhongxia (Ricky) Zhao ’16, AGA 7D, also studied with Feng Yun (photo). “In recent years, we have had an influx of college club players, notably Stony Brook and Rutgers. This year, Cornell has told us they will be sending a group as well,” Mott tells the E-Journal.
photo: Feng Yun analyzing a top-board game at the 2010 NJO; photo by John Pinkerton