A record 34 players turned out on Saturday, April 20 for Syracuse’s 6th annual
Salt City Go Tournament at Manlius Pebble Hill School. Eight dan-level players participated in the tournament’s first-ever Open Division, with Phil Waldron 6d of Ottawa, Xinde Ji 5d of Syracuse, and Changtian Wang 5d of Ithaca all finishing with identical 3-1 records and receiving a total of $310 in cash prizes. In the B Division, Phil Tracy of Syracuse was the sole 4-0 winner, and Jim Gonnella, also of Syracuse and Scott Jankowski of Cheektowaga both finished with 3-1 records and took the 2nd and 3rd place prizes, respectively. In the C Division, 5th grader Wyn Pitnick won the first place prize by tie-break ahead of Howard Canaway of Utica; both won all four of their games. Seventh grader Carl Beach took 3rd place in that division with a 3-1 record.
Fifteen prizes, most of them new books provided at a discount by Slate and 
Shell, were awarded to the top five finishers of each division. Nine-year-old Yitian Liu 2d, who won two of his games in the Open Division, captured the highly coveted cake problem prize, his winning entry selected at random from the other correct submissions. The wife of tournament organizer Richard Moseson has baked a problem cake (above; black to move) for the paired competition each of the last six years.
– report/photos by Richard Moseson; photo: Xinde Ji (front left in vest) playing Phil Waldron (front right), Changtian Wang (to Waldron’s right).
