American Go E-Journal » 2013 » May

Eric Lui 7D Sweeps 40th Maryland Open

Thursday May 30, 2013

An undefeated Eric Lui 7D won the 2013 Maryland Open and NAMT Qualifier, held May 25-26 in Baltimore, MD. A total of 52 players “enjoyed beautiful weather for the 40th Maryland Open,” reports organizer Keith Arnold. Eight players 4-dan and above competed for NAMT points. Gurujeet Khalsa directed the 5-round event.

Winner’s Report: Open Section: Eric Lui 7 dan (undefeated); 2nd Yuan Zhou 7 dan; 3rd Daniel Chou 6 dan
A Section: Justin Ching 4 dan; 2nd Willis Huang 3 dan
B Section: Kelsey Dyer 1 dan; 2nd Ken Koester 2 dan
C Section: Julian Erville 2 kyu and Kyu Champion; 2nd Todd Blatt 1 kyu
D Section: Nathan Epstein 5 kyu (undefeated); 2nd Arnold Eudell 4 kyu
E Section: Andrew Liu 6 kyu; 2nd Frederick Bao, (The Smiling Assassin, 6 years old) 6 kyu
F Section: Bob Crites 10 kyu; 2nd Roberto Andaya 12 kyu
Fighting Spirit Prize – Leslie Lamphere 12 kyu

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Categories: U.S./North America
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Chapel Hill Chinese School Team & Changlong Wu 7d Top Carolina Spring Go Tournament

Thursday May 30, 2013

The 10th annual Carolina Spring Go Tournament featured a hotly-contested team competition for the youth players. Four teams representing Raleigh Academy of Chinese Language (RACL), Cary Chinese School (CCS) and Chinese School at Chapel Hill (CSCH) competed in the team tournament at the May 18 event, held in Raleigh, North Carolina and organized by the Cary Go Club and the Chinese-American Friendship Association of North Carolina. The tournament attracted 30 go players with ages ranging from 6 to 70 years old.

“The team competition was fierce,” reports organizer Owen Chen. “Young players kept reporting and checking the team scores posted on the wall after each round. In the end, the Chinese School at Chapel Hill team consisting of Justin Zhang, Andrew Huan and their teacher Eric Zhang (right) won the team competition.”

In the individual competition, a new Duke student, Liqun Liu, who was a 5 dan in China, gave long-term North Carolina champion Changlong Wu 7d (left) a fierce challenge. Wu won the close match against Liu and eventually won the open section with a perfect score of 4-0. Liu finished the second place in the open section with his only loss to Wu.

Xiaoping Wu 1d won Section A (1d-2d) with a perfect score of 4-0. John Zhu 9k won Section B (9k-1k) with a score of 3-1. Tom Carlson 10k topped Section C (15k-10k) with a perfect score of 4-0. Justin Zhang 19k, who was a member of the Chinese School at Chapel Hill team that won the team competition, also won the indiviual champion in Section D (25k-16k) with a 4-0 score.
– photos courtesy Owen Chen 

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Categories: U.S./North America
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Transatlantic Youth Match Sunday June 2

Thursday May 30, 2013

The fifth annual Transatlantic Youth Tournament will take place Sunday on KGS.  Ten young players from Europe will face off against ten from North America, the team with the most wins will be the victor (captain’s game will be the tiebreak if needed).  North America won last year, with an overwhelming 8-2 finish, and the Europeans are itching for paybacks this time around.  Most of the matches will be held Sunday June 3, in the Transatlantic Youth Go room on KGS (under tournaments).  The schedule will be:
13:00 UCT/GMT:
       1. Andrew Huang (donvalley) – Jonas Welticke
15:00 UCT/GMT:
2. Jianing Gan (hkkyeen) – Alexander Vashurov (ALEX575)
         3. Yunxuan Li – Stepan Popov (StepanP)
         4. Aaron Ye (hyperbeam7) – Denis Dobranis
         5. Oliver Wolf (sinsai) – Schayan Hamrach (schayan355)
18:00 UCT/GMT
6. Calvin Sun (kbag)  – Pavol Lisy (cheater)
        7. Bill Lin (billlin) – Lukas Podpera (Lukan)
        8. Lionel Zhang  – Tanguy le Calve (Welvang)
        9. David Lu  – Valeriy Kulishov
4:00 UCT/GMT, Monday, 3rd June
       10. Hugh Zhang (sume) – Mateusz Surma (drakula)

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Categories: Youth
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KBA Names Two Pros for US Go Congress

Wednesday May 29, 2013

The Korea Baduk Association is sending Kim Hyunghwan 6p and Lee Dahye 4p to the US Go Congress in Tacoma this year. Kim Hyunghwan, 27, is a student of famed teacher Kapyong Kwon, whose students include Lee Sedol 9p and Park Junghwan 9p. He distinguished himself as a youth player, and was unbeaten in the 2001 WYGC in Maui, Hawaii, becoming pro the following year. The Maui experience  prompted him to study English. He is also a student of Chinese and teaches go at university clubs. Lee Dahye, 28, aside from representing Korea in international play, is a specialist at teaching beginners, expertise she will be sharing as an instructor at the first ever AGA classroom teaching certification workshop at Congress. Since 2008, Lee has amassed an impressive record broadcasting lessons on Baduk TV, K-Baduk and Cyberoro (you can see some of her lessons on YouTube here).  She has also taught soldiers in Korea’s military, students at university clubs, and multicultural youth. She  edited the Korean edition of Hikaru no go as well. Most relevant for the teaching workshop, she is co-author of the Korean-English go book, Falling in Love with Baduk, which will be distributed to workshop students free in PDF form (it is available for download through the AGF here as well). She graduated Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, majoring in Japanese, and is in graduate school in the same university. -Andy Okun, with assistance from Myungwan Kim 9p. Photo: Lee Dahye 4p

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Virtual Go a Labor of Love for Games Programmer

Wednesday May 29, 2013

When Glenn Fiedler first came to go in 2004, he was immediately taken with the aesthetic side of the game, the black and white stones, their biconvex shape, the sound they make hitting a wooden board.  “I especially loved the way go stones wobble and how stone placement becomes irregular as the game progresses, because the go stones are just slightly larger than the grid,” he told the EJ.  Playing on a computer, though, was not the same experience.  “When I play go on a computer it feels like I’m playing on a magnetic board. In real life, I don’t want to play on a magnetic board. I wanted to make a go board that I could play on the computer that felt like I was really playing go.”  The desire led the Australian Fiedler to a career change.  He became a network game programmer with a specialization in physics and started developing methods of synchronizing physics simulations across multiple computers.  “I ended up inventing new techniques and talking at GDC (Game Developers Conference) about how to network physics simulations. And all the techniques I invented were originally thought up because I wanted to network a simulation of a go board and stones!”

Now, after finishing work on his latest project at Sony, “God of War: Ascension,” Fiedler has finally turned his attention to programming go.  The idea is not to provide an AI opponent, but instead provide a beautiful and compelling simulation of an actual 3D goban and stones that other developers could include in existing go software like SmartGo or Many Faces of Go, Fiedler said.  It is a painstaking step-by-step effort he is chronicling in a blog on his website, Gaffer on Games.  The blog lays out the code and the physical reasoning behind it.  Fiedler hopes to make some commercial use of the software eventually, though it will be hard to do.  In the meantime, that’s not what’s on his mind. “I’ve had some time to work on my dream project after almost 10 years. It’s really satisfying.” -Andy Okun.  Diagram of a stone from Fiedler’s blog: Gaffer on Games.

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Go Spotting: Go Builds Math Skills

Wednesday May 29, 2013

A recent article on the Business Insider website extols the mathematical benefits of the game of go, which is the 6th of 13 Things That You Can Do To Make Your Child A Genius At Math.

The article asked professional mathematicians what got them started in math. “There is no better way to train your brain, said one respondent, than the game [of] Go.

Can you tell who is ahead in the go position that the article displays?  (Assume Black to play and a komi of 6.5.)  The full article appears here. Thanks to Chris Sira for sending the link.

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Categories: Go Spotting
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AGA Election Update

Wednesday May 29, 2013

Incumbent Paul Celmer has been nominated to retain his seat as eastern region representative. No nominations for western or central region candidates have been received yet.  Nominations close June 15 and should be sent to elections@usgo.org. Qualifications and procedures are here http://www.usgo.org/aga-board-elections.

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Simons to Challenge Kay for British Championship

Monday May 27, 2013

Reigning British Champion, Andrew Kay 4d, and fellow Cambridge University graduate Andrew Simons 4d, have emerged as the finalists for the British Go Championship from this weekend’s Challengers’ League. Simons is the Terry Stacey Grand Prix 2013 title-holder (awarded for best tournament results over the year to the British Go Congress last April). The pair will meet for the best-of-three final at a time and place yet to be fixed, to decide who will take the title of British Champion. As both players intend to travel to Asia over the next three months, the final will probably not take place before August. When it does happen, it is likely to be followed live in the British Room on the KGS go server, with professional commentary.

In the Challengers League, which ran from Friday till Monday, each of the eight most successful players from the Candidates’ Tournament (see the EJ from May  10th), held earlier this month in Edinburgh, played one game against each other, with 1 hour 45 minutes main time each and 15 stones in 5 minutes repeating overtime. Under British Go Association (BGA) rules, the current title-holder was required to play in the Challengers’ League on the same terms as the other seven, and in fact Kay also waived his right to be entered automatically, winning his place at the Candidates’ Tournament as the others did. He said of this decision, “I’m always keen for an opportunity to play a high-level game of go with a reasonably long playing time and I like Edinburgh”. The other six challengers, in order of score, were: Alex Kent 2d, Alex Rix 2d, Des Cann 4d, Boris Mitrovic 2k, Francis Roads 1d, and Tim Hunt 2d.

The Challengers’ League was held in the Nash Room and elsewhere at the International Student House, London and the British Championship 2013 is organized by Jenny Radcliffe on behalf of the BGA. Ms Radcliffe also expressed pride at the excellent showing by Alex Kent, whom she herself taught to play in Durham less than 10 years ago. Click here for full results. -Story and photo by Tony Collman.  Photo: Andrew Simons (l) vs. Andrew Kay (r)


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Categories: Europe
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Triple Ko in Tiger’s Mouth Tourney

Monday May 27, 2013

An interesting triple ko came up in the most recent Tiger’s Mouth prize tourney.  The tourneys are run every month, and are open to youth in the US and Canada. Handicapped, and with prizes in double-digit kyu, single-digit kyu, and dan sections, the tourneys provide challenging games for players of all levels, with prizes courtesy of the AGF.  The triple ko came up in a six stone game between Narnian 12k, and Gocookrice 18k, and can be seen in the attached game record. The ruleset was Japanese, which technically means the game should be no result. The players asked the TD to make a ruling, he decided it was a seki, and gave the win to white on territory.  How would the triple ko have been resolved in other rule sets?  The E-J asked Yilun Yang 7p to weigh in with Chinese rules: “If both players keep taking the ko in this situation, it seems the game should be no-result. Black has to keep capturing,  otherwise black loses. Unless one side gives up the ko battle, no one can win, and neither player can give up the ko in this game.”

AGA rules resolve the issue by making full board repetition illegal, which turns this situation into what is called “Super Ko“. AGA Rules Coordinator Terry Benson says: “The main point of AGA rules is that the players have to figure and play it out – not the ref – and we have no null games. A triple ko is going to prohibit the 6th move. So who starts matters. Thus finding a ko threat on move 6 which the opponent answers, would reset the triple ko with the other player to start. I think Ing rules would be the same. This is a fighting ko.” See move 257 to illustrate the options.

E-J Games Editor Myron Souris has a succinct analysis for this situation: “according to AGA rules Black wins the triple ko, no matter who plays first.  If Black takes 1st, then 6 moves later White would be forbidden from repeating the position from just before Black’s 1st move.  So White dies.  And White taking the triple ko 1st is useless, because Black is alive in double ko. With the AGA rules, Terry and the rules committee devised a truly beautiful ruleset:  simple, rigorous, and sensible. Numerous people have unfairly criticized the AGA ruleset for being to difficult to apply to these multiple ko situations, e.g., ‘Knowing when a previous board position repeats is too difficult.’  Terry’s analysis exposes that misconception for this game.  A few years ago, I found about a dozen pro games (the latest is the infamous 2012 Gu Li vs. Lee Sedol game) ending in triple and quadruple ko, all of which even I could apply the AGA rules to resolve who would have won without too much work. Yes, some contrived multiple ko situations can be extremely difficult to analyze for who wins; however, those situations don’t seem to appear in real games, and in any event, the AGA allows the players to play out the situation themselves.” To sign up for the next Tiger’s Mouth Tourney, on June 15th, click here. -Paul Barchilon, E-J Youth Editor 

[link]

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Podpera, Hui, and Pittner Lead Fifth Kido Cup in Hamburg

Saturday May 25, 2013

The fifth annual Kido Cup was held in Hamburg, Germany May 18-20. The three day event, including a main tournament, top group, and kids tournament, has become the largest go event held in Germany. In addition to the tournaments, this year’s Kido Cup also featured numerous side events, including six visiting pros from Korea playing teaching games and giving game reviews. Lukas Podpera 5d was the champion at the main tournament among a field of 198 players. Full main tournament results are available here. Fan Hui 2p, a pro from China living in France since 2000, won the top group with a 6-1 record. Top group results are available here. Arved Pittner 5k from Berlin won the kids tournament. Full results are available here.  Story by Jan Engelhardt, photo by Joachim Beggerow.

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Categories: Europe
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