Peter Nelson, a recent arrival to Seattle from Minnesota, was selected for the Seattle 1 Pandanet-AGA City League Team, after winning the Qualifier Tournament at the Seattle Go Center by a narrow margin. Longtime Northwest player Edward Kim placed second at the tournament, with the same win/loss record, and will also join the team. Returning first team members are Simon (Ximeng) Yu, and Ho Son. The Seattle Pandanet-AGA team placed second last August in the A League competition, losing to the team from neighboring Vancouver B.C. The board order for the teams in the online tournament is determined by AGA ratings, so Nelson will probably have the alternate position. Nelson had an AGA rating of 3 dan last month, and has a 4 dan rating at present. However, he won two even games against a 7 dan at the tournament, plus a game against Xiaowu Li, who is a 5 dan in China, so observers expect his rating to continue to improve.
The open tournament was a challenge to both players and Tournament Directors Sonny Cho and Dennis Wheeler. Due to “circular wins” four players had identical records after four rounds, necessitating a playoff round. The tournament lasted 9 hours and some players had five games. In addition to Peter Nelson and Edward Kim, Dong Baek Kim and Xiaowu Li were finalists. This was the first Seattle event for Xiaowu Li, a Visiting Scholar at the University of Washington Law School, and former director of the faculty go club at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. Photo: Simon (Ximeng) Yu watches the game of Peter Nelson and Xiaowu Li. Report/photo by Brian Allen
