Friday November 27, 2015
Registration is now open for the 2016 International Paris Go tournament, which will be held March 26-28 in Neuilly, in the city’s western 
suburbs. This is the 44th edition of the event, a 6-round tournament; prize for the winner is 1000€; click here to register.
– Alain Cano, Président de la Ligue Ile-de-France
Thursday November 26, 2015
Lee Sedol 9P (right) defeated Ahn Seongjun 6P and Ke Jie 9P (left) beat Park Younghun 9P in the semifinals of the second MLily Cup, played November 22-25
in Hefei, China. The Ke Jie-Park Younghun showdown — relayed live on the AGA’s YouTube channel with commentary by Myungwan Kim 9P — was one of the most interesting matches of the year.
Ke Jie is ranked #1 in China, is virtually undefeated as White in 2015 and proceeded to the final of the 2015 Samsung Cup in early November by defeating Lee Sedol. Meanwhile, Park Younghun is in his second heyday in 2015. He’s ranked #3 in Korea, and he proceeded to the final of 20th LG Cup by defeating Tuo Jiaxi 9p about only a week ago.
Lee Sedol is currently ranked #2 in Korea, and Ahn Seongjun is ranked #7.
Click here for more analysis, photos, game records and game commentary by Younggil An 8P on Go Game Guru.
– Go Game Guru
Update (12/24): Ke is not, as originally reported, undefeated this year on white; in fact he has lost twice.
Thursday November 26, 2015
Roelofs/Eijkhout Dethrone Defending Champs at 2015 Dutch Pair Go Championships: The Dutch Pair Go Championships took
place in the city of Eindhoven on November 15 this year. Ten pairs from all over the country gathered to have fun together and compete for the title. Four rounds were played to determine the winner, with 45 minutes on the clock and no overtime. Under such time pressure, good teamwork was essential to guide the games in the right direction, with enough time to spare for the endgame. The great thing about Pair Go is its unpredictability – surprising things happen all the time – and on several occasions sudden laughter during a match drew the attention of all the others. In the fourth and last round, defending champions Karen Pleit 2k & Willem-Koen Pomstra 5d faced Yvonne Roelofs 4k & Michiel Eijkhout 6d (right), whose strong effort won them the 2015 championship. Pleit/Pomstra shared second/third place with newcomers Justyna Kleczar 2k and Kim Ouweleen 4d (left), with the exact same amount of SOS points. Marika Dubiel 2d & Alexander Eerbeek 5d, another young pair, also scored 3/4 but ended on fourth place due to SOS. Complete results can be found here.
Geert Groenen Wins Brabants Go Tournament: At the same location as the Pair Go Championships, another tournament took place that weekend. A total of exactly 50 players participated in the main tournament in community center Bellefort. Geert Groenen 6d (right, playing Alexander Eerbeek 5d) took the title, with Frank Janssen 6d trailing in second place. Surprisingly, these two titans did not play each other in the tournament. Rudi Verhagen 4d however played against both, managed to win against Frank Janssen, and took third place. Verhagen has the distinction of having played more go tournaments than any Dutch player ever, with the magic number of 324 tournament appearances so far. Complete 
results can be found here.
News from Go shop Het Paard, Amsterdam: A new book is available in Kiseido’s “Mastering the Basics” series. K79 An Encyclopedia of Go Principles is a compilation of the most important principles of strategy and tactics in go. These are explained through proverbs, such as: do not attack with your thickness, defend before attacking, the tortoise shell is worth 60 points, etc. Other important concepts that do not have sayings, are also included in this book, like: be willing to transfer a moyo from one part of the board to another. A must-have for players who wish to grow in their fundamentals of the game. Price: € 21,00; order here.
– Kim Ouweleen, European Correspondent for the E-Journal
Wednesday November 25, 2015
by John Power, Japan correspondent for the E-Journal
Pair Go tournament for professional couples: The second Professional Married Couples Pair Go Tournament was held at the Nihon Ki-in on Sunday, November 22. If you write the date 11/22 and take the first syllable of the numbers in Japanese, you get the word “ii fufu,” which means “a good married couple,” so this is an apposite date for this tournament. Last year, eight pairs took part; that increased to 13 this year, but the same pairs reached the final (right): Suzuki Ayumi 6P and her husband Rin Kanketsu 7P and the Mimuras, Kaori 3P and Tomoyasu 9P (at left). The latter took their revenge for their loss last year, playing white and securing a resignation after 206 moves. First prize is one million yen and second 400,000.
Iyama tops most-wins list: Thanks to his winning streak, Iyama Yuta has worked his way to top place in the most-wins list. After his Oza win, his record for the year is 39-9. That’s a winning percentage of 81%, which is astonishing considering the level of his opponents. The top players are given below.
1. Iyama Yuta Kisei: 39-9
2. Kyo Kagen 3P: 38-9; Ichiriki Ryo 7P: 38-16
4. Shibano Toramaru 2P: 36-5
5. Yamashita Keigo 9P: 35-20
6. Ida Atsushi Judan: 32-18
7. Motoki Katsuya 7P: 29-10; Ogata Masaki 9P: 29-12; Kono Rin 9P: 29-12-1 no contest; Tsuruta Kazushi 3P: 29-12; Mutsuura Yuta 2P: 29-13
12. 25th Honinbo Chikun, Son Makoto 3P: 28-14
14. Akiyama Jiro 9P: 27-9; Cho Riyu 8P: 27-10
16. Koyama Kuya 2P: 25-12; Ko Iso 8P: 25-17; Fujisawa Rina: 25-21
Huang wins Chinese Agon Kiriyama: The final of 17th Agon Kiriyama Cup, a sister tournament to the Japanese title, was held in the City of Taiyuan. Taking white, the 18-year-old Huang Yunsong 4P beat Chen Yaoye 9P by resignation. Huang, who won the 2nd Globis Cup U-20 in May, will meet Iyama Yuta in the Japanese-Chinese playoff on December 25.
Tuesday November 24, 2015
Demis Hassabis, the artificial intelligence savant behind Google DeepMind, hinted recently that his secretive team has cracked go, reports 
<re/code> magazine. While DeepMind has has put out a couple papers of its training algorithms beating Atari games it has released little else. Asked in an interview with the Royal Society of London “Maybe you will have a surprise about go?” Hassabis smiled and said “I can’t talk about it yet, but in a few months I think there will be quite a big surprise,” he replied.
Tuesday November 24, 2015
Zhu Haichen 7d, a New Jersey resident and onetime student in the go school of Chinese champion Nie Weiping 9p, bested a strong field of 72
players at the 3rd annual Gotham Go Tournament last Saturday. Twelve pairs, meanwhile, played in the Sunday pair go tournament, first of what is hoped to be an annual event.
Zhu took top honors in the open section, but the dark horse of the event was Daniel Koch 2d, who went 4-0 to win the 1-3 dan section, beating a 4d and a 5d in succession in his two last rounds. Click here for complete results.
In the pair go tournament, run with the support and encouragement of the AGA, twelve pairs vied in four sections, with Stephanie Yin 1p and Rongxin Yu 7D going 3-0 to win the top section. Best dressed honors went to Alexandra Patz and her son Douglas who came dressed as go stones, narrowly beating out tournament organizer Peter Armenia and his wife Gretschen. AGA President Andy Okun 1d attended and played for once (going 2-2 in the main tournament and 1-1 in the pair go with partner Marilyn Stern). Okun (second from left) expressed gratitude in the closing ceremony to Armenia TD Yingzhi Qian. Okun said he was pleased with the turnout and wants to make pair go tournaments a more common occurrence around the U.S., not just a feature of the US Go Congress.
— Michael Fodera; click here for more photos.
Tuesday November 24, 2015
by John Power, Japan correspondent for the E-Journal
Women’s Meijin League: Two important games were played in the 28th Women’s Meijin League last week. On November 16, Fujisawa Rina, Women’s Honinbo, (W) beat Mannami Nao 3P by 6.5 points. Fujisawa had to win this game to keep alive her chances of becoming the challenger. She goes to 3-1, in equal second place with Okuda Aya 3P. Mannami drops to 2-2, so all she can aim at is keeping her place. The tough thing for Fujisawa and Okuda is that they are ranked equal 5th in the league. The leader is Aoki Kikuyo 8P, who is ranked second. In my previous report, I mentioned that Aoki just had to win two of her remaining three games to become the challenger, as she would take precedence in a tie. She played the first of those three games on November 19. Taking black, she beat Suzuki Ayumi 6P by 1.5 points. That 
improves her score to 4-0 and improves her odds to 1 in 2, as she now just has to win one game out of two. Her remaining opponents are Mannami and Fujisawa. The above game was Aoki’s seventh win in a row.
Honinbo League: One game in the 71st Honinbo League was played on November 19. Kono Rin 9P (W) beat Cho U 9P by resignation. Kono improves his score to 1-1 and Cho is 0-2. Cho’s decision to return home to Taiwan is not paying off yet.
Iyama wins Oza, regains quintuple crown: The third game of the 63rd Oza title match was held at the Hotel Okura Kobe in Kobe City,
Hyogo Prefecture on November 19. In dominating form, Iyama Yuta (black, at left) pounced on a misreading by the titleholder, Murakawa Daisuke (right), and seized the initiative. Iyama’s flawless play then denied Murakawa any chance to get back into the game and he was forced to resign after just 135 moves. Murakawa was unable to match the precision of Iyama’s reading; after a reign of just one year, he surrendered the title he took from Iyama last year. With this win, Iyama regains his quintuple crown after a gap of 11 months. This is his third Oza title and his 33rd title overall. It is also his 23rd successive win. Go journalists are starting to refer to the record set by Sakata Eio, 23rd 
Honinbo, in 1963 and 1964 of 29 successive wins. What the two streaks have in common is that many of the wins were in title matches or tournament finals, so the defeated opponents were mainly top players.
Teranishi repeats in Young Carp: The semifinals and final of the 10th Hiroshima Aluminium Cup Young Carp Tournament, open to Nihon Ki-in players under 31 and under 8-dan, were held at the Central Japan Newspaper Building in Hiroshima on November 22. In the semifinals, Shida Tatsuya 7P (B) beat Yo Seiki 7P and Teranishi Rei 4P (B) beat last year’s winner Motoki Katsuya 7P; the margin in both games was 2.5 points. In the final, Teranishi (B) forced Shida to resign after 159 moves. Teranishi (at left) also won the 5th cup. First prize is three million yen.
Tomorrow: Pair Go tournament for professional couples; Iyama tops most-wins list; Huang wins Chinese Agon Kiriyama
Tuesday November 24, 2015
Ke Jie 9P lost Game 2 of the MLily Cup semifinal against Park Younghoon 9P Monday night, setting up a decisive Game 3 showdown that will be
broadcast Tuesday night. Myungwan Kim 9P will provide live English commentary on the AGA’s Youtube Channel starting at 7P PST (10P EST).
Sunday November 22, 2015
Catch more top professional games with live English commentary on the AGA’s Youtube Channel Monday, November 23. Myungwan Kim 9P will comment the semifinals of the MLily Cup, between Park Younghoon 9P (#3 in Korea) and Ke Jie 9P (#1 in China). The MLily Cup is one of the major international tournaments, with a grand prize of over a quarter million dollars US. They’re playing a best-of-three series, with the first game already in the books — a win for Ke Jie — and Game #2 will be broadcast LIVE this Monday at 7pm PST (10p EST). As a bonus, Myungwan Kim will also review game #1 during the player’s lunch break.
Sunday November 22, 2015
EuroGoTV, which regularly streamed live video of tournament games, posted videos on YouTube and was a reliable source of European go news for the E-Journal — may return. If at least 300 people pledge to help EuroGoTV financially “we will resume (and upgrade) our services,” reports Harry Weerheijm. Click here to take EuroGo TV’s poll by November 30. “If EuroGoTV continues, Go-Pro articles, on demand video playback, the complete European Go calendar and the Newsletter will only be available to VIP-members; membership will run 25 Euro for the first year and 20 Euro for the second. Tournament reports will be available to all, including EJ readers, so we urge your support, either a membership or donation pledge.
– Chris Garlock, E-Journal Managing Editor