American Go E-Journal » 2015 » December

Korean Go News: Park Jeonghwan Defeats Cho Hanseung in Kuksu; Gyeongbuk Wins Cheonnam in Samdasu Amateur City League Cup

Monday December 21, 2015

Park Jeonghwan Defeats Cho Hanseung in Kuksu: The finalists in the 59th Kuksu — Park Jeonghwan and Cho Hanseung — are the 2015.12.21_park-jeonghwan-rightsame as last year and defending champion Park is looking to repeat the previous result as well. Park, playing White, forced Cho to resign after 178 moves. “Black had a lot of territory in the beginning, so it didn’t look good,” Park said in an interview, “but after the middle game White’s territory increased significantly, and I was fine.” The second round in the best-of-three match will be next year in January.

2015.12.21_samdasu-cupGyeongbuk Wins Samdasu Amateur City League Cup: The question of which city is the strongest in all of South Korea was decided on December 9th when the two finalist cities, Cheonnam and Gyeongbok, faced off in their final match in Jeju, South Korea. Kyeongbok defeated Kyeongnam on the 20th of November in the Baduk TV studios in Seoul to join Cheonnam in the finals. The tournament began with 12 different teams from different cities/regions in South Korea. Each team has four members who all face off; each team earns points by winning, and whichever team has more points by the end wins.  This way, the teams play out all four games, even if the first three people lose, the result of the last game can decide the whole match.   The Gyeongbuk team was comprised of Park Gangsu, Song Yesul, Park Yeongjin, Yi Cheolju and Park Seonggyun.
– Jonathan Hop

 

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Categories: Korea
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Pittsburgh Artist Seeks Go Players for Film Project

Monday December 21, 2015

Pittsburgh-based artist Jesse Kauppila is looking for two “highly skilled go players, hopefully dan-level, who can memorize and reenact a 2015.12.13_Jesse-Kauppilahistoric go game which I can film.” An artist in Carnegie Mellon Univeristy’s MFA program, Kauppila is working on visualization/film project in which “I will be visualizing a game of go using a 7 axis Robot and 20,000 Legos.” The project is an extension of Kauppila’s recent public art project, “Checker Brick House.” “I am located in Pittsburgh, but I am willing to travel for this project,” Kauppila says. Contact him here.
Image: Kauppila’s “Bitmap Machine”

 

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NOVA Slate and Shell Open Provides Holiday Shopping Alternative

Sunday December 20, 2015

Fifteen dedicated go players decided to test themselves across the goban rather than fight for parking places at the mall or go to the latest 2015.12.20-nova-tourneyinstallment of Star Wars this past Saturday, December 19, in Arlington, VA at the 4-round NOVA Slate and Shell Open.  Competition was tough with no 4-0 winners.  Kelsey Dyer 1D lead the top division with 3-1.  Robert Ehrlich 5K, Sarah Crites 11K, and Amber Boyden 20K won their divisions.  Joshua Lee 6D (tie), Edward Zhang 6D (tie), David Reed 6K, and Anderson Barreal 8K placed second.  Honorable mentions went to Zhao Zhao 5K and Bob Crites 7K for 2-2 records.  All winners received books supplied by our sponsor Slate and Shell, who also provided a small but challenging puzzle book to all entrants.  A very big thank you to Slate and Shell!
– report/photo by Garrett Smith, TD; photo: Bob Crites, Sarah Crites (foreground), Anderson Barreal, Amber Boyden (foreground), Robert Ehrlich, Edward Zhang, Kelsey Dyer, Joshua Lee, David Reed, and Zhao Zhao are pictured with their prizes. 
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Categories: U.S./North America
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China’s Bao Yun 6d Sets New Blindfold Go Simul Record

Saturday December 19, 2015

Bao Yun 6d of China has just set a new Guinness record for the most wins in a blindfold go simul, defeating five amateurs ranging from about 2d 2015.12.19_Bao Yun blindfoldto EGF 6d in Guangzhou, China. The games lasted nearly 12 hours and the players could not resign until the game was at least 180 moves in. “It is an odd feature of the Guinness process that a resignation has to be defensible, lest players connive in earning the record,” reports AGA president Andy Okun, who was on hand to serve as a witness — along with EGF president Martin Stiassny and Malaysian Go Association president Tiong Kee Soon — to the attempt.

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Categories: China
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Latin American Youth Tourneys Heat Up

Monday December 14, 2015

IMG_4084Chile won the Orion Latin American Online Youth Team Tournament, held November 28 and 29.  The event drew 9 three-player teams from 4 different countries, reports organizer Sid Avila. “We contacted Yunxuan Li,  President of the American Go Honor Society, about having a friendly match between the division winners in the School Teams Tournament with their Latin American counterparts, and Chile is looking forward to the match,” said Avila.  The Chilean team included Matias Salinas, Benjamin Mimiza, and Esteban Orellana.  The Mexican team took second place, and included Diego A. Luciano, Lilian Zavala, and Omar Zavala. The Venezuelan team took third place, with Abel Pérez, Yenderwin Palomino, and Yendervy Palomino.

Earlier in the year, on July 4 and 5, the Latin American Online Youth Tournament ´Las Tres Águilas´ was held on the Online Go Server. 55 players from 5 countries represented their schools, academies, and go clubs, their ranks ranging from 25 to 6k.The top three players for the 19 by 19 division were Abel Pérez 12k from Venezuela, Matías Salinas 8k from Chile, and Mateo Nava 12k from Mexico. The top three players for the 13 by 13 division were David Poblete 15k, Juan P. Ascencio 25k, and Francisco Gonzales 16k, all from Chile. Yuri León from Colombia received recognition for his fighting spirit. For more information and pictures click here for Tres Aguilas and here for Orion. -Story by Amy Su. Photo: Students from Chile competing.
Correction (12/19): Poblete, Ascencio and Gonzales are from Chile, not Colombia, as originally reported. 

 

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2016 US Go Congress Website Launched

Sunday December 13, 2015

Whether you’re definitely planning to attend the 2016 US Go Congress July 30-August 7 in Boston or just considering it at this early stage, you’ll want to sign up for updates from Congress organizers. The site will continue to be updated as 2015.12.14_boston-congressmore details are finalized.

 

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Google and Facebook Race to Solve Go

Sunday December 13, 2015

“Inside companies like Google and Facebook, deep learning is proving remarkably adept at recognizing images and grasping spacial patterns—a skill well suited to Go,” reported Cade Metz in Wired last week . “As they explore so many other opportunities this technology presents, Google and Facebook are also racing to see whether it can finally crack the ancient game. As Facebook AI researcher Yuandong Tian explains, Go is a classic AI problem—a problem that’s immensely attractive because it’s immensely difficult. The company believes that solving Go will not only help refine the AI that drives its popular social network, but also prove the value of artificial intelligence. Rob Fergus, another Facebook researcher, agrees. “The goal is advancing AI,” he says. But he also acknowledges that the company is driven, at least in a small way, by a friendly rivalry with Google. There’s pride to be found in solving the game of Go.” For more on Facebook’s research, check out “How Facebook’s AI Researchers Built a Game-Changing Go Engine” in the MIT Technology Review last week.

Smart Go’s Anders Kierulf also recently published a blog post on “Go at Facebook”, saying that “As long as Facebook and Google stick with trying to find general solutions to general problems, I don’t think top Go programs like Zen and Crazy Stone have anything to worry about. But once these giants decide to beat the strongest human players and are willing to focus on Go-specific solutions, it will get interesting.” Check out also his explainer on Monte Carlo Tree Search and his post about the impact of the Swift programming language on his go programs.

 

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Categories: Computer Go/AI
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Dwyrin’s “25 Days of Go”

Sunday December 13, 2015

To celebrate the holiday season, go video blogger Dwyrin is releasing a short new go video each day this month on his channel. The playlist for2015.12.13_25-Days-of-Go
this specific set of videos can be found here and features go proverbs and short game reviews.

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Your Move/Readers Write: “Narrow Road” Began in Japan

Sunday December 13, 2015

“The Narrow Road to the Deep North (11/27 EJ) is actually named after a Japanese classic,” writes Michael Redmond 9P. “Quoting from 2015.12.13_Basho_by_HokusaiWikipedia: ‘Taking its title from 17th century haiku poet Matsuo Bashō‘s famous haibunOku no Hosomichi, best known in English as The Narrow Road to the Deep North…’ The 17th century text is one of the major classics of Japanese literature.”
graphic: Bashō by Hokusai

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Ke Jie Blanks Shi Yue in Samsung to Win Second International Title

Saturday December 12, 2015

Ke Jie 9p (right) won the 2015 Samsung Cup by defeating Shi Yue 9p 2-0. The Samsung final was held on December 8-9 in Shanghai, China. This was 2015.12.12_Ke-Jie-Samsung-Cup-300x351Ke Jie’s second international title — his first was the Bailing Cup in January, 2015 — and this was the first time since 2011 that a player has won two international titles in the same calendar year (Lee Sedol 9p won the BC Card Cup and Chunlan Cup in 2011). Ke Jie’s Samsung win also made him the first of the new generation of young Chinese world champions to win a second international title. He’s undefeated on white this year and his games in the Samsung semifinals against Lee Sedol, and the final against Shi Yue, were wonderful and faultless.
– excerpted from Youngil An’s report on Go Game Guru, where you’ll find An’s commentaries on both games and more photos.

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Categories: China,World
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