Thursday March 14, 2019
In the third round of the 2nd Wu Qingyuan Cup Qualifier, Gabby Su (playing black) beat Yinli Wang by 9.5 points to join Feng Yun, Stephanie Yin and Cathy Li at the 2nd Wu Qingyuan Cup, which will be played April 26-30 in Fuzhou, China.
– Jeff Shaevel, Tournament Director
Thursday March 14, 2019
attending weekly. Also notable is that the club has a number of 10-15k players that have recently begun playing at the club, so most players who show up should be able to get a good game.You can find news and information about the club at Twitter.com/pasadenago
Thursday March 14, 2019
Deep Learning and the Game of Go by Max Pumperla and Kevin Ferguson, teaches all the aspects of deep learning that went 
into Alpha Go. It is complete with code in Python3, with all code based upon building a go-playing program starting with code for the board structures/objects. It does not teach Python and does not assume you know anything about learning algorithms. I am only in the 4th chapter and so far I find the text very readable and the explanations clear. By the end of the book you can have a complete Go bot for playing or experimenting. One very nice thing that Manning does is that all the code is available for downloading, and buying the paper book allows you to signup for electronic versions in a variety of formats, so you can copy/paste the examples if you don’t want to type them and you can search the text electronically rather than paging through the book. About the only thing not covered in the book is parallelization for multiple GPU/CPUs.
– David Doshay
Wednesday March 13, 2019
Gabby Su won on time in Round 2 of the Wu Qingyuan Cup Qualifier, tying things up 1-1 in the best-of-three match against Yinli Wang. The deciding game will be Thursday, 3/14, at 6 PM EDT in the AGA Tournament Room on KGS.
– Jeff Shaevel, Tournament Coordinator
Wednesday March 13, 2019
“I was invited to the opening ceremony of a new exhibition at the Chinese American Museum of Chicago,” writes Xinming (Simon) Guo. 
The exhibition, “The Chinese Helped Build the Railroad – The Railroad Helped Build America,” features the history of the 12,000 plus Chinese 
workers who contributed in the building of the world’s first Transcontinental Railway in United States in mid-19th century.
“I was so astonished when I found a Weiqi game in the exhibition,” says Guo. The introduction says that these Chinese railroad builders worked in inhospitable environment of the American West and gathered to play fan-tan (a gambling game) or Weiqi after more than 10 hours of back-breaking work each day.
This exhibition will last for one year “and it is a perfect opportunity to promote Weiqi (Chinese for Go). I have been working with the museum for many years. We have organized Weiqi workshops, Weiqi courses, and Weiqi culture stations in the museum several times. With the help from local go community, we will work together to start a new add-on service — providing on-site hands-on Weiqi workshop for students visiting the museum on school field trips.”
Wednesday March 13, 2019
Mark Lee 7D, once again showcasing his flawless opening technique and middle game fighting strength, defeated all six
opponents to win the 2019 Zheng Cup (formally known as Southern California Go Championship) held on Feb. 16-17. Lee defeated all his opponents by resignation and now holds an impressive record of 21 consecutive wins without any losses in this tournament. Tyler Oyakawa was second and Yixian Zhou third.
Other section winners included Kosuke Sato [2 dan to 4 dan Section]; Zhengwen Bi [1 dan to 3K Section]; Kevin Yang [4K to 12K Section]; Ethan Wong [13K to 30K Section].
photo: Mark Lee with sponsor Mr. J Zheng
Wednesday March 13, 2019
As anyone who’s either a renewing or new AGA member knows, our online enrollment system has had a technical problem in recent months. Folks renewing their memberships or joining the AGA have encountered off-putting messages during the online process. Rest assured that everyone’s memberships are being carefully taken care of, albeit by a time-consuming manual input by our redoubtable membership team, which adds “you may disregard any error messages you receive in the process.” Our technical staff is developing a new, automated system via PayPal that they hope will be operational in the near future. “We have a new system, working software, and a plan,” our teams say. Our apologies for the glitches, our thanks for your patience, and stay tuned for updates!
Tuesday March 12, 2019
In Game 1 of the best-of-three Wu Qingyuan Cup Qualifier between Gabby Su (w) and Yinli Wang (b) on Tuesday night, Yinli won by resignation. The second game will be Wednesday, March 13, at 6 PM EDT in the AGA Tournament Room on KGS, with the third game, if necessary to be played Thursday. The two are competing for the final slot on the North American delegation that includes Feng Yun, Stephanie Yin, and Cathy Li. The second Wu Qingyuan Cup will be played April 26-30 in Fuzhou, China.
– Jeff Shaevel, Tournament Director
This post has been updated with the correct spelling of the Wu Qingyuan Cup.
Tuesday March 12, 2019
“Registration for the 2019 American Go Honor Society (AGHS) School Team Tournament is now open until March 31st,” says Promotion Head Melissa Cao, “This year, the K-12 tournament will be held on Sunday, April 7th and Sunday, April 14th, with two rounds per day (10 AM and 1 PM PST). In order to be eligible, teams must be an educational institution, excluding online schools. Three players are needed per team to participate and an institution is allowed to have at most five teams. Players must be under the age of 20 and cannot have graduated from high school. Prizes will be awarded to the top three teams from each division.”
-Story by Lionel Zhang, EJ Youth Correspondent. Artwork by Melissa Cao, AGHS Promotion Head
Tuesday March 12, 2019
Registration for the 2nd AGA Girls Cup is now open. Modeled after the Redmond Cup, the AGA Girls Cup strives to promote go among girls and recognize the top young female players in North America. Competitors must be female, 15 or under, have an accredited rank of 10 kyu or higher, reside in the US, Canada, or Mexico, and be members of their respective national go association. The top two finishers of the online preliminary tournament will win a free trip to the 35th US Go Congress in Madison, Wisconsin to play in a best-of-three finals, courtesy of the American Go Foundation. All other competitors who complete the preliminary tournament will be eligible for a $200 scholarship to the 35th US Go Congress.
Registration is open until March 30th and the tournament will begin on April 1st. For more information about the tournament and other rules, please read the Rules and Regulations. -Story and photo by Justing Teng, AGA Youth Coordinator. Photo: Tianyi Tina Li (l) plays Melissa Cao (r) at the Girls Cup Finals in Williamsburg VA last year.