This month we start a new feature, as we look back fifty years in world Go.
by Keith Arnold, hka, with Patrick Bannister
On November 14, 1968, the Nihon Kiin celebrated Rin Kaiho’s victory as the 8th Meijin. He towers above the dignitaries in our photo , but also notable is the late Go Seigen 9 dan, fourth from the left and , at far right, Rin’s teacher, Goro Fujita 6 dan.
As was his custom, Fujisawa Shuko won the first year the Oza became a title match. He’s shown here, at left, turning aside the challenge of Otake Hideo, then 8 dan, on November 12, 1968. Otake was the first of the Kitani school disciples to make his presence felt.
Go Review also heralded the “Big Three’ of the younger generation, 50 years ago this month, but these three – Ishida Yoshio “the Computer”, Kato Masao “ the Killer”, and Takemya Masaki would become better known as the “Three Crows “ of the Kitani school.
Finally, William Pinckard returned home to New York after a 6-month stay in Tokyo, with a 2 dan diploma from Iwamoto 9 dan. Pinckard is well known in the west for his writings about go history and culture, particularly his wonderful “Japanese Prints and the World of Go” available from Kiseido.
Please forward any ideas for future months to the journal, ejournal@usgo.org. Photos are borrowed from Go Review.
Ogawa Tomoko 6 dan passed away on November 15 at age 68. A pupil of Kitani, she is perhaps best known in the West as the author of “The Endgame” part of the Ishi Press Elementary Go Series. I will always remember her as the ofttimes host of the NHK matches I watched on my VCR. She was the winner of the Women’s Honinbo in 1986 and the Women’s Kakusie in 1987. – Keith Arnold, HKA Correction: Updated to reflect Ogawa’s date of deathon 11/15, not 11/18.
The Evanston Go Club hosted its semi-annual tournament on November 9th, drawing 33 players from Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin. In addition to the normal handicap section, the tournament included an Open section for dan players. “We’ve never had more than one section before,” says club president and TD Mark Rubenstein, “so I was a little nervous about it. I have my hands full running the self-paired section, so I knew I’d need someone to run the Open section. Thanks to the outstanding help of Lee Huynh, it went smooth as silk!”
Rubenstein uses his own custom software for running the club’s tournaments, which are always self-paired. Huynh used OpenGotha to manage the Open section. The response of the dan players was unanimous; they greatly prefer to play even games, regardless of the difference in rank… even knowing they’d be up against Albert Yen 8d! “Special thanks to our Central board members Lisa Scott and Devin Fraze (all the way from Columbus Ohio) for joining us!” says Rubenstein.
Results: Open Section: 1st place Albert Yen 8d (4-0), 2nd place Meng Wang 6d (3-1) Handicap A Section: Nathan Beecher 2d (4-0) Handicap B Section: Daniel Lambert 4k (4-0) Handicap C Section: 1st Place Alicia Seifrid 14k (5-0), 2nd Place David Bireta 15k (4-1) playing in his first tournament.
Andy Liu 1P took the top prize by tie-breaks after a three way tie in the top division of the Gotham Go Tournament on November 2nd. “Thanks to everyone who participated,” says organizer Peter Armenia, “and thanks so much to our fabulous tournament director David Glekel, his assistant Jino Choung, and my beautiful wife Gretchen Hanser for keeping the coffee warm, feeding us, and making beautiful ceramic go mugs for the top prizes!”
Division winners were Yong Chen 7d, Niel Ni 1d, Alexander Yu 2k, and Micah Murphy 10k, with Amari Gonzales 20k and Zhihan Huang 29k also undefeated in Murphy’s division. Peter Armenia’s eight year old daughter, Veronica, played in her first official tournament and he reports that she took her losses in stride with grace and composure.
Organic mugs made by Gretchen Hanser and awarded as prizes
Veronica Armenia in her first tournament
Complete winner’s list Open Division (all 3 wins) 1st Andy Liu; 2nd Alan Huang; 3rd Michael Chen A: 1st Yong Chen; 2nd Lei Sun; 3rd Jianjin Lin B: 1st: Niel Ni (undefeated); 2nd Sophie Lin; 3rd Afa Zhou C: 1st Alexander Yu; 2nd Alex Fan-Cui; 3rd Luke Luo D: 1st Micah Murphy (undefeated); 2nd Amari Gonzales (undefeated); 3rd Zhihan Huang (undefeated)
U.S. Go Congress organizers would love to thank everyone who has filled out the Congress Survey – nearly 200 responses already. The feedback they’ve received has been extremely valuable, especially since over half of the responses came from people who couldn’t attend the 2019 Congress, and nearly a quarter of respondents have never been able to attend a Congress.
Ryan Li 1p playing simul at the 2019 US Go Congress; photo by Chris Garlock
Among the responses so far were two from people who haven’t attended since the late 1990s, as well as four from people who have attended 26 or more Congresses. Over half of respondents rate playing in tournaments as their favorite thing about Congress, while 28% of attendees say their favorite part is learning from pros, and 27% say their favorite part is spending time with friends (people seem to have multiple favorites).
Interestingly, 36% of respondents would like to attend the European Go Congress and 34.5 say they’d maybe like to, but only 8.5% actually have attended.
Feedback from everyone – longtime attendees, new players, and everyone in between – will help the AGA make the next U.S. Go Congress in Estes Park (August 1-9, 2020) a better event for everyone! Click here now to complete the survey if you haven’t already.
To put the time in and help this great organization? The AGA is continually looking for new talented leaders to help with our programs. We are a small core group that wears many hats. Our listing of open positions is always growing.
If you are interested please email volunteer@usgo.org for more information
Here are a few of the folks that are on the top of our search list:
AGA Treasurer
Looking for someone with a minimum 2-3 years Accounting/CPA experience. Will assist the organization in day-to-day operations with members and chapters for payment issues. Person will help run reports for various administrators for operations activities. Person will work on tax documents yearly. This position has a two year commitment.
AGA Ratings Officer Assist current Ratings Officer. Knowledge of how ratings works is advantageous. This person will be communicating with membership and other AGA officers to answer member issues relating to tournaments. Required: programming ability including perl, mysql, version control, and linux. This person will work with our current Ratings Officer and potentially take over the position.
Drupal Developer
Looking for someone to help with our drupal upgrade. Looking to take our install to v9 and make it more efficient. Help drive the look of the AGA’s web presence. Knowledge of Drupal 7/8 needed, Helpful to have include PHP, WordPress, Drupal 8 front end development.
This Sunday November 17th starts the 8th year of the Pandanet City League in the US and Canada. This year brings four sets of leagues with 30 different teams. Check the teams listing to find your closest city to root for. Watch at least nine different pros in the top three leagues. Games can be found in the AGA City League rooms using the GoPanda2 client. Watch on any platform whether it be at your computer or on a mobile device. Games start LIVE at 3PM unless otherwise noted.
“The American Go Honor Society is hosting its annual Young Lions Tournament, ” says Promotion Head Sophia Wang, “All go players under age 18 of any rank are welcome. It is a great tournament where youth players can compete against others from the United States, Canada, and Mexico for prizes. There is a total prize pool of $600 in cash, trophies, and other awards.”
For registration, click here. For detailed rules, click here.
A few follow-ups to the Cotsen Open, which recently celebrated its 30th anniversary with one of the biggest tournaments yet: Games: Top-board game records are posted here. Videos: Click here for a playlist of all the Cotsen videos, including a brand-new highlights reel and interviews with founder Eric Cotsen, first-time game recorder Timothy Yu and more. Results: See below for the complete list of winners.
Credits: The Cotsen is sponsored by Eric Cotsen; this year’s tournament was organized by Ryan Murray and directed by Kevin Chao. The tournament Co-Organizer was Chris Saenz and the Assistant Director was ChiWu (Jack) Chao. Yilun Yang 7P was the resident pro. Leah Wilson was the MG Studio rep, Georgett Cota was the Assistant Organizer and the official tournament photographer was Charles Brewer, who also served as a volunteer. Other volunteers were Wenguang Wu and Devin Fraze. Vendors were Kogi (food truck) and TPT (tables/chairs). Paula and Cindy were the massage therapists.
The E-Journal crew was headed up by Managing Editor Chris Garlock, who also produced the videos. Jeff Fitzgerald was the videographer and video editor. Game recorders were Kevin Hwang, Vince Ma, Yen-Chin Wang, Timothy Yu and Lionel Zhang. Stephen Hu provided technical support.
Special thanks to AGA president Andy Okun.
Winner Mark Lee (r) with Eric Cotsen. photo by Chris Garlock
2019 Cotsen Winner Report (Final) Open Section: 1st: Mark Lee (5-0); 2nd: Andy Liu (4-1); 3rd: Evan Lin (4-1); 4th: Xiaocheng Hu (4-1); 5th: Calvin Sun (4-1); 6th: Ying Ngai Yu (3-2). Section A (4d-2d): 1st: Kosuke Sato (5-0); 2nd: Zhizhe Zhang (5-0); 3rd: Ashish Varma (4-1) Section B (1d-2k): 1st: Tony Yang (5-0); 2nd: Tommy Yinhe Liu (5-0); 3rd: Andrew Luo (4-1) Section C (3k-5k): 1st: Billy Maier (5-0); 2nd: Samuel Kennedy (5-0); 3rd: Shawn Blue (4-1) Section D (6k-10k): 1st: David Su (4-1); 2nd: Mario Espinoza (4-1); 3rd: Viet Nguyen (4-1) Section E (11k-30k): 1st: Jiqi Wang (5-0); 2nd: Michael Lee (5-0); 3rd: Xiao Tiao Wang (4-1)Club prize winner: Santa Monica Go Club
Star of the show: “Sad news (Ben Lockhart: 1993-2019) from a wonderful NYC Go family,” writes Peter Armenia. “Ben was an accomplished and passionate Go player, as well as a friendly and inquisitive soul. Whenever he showed up at our meetings or tournaments he was the star of the show. He left us way too early, but he left us with an inspiring example of how to live life following your passion and how to face mortality with insight and dignity.”
Lockhart at the 2016 AGA Pro Qualifier; photo by Chris Garlock
Razor-sharp pursuit of the game: “When I think of Ben, I am sopping wet and wearing only a towel,” writes Keith Arnold. “Perhaps I should explain. Several years ago, I headed back to my dorm room to get ready to emcee the Congress Banquet. The last thing I did was check the Lightning tournament results and, with an hour till the banquet, I was in the Dan final, but the other semi-final had yet to take place. So, I happily intended to declare myself the winner.
After showering, I dripped my way back to my room. Almost immediately, there was a knock on the door. I will never know how he figured out which room was mine, but I opened the door to find Ben and a friend, Go set and Ing clock in tow. He announced that he had just won the other semifinal and was here to play the Lightning final. I am sure I hesitated, but in short order I found myself soaking down onto the dorm room carpet to play with the gangly teenager. This was the only game I ever played with Ben and I have no record of the 18 minutes we spent on the board, yet it was enough to etch Ben’s essence on my mind forever.
I mean only Ben would have done this in the first place, with his single-minded, if slightly off schedule, pursuit of the game. And he loved our lightning game, laughing at himself for an early mistake, bearing down after, with a stream of self-revelatory commentary one can only appropriately hear in a lightning game. His focus was amazing, as was his comfort in his surroundings; he found nothing strange about sitting on the floor opposite this middle-aged man clad only in a wet towel. The game was the thing. Ultimately, his youthful enthusiasm and growing strength overwhelmed both my groups and my hopes. After some hasty dressing, I was soon handing this force of nature the Lightning tournament trophy.
And I am so glad, so very glad to have been able to do so, to reward this young man, who should have had so many other victories. In many ways, we could not have been less alike, and yet we shared an absolute love for this game. Yet while I labored to a gentleman’s ‘C’ in the rest of my life to conserve what focus I could for go, that was not Ben’s way. I will always envy and admire his razor-sharp pursuit of the game, tirelessly learning and playing and also teaching. It is sad that we will never know how far he could have gone, but we can take great solace in knowing he went absolutely as far as he could have gone in the time he had, and I know that would make him smile.
