Last weekend the Capital Go Chapter held the 9th Virginia Open on OGS with over 80 participants ranging from 30k to 8d. Players enjoyed the four-round event and many won prizes and certificates. “Nearly half players were youths, U.S. Go’s future couldn’t be brighter,” says tournament director Devin Fraze. With so many players, the pool was broken into six divisions with over $500 cash in prizes, sponsored by Honest401k, going to the winners along with additional prizes for high-performing female and youth players. The tournament also served as the qualifier for the VA State Championship, which is set for 12/26/2020, and will be directed by NOVA club president Gary Smith.
“To lend the tournament a personal and special touch, co-director Qingbo Zhang also tirelessly prepared both award and participation certificates, and emailed them to each player individually,” says organizer Edward Zhang. He also noted the rapid improvement of many players in the tournament. “Some stretching self-promotions were allowed by TD, and many of these players played very well.” Zhang’s team plans to host more tournaments in 2021 using Baduk.Club, which made this OGS tournament simple for players and feasible for the TDs.
The tournament wasn’t all serious business; after one youth player turned him down for a friendly match, next year’s Go Congress Director Steve got his change to go up against her in the next round. Declaring her his arch rival he sadly didn’t stand a chance and resigned with only his honor left. TD Devin Fraze also had fun chatting with players between rounds; he ended up teaching some youngsters how to use ‘bbcode’ – a relic of the programming language PHP – so they could use colors and different sizes in the chat. The event chat on Baduk.Club was active all day. Some of our excited younger players posted to celebrate their 120+ point wins while others were fending off power-outages as ice and snow threatened to disconnect their games.
Winners
Click here to see the full winners report.
Open (Elite) 6-8D: 1st, Ninghan Duan; Tied 2nd, Shuaiheng Tao and Zhengbokang Tang.
Open: 1st, Ruoshi Sun; 2nd, Alexander Qi.
Women’s: 1st, Stephanie Tan; 2nd, Angel Zhou.
Expert: 1st, Patrick Zhao; 2nd Juanshu Lan.
Proficient: 1st, Hyunjun Roh; 2nd, Jason Yang.
Intermediate: 1st, Ragnarr Markssen; 2nd, Anderson Barreal.
Novice: 1st, Cody Tang; 2nd, Justin Collier.
Youth: 1st, Alexander Qi, 2nd; James Chih-Rong Sun.
Final standings
Top Divisions (4D+): beta.baduk.club/mac/9thvaopen
Main Section (>3D): beta.baduk.club/mac/9thvaopen-main
(Note: select ‘Games’ at upper-right to view game records of all ‘Boards’.)
report by Capital Go Club
