Saturday March 5, 2022
Kevin Yang advanced to the Transatlantic Online Pro League by defeating Brady Zhang in Round 1 and Alexander Qi in Round 2 of the qualification tournament held Feb 18-19. Brady Zhang takes the second seat in the Transatlantic Online Pro League, defeating Alexander Qi in the 3rd-round playoff.
See below for the game records.
Round 1: Yang-Zhang
Round 2: Qi-Yang
Round 3: Qi-Zhang
Saturday March 5, 2022
By Daniela Trinks, Korea correspondent for the E-Journal
The Saudi Arabian government’s Vision 2030 strives to reduce its dependency on oil. One of the vision’s components, the “Quality of Life Program” (QLP), was launched in 2020 with a huge budget of 35 billion USD and aims to enrich the standard of living of Saudi citizens by creating new opportunities for cultural, arts, and sports activities. In this regard, the government has selected the mind sports Go, chess, and bridge to be part of the QLP.
The leader of the Go project, Dr. Majed Alharthi from King Abdulaziz University, explained that they had conducted some research on which mind sports to include in the program. At the end of 2019, after coming across some studies on the positive educational effects of Go, he visited the Secretary-General of the International Mind Sports Association, Thomas Hsiang (who is also VP of AGA and IGF), to discuss the idea of selecting Go. Naturally, Hsiang strongly affirmed that idea and recommended contacting Kim Myungwan 9p as he had plenty of experience teaching Go abroad during his ten-year stay in the USA until 2018.
Plans were delayed due to the pandemic but recently, Alharthi invited Kim Myungwan 9p to Saudi Arabia to offer a 9-day workshop from January 15th to 23rd to 12 Saudis from various professions: teachers, chess players, and government officers in their 20s to 50s. Kim’s mission was to provide a beginner’s course to train future Go teachers. As part of the daily six-hour training, he taught the participants basic Go techniques, concepts and had them play practice games. It is hoped that each participant would teach twenty new Go players and grow the game steadily in their local communities.
“Saudi Arabia’s enthusiasm for Go is amazing. Before I arrived, they even had made their own Go textbooks, despite being beginners themselves”, recalls Kim after his visit. For now, they aim to target university students and increase awareness of Go in students’ mind sports clubs. However, in the future, they intend to expand the program to elementary school students. Alharthi, who participated daily in the workshop commented, “Let’s find a way to continuously and efficiently promote Go in Saudi Arabia.” The enthusiastic project leader hopes to soon sign an MOU with the Korean Baduk Association to grow the seed planted.
Wednesday March 2, 2022
The New York Go Honor Society’s Spring Open will be played online using KGS on March 12th and 19th. The 4-round, Swiss-style tournament will feature an open division and handicap divisions, with the top players in each division receiving prizes. Players of all ages and levels are eligible to participate. Registration – which is $12 – closes on March 10th.
Click here for more information about the tournament’s rules and regulations.
– Kyle Fenimore
Tuesday March 1, 2022
“Want to represent the AGHS internationally? The AGHS is excited to launch a new tournament called the Challenger Series,” says AGHS Co-President Sophia Wang, “In this tournament that will begin in June, a team selected by the AGHS will face off against a team selected by the Jena International Go School in Germany (JIGS). To be eligible for our team, you must participate in the March-April Youth League and win your division. We have a limited number of spots, so division winners will either be players or alternates for our team.”
More information regarding this event will be shared soon. You can stay up to date by checking the AGHS website at http://www.aghs.us and the AGHS discord channel in the AGA discord server.