An enthusiastic crowd of 58 go players turned out on April 2 to welcome Spring and the return of the National Go Center’s Cherry Blossom Tournament after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic. Because of the large group and general uncertainty over ratings with no recent tournament play, all games were played even without handicaps.
Eric Lui (1P) was the overall winner at 4-0 beating Alan Huang (7D) 3-1 in the final round for the championship. Cash prizes were awarded to the top players, and all 4 or 3 game winners got their choice of an NGC t-shirt or a go book. The other 4-0 winner was Ning-Yuan Ernest Wang (6K), back in the US on a business trip from Taiwan and still fondly remembered from his days at the Johns Hopkins Go Club.
The other three-game winners were Qi Huang (5d), Qingbo Zhang (5D), Joel Kenny (4D), Ching Long Lam (3D), Samantha Soo (2D), Alex Fan-Cui (1D), James Bonomo (2K), Ken Onishi (2K), Joseph Craig (3K), Anderson Barreal (4K), Robert Qi (5K), John Gipson (6K), Zhaorong Ma (8K), Mi=ulan Liu (10K), Amber Boyden (13K).
“We had one player, Siddhant Rajoriya (28K), who had only been playing the game for one week,” says TD Gurujeet Khalsa. “He showed real aptitude for go, and we hope to see him playing at a Dan level next year. A shout-out goes to Samantha Soo’s mom also. She left New York City at 2 AM to bring Samantha and two other players to the event, which was great!”
photo courtesy Gurujeet Khalsa
