Yuxiao Wang (2nd place, 4-1), Xinyu Tu (1st place, 5-0), Trevor Morris (TD), Hao Li (3rd place, 4-1)
Xinyu Tu took first place at the 2022 New England Open over the Labor Day weekend, winning all five rounds. See below for the complete winner’s list.
“We had players from each of the six New England states, except for New Hampshire,” reports organizer Trevor Morris “Next year, we’ll be recruiting heavily from New Hampshire!” In order to incentivize New England players, “next year we’ll have a special prize for the top finisher from each of the six New England states,” said Morris.
With over $3,000 in cash and prizes, the 2022 New England Open tripled the advertised $1,000 prize pool. Prize sponsors, in order of the value of their donations, included ZBaduk, OGS, BenKyo Baduk, GoMagic, Battle Standard (physical location, hosting the Central CT Go Club), New York Go Institute, BadukPop, AYD, Yilun Yang, SmartGo, Shawn’s Go Group, baduk.club, AwesomeBaduk, Chris Sagner, and Guo Juan’s Internet Go School. Click here for links to all of the sponsors and a detailed description of their donations.
“A special thanks to Sunstein LLP, an intellectual property law first, for sponsoring breakfast, which included, importantly, bottomless coffee, on the second day,” said Morris. “The breakfast was very popular, and would not have been possible without their generous support.”
Morris also thanked Chris Sanger, “not only for donating lessons to the prize pool but also for offering to be the odd player out. Thanks to him, no one had to take a forced bye. In the rounds that he did not play (most of them!), he was super-helpful pitching in on logistics.” The E-Journal’s Eva Dee Beech made streaming of the final round possible, training Morris on how to set up cell phones to stream live, and then providing the off-site live transcription to KGS for the top two boards. She also arranged for TelegraphGo to provide live commentary on Twitch.
Winner’s Report
Open section winners: Xinyu Tu (1st place, 5-0); Yuxiao Wang(2nd place, 4-1); Hao Li (3rd place, 4-1).
Four-game winners, all of whom earned a new rank, per their new official AGA ratings:
Hughes de Saxce (1 kyu) [now 1 dan]; Andrew Hall (1 dan) [now 2 dan]; David Fang (3 kyu entry rank; official rank: 5 kyu) [now 2 kyu]; Laura Wu (7 kyu) [now 6 kyu].
“An unexpected shout-out to the Feng Yun Go School,” adds Morris. Three of her young students were a real pleasure to have at the tournament, and they each gained more than 2 points in their official AGA ratings: Zhihan William Huang: 19kyu -> 8kyu; Zhiyong Huang: 10kyu -> 4kyu; David Fang: 5kyu -> 2kyu.
“Finally, we’d like to recognize the nine players who competed for the first time in an AGA tournament,” says Morris. “That’s a full 18% of the entire pool. We look forward to seeing you all at the next one!” Hao Li, Yuxiao Wang, Jiayi Chen, Wei Chen, Patrick Blackstone, Philippe Lessard, Sophia Mears, Zeyi Tong, Martha Marteney.
The full tournament cross-grid and photos are available on the website.
Prize Coordinator: Michael Scudder (+ wife Lyda); Tournament Director: Trevor Morris (+ partner Martha Marteney). Photos by Chi-Hse Teng.
