American Go E-Journal

Canadian youth have all but shut the U.S. out of the Redmond Cup this year, with Jianing Gan 6d and  Gansheng Shi 8d winning the Senior Division, and Oliver Wolf 2d and Henry Zhang 1d winning the Junior.  Zhang is the only one of the three from the U.S., he is also the younger brother of former Redmond champ Hugh Zhang.  All four youth have won a free trip to the US Go Congress, where they will play a best two-out-of-three match with their opponent, and split a $1,000 prize pool courtesy of the AGF.  The Senior Division, for youth 12-17 years old,  had 27 youth competing and featured U.S. stars Curtis Tang 8d, Calvin Sun 7d, and Zhongxia Zhao 7d among the top players.  Leading the pack was two-time Redmond Champion and current title holder Gansheng Shi 8d.  Shi has a simple but effective strategy: he just wins, all the time.  Tang or Sun were both favored in this event, but it was fellow Canadian Jianing Gan who pulled out all the stops to place first. He was the only player to beat Shi, each losing only one out of their seven games. Gan, just 13 years old, will be familiar to E-J readers as the challenger to Myungwan Kim in the SPOT1 finals recently.  In the Junior Division, nine kids, all under the age of 12, duked it out for top honors.  Ten-year-old Oliver Wolf had the top record, with four wins in five games.  Four players had three wins, but Henry Zhang had the best SOS (Sum of Opponents Scores) record, and also was the only player to beat Wolf. The Redmond Cup, now in its 17th year, was directed by Michael Bull.  
– Paul Barchilon, EJ Youth Editor.  Photo: Yunxuan Li (l) vs. Jerry Shen (r) in 2009 Redmond finals, Jr. Division.