Mark Lee 7D (right) locked up the US Open Masters Division championship on Friday night with his 8th-round win over 
Andy Liu 1P, giving the 17-year-old former Korean insei an impressive 8-0 record with one final round to play Saturday morning. Matthew Hu was 6-1 coming into the 8th round but his loss to Conner Li knocked him out of contention for the Masters, leaving the NAMT prize race still up in the air. Click here for the Masters Division crossgrid. photo by Chris Garlock
US Open players undefeated through five rounds (also with one final round left to play Saturday morning): Fan Chen 5D; Nick Blake 3D; Dan Alvira 2D; Gilbert Feng 1D; Yukio Ishiyama 1D; Erik Brummelkamp 4K; Dmitry Dimatov 5K; Adam Jiang 7K; Joe Suzuki 7K; Matthias Kramm 9K; Ann Wu 10K; Mackenzie Brown 10K; Mark Nahabedian 13K; Dowson Yang 20K; Gary Smith 24K. Click here for US Open crosstab results.
Longtime go player Steve Barbieri 1K was the high bidder at the traditional Friday 
night auction of a go board to benefit the American Go Foundation, his $1,000 bid winning a fierce bidding war for a two-inch kaya board signed by all the professional go players at the Go Congress. Barbieri was clearly inspired by AGA President Andy Okun’s example: he became shodan after winning the auction in 2008. “This kind of generosity is what’s enabled us to continue helping grow the game of go across the United States,” said AGF President Terry Benson. ““This contribution will cover one of the AGF college scholarships!” The auction, conducted as usual by American Go E-Journal Managing Editor Chris Garlock and Terry Benson, followed a live game commentary by Jungsang Park 9P and Myungwan Kim 9P on the Masters board one game between Lee and Liu. As usual, the board was donated by Yutopian. photo (l-r): Chris Garlock, Myungwan Kim 9P, Steve Barbieri, Terry Ben
son, Andy Okun and Jungsang Park 9P; photo by Steve Colburn.
Matt Mo 10k defeated Jim Fienup 3k in the 9×9 Tournament final on Friday to win the kyu championship; Dirk Riedeman 3D still has to play Zheng Xiangnan 5D for the dan championship.
In the 13×13 Tournament, April Ye 1D beat Gabriella Su 5D to clinch the dan championship, while Jeff Wu 5k is still to face Ann Wu 10k in the battle for kyu champion.
In the Lightning Tournament, the dan finalists have yet to be determined, but Yukino Takehara 1k has advanced to the kyu finals and waits for the winner of a semi-final game to play for the kyu championship.
In the Self Paired Tournament, just 129 games have been played, with Matt Pruner 4D leading in Most Games Played, with 12. No other prize category leaders were available at press-time Friday night.
– reporting by Chris Garlock and Karoline Li; bottom right photo of kids playing a casual game Friday night by Phil Straus. Click here for his latest album of Congress photos.
