American Go E-Journal » Other

Registration is now open for the 2021 San Diego Go Championship hosted by the San Diego Go Club. This will be the 10th annual San Diego city championship. In 2019, the Open section featured one player with a rating of 10 dan – who finished 4th – and five 6 dans out of a total of 10 players. The handicap section had another 55 players. 

This is an online 5 round tournament. One round will be played a week for five weeks beginning March 13. AGA Membership is required. There will be no entry fee and no cash prizes, but any AGA member can play to become the San Diego Go Champion. Redesigned 2017 U.S. Go Congress – San Diego t-shirts will be awarded to section winners as well as U16 Girls and U16 Boys winners. 

There will be an Open section – in which five 6 dans have already registered – and a Handicap section in which all levels are welcome. Players must register by 11:59 p.m. PDT by March 11, 2021 to play in the first online round. Late registrants can play in any other round. Byes are acceptable if needed. Free registration is open at GoClubsOnline.

The Open winner will become the 2021 San Diego Go Champion, with their name on a perpetual plaque along with past winners: Mark Lee 10d, Chengjie Huang 7d, Ari Saito 7d, Leran Zou 7d, Yi Wang 6, and Yixian Zhou 6d.

-report by Ted Terpstra

Registration is open again for the New York Go League! Now in its sixth iteration, players can expect to play one round robin game per week with players of similar rank over the two-month league. The organizers continue to hope that organized competitive play can endure even during the pandemic and plan to offer small prizes to the winners of each division, which in the past have included discounts for New York Institute of Go lessons and programs. Registration is open to anyone with a stable rank with any association or online go server.

The New York Go League is organized and run by the New York Go Honor Society, with the first iteration beginning in May of 2020 with over 80 players. Registration for the league will be open until March 13th and the league will officially begin the week of March 15th. Interested players can click here to read the rules and regulations, and click here to register.

To encourage players to play on western Go servers and support the western Go community, Shawn Ray (Clossius) has launched the Western Dan Challenge. Sponsored by Ray, and as a result of various donations, the prize pool has steadily increased to $1200, with prizes being added for more divisions of the event. One sponsor, Aneok, has added prizes for players who choose to play exclusively on OGS. Three divisions overall include a dan division, a single digit kyu division, and a double digit kyu division, with a prize available for most ranked games played in February. Click here for Ray’s Youtube video on the event.

Rules:

• Only games played in February will count
• Must be a ranked game.
• Must be on a western server like OGS or KGS
• Must be on the same account. (Makes it easier to track)
• Must not use AI. I will be having people check.
• Minimum time settings of 1min 10sec x 5
• Must use an overtime clock equivalent to the minimum time settings.
• No Sudden Death
• Only 19×19 games
• Do not find flaws with the rules that defeat the spirit of the challenge.

The 2020 Virginia State Championship final is set in knock-out format on OGS on Saturday Dec. 26. After the Dec. 5 prelim – click here for results – four strong players have been invited to the final-four. Semi-finals start at 9am ET, and the final at 2:30 pm ET.

Players are welcome to watch and join in the chat on Baduk Club. Prior to the championship tournament, organizers reached out to all Virginia clubs and several language schools of major VA cities, to scout for more Go players who may have liked to compete. Joshua Lee is the defending VA champion from 2019, and though not in the competition this year, 2019 runner-up Qingbo Zhang has made it to the final four for a shot at the 2020 title.

–report by Capital Go Club

Bo Luan 6d of Carpinteria, California won all five of his games this weekend in the Third Annual California State Go Championship, which was hosted online by the San Diego Go Club. The top seven players in the Open Division were all over 6 dan. Finishing second in the Open was Zhengbokang Tang, 8d, (4-1) from Boulder Colorado and third was Yixian Zhou, 6d (3-2) – a familiar figure in the Southern California go scene.

The 50 competing players weren’t only Californians; players also hailed from New York, Vermont, Florida, and Oregon, and were from 7 to 75 years old. Handicap players who went undefeated at 5-0 were Patrick Ferl 1d, from Valley Village, California and David Rohlfing 8k from Dublin, Ohio.

Also selected from the Handicap ranks were the best Under-16 girl and boy:
Tianyi Tina Li 2020 U-16 California State Go Champion.
Alexander Lo 2020 U-16 California State Go Champion.

Registration, pairings for 5-rounds, tabulation of results and calculating tie-breakers for fifty players was made easy using the GoClubs.org program. This is the third online tournament the San Diego Go Club has run for free since the pandemic has eliminated face-to-face competition. The other two were the San Diego Go Championship and the California Pair-Go Championship. The individual tournament results have been submitted to the new National Go Center online rating system. Although not rated by the AGA, the tournaments required AGA membership.

report by Ted Terpstra

From 2016 to 2020 the South Central Go Tournament has been held in Dallas on the Saturday and Sunday before Presidents’ Day. Because of the uncertain safety of in-person play during the COVID 19 pandemic, the 2021 tournament will go online. It will be held the Saturday and Sunday preceding Presidents’ Day – February 13 and 14, 2021. The Texas resident finishing best in the Open Section will become the 2021 Texas State Champion. Registration for the tournament is now open on GoClubsOnline (www.goclubs.org).

Basic Tournament Information

• Open and Handicap Sections. The Handicap Section will be divided into bands which group players near in strength for pairing purposes.
• Schedule: Saturday, February 13 and Sunday, February 14, 2021. Three rounds each day. Rounds start at 10 AM, 1 PM, and 3 PM Central Standard Time.
• Where: KGS go server (www.gokgs.com)
• American Go Association (AGA) membership required.

More Information
The South Central Go Tournament is on Facebook. There is a “Book Now” button on the Facebook page which will take you to GoClubs.org to register. The Facebook page is also a good place to find updated basic information on the tournament and to see comments made by interested players. You can post questions there. You can also write to bobgilman.aga@gmail.com with questions or concerns.

report by Bob Gilman

Last weekend the Capital Go Chapter held the 9th Virginia Open on OGS with over 80 participants ranging from 30k to 8d. Players enjoyed the four-round event and many won prizes and certificates. “Nearly half players were youths, U.S. Go’s future couldn’t be brighter,” says tournament director Devin Fraze. With so many players, the pool was broken into six divisions with over $500 cash in prizes, sponsored by Honest401k, going to the winners along with additional prizes for high-performing female and youth players. The tournament also served as the qualifier for the VA State Championship, which is set for 12/26/2020, and will be directed by NOVA club president Gary Smith.

“To lend the tournament a personal and special touch, co-director Qingbo Zhang also tirelessly prepared both award and participation certificates, and emailed them to each player individually,” says organizer Edward Zhang. He also noted the rapid improvement of many players in the tournament. “Some stretching self-promotions were allowed by TD, and many of these players played very well.” Zhang’s team plans to host more tournaments in 2021 using Baduk.Club, which made this OGS tournament simple for players and feasible for the TDs.

The tournament wasn’t all serious business; after one youth player turned him down for a friendly match, next year’s Go Congress Director Steve got his change to go up against her in the next round. Declaring her his arch rival he sadly didn’t stand a chance and resigned with only his honor left. TD Devin Fraze also had fun chatting with players between rounds; he ended up teaching some youngsters how to use ‘bbcode’ – a relic of the programming language PHP – so they could use colors and different sizes in the chat. The event chat on Baduk.Club was active all day. Some of our excited younger players posted to celebrate their 120+ point wins while others were fending off power-outages as ice and snow threatened to disconnect their games.

Winners
Click here to see the full winners report.

Open (Elite) 6-8D: 1st, Ninghan Duan; Tied 2nd, Shuaiheng Tao and Zhengbokang Tang. 
Open: 1st, Ruoshi Sun; 2nd, Alexander Qi.
Women’s: 1st, Stephanie Tan; 2nd, Angel Zhou.
Expert: 1st, Patrick Zhao; 2nd Juanshu Lan. 
Proficient: 1st, Hyunjun Roh; 2nd, Jason Yang. 
Intermediate: 1st, Ragnarr Markssen; 2nd, Anderson Barreal. 
Novice: 1st, Cody Tang; 2nd, Justin Collier.
Youth: 1st, Alexander Qi, 2nd; James Chih-Rong Sun. 

Final standings
Top Divisions (4D+): beta.baduk.club/mac/9thvaopen
Main Section (>3D): beta.baduk.club/mac/9thvaopen-main
(Note: select ‘Games’ at upper-right to view game records of all ‘Boards’.)

report by Capital Go Club

The Capital Go Club is proud to announce the 9th Virginia Open and 2nd VA State Championship Qualifier to be held on OGS and BadukClub on Saturday, December 5th and Sunday, December 6th. Players will compete across four divisions for four rounds: Open (4D+), Expert (1-4D), Intermediate (5-1K), and Novice (6K and below). Prizes will be $100, $50 and $25 for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in the Open Division respectively, and $20 and $10 for 1st and 2nd in all other divisions. Female and youth winners (aged 17 and below) will be awarded additional $10 (minimal 2 wins). Go books are also available as rewards, sponsored by Hinoki Press. Prizes are sponsored by the Honest401k team. The first three rounds of the Open Division will be held Saturday 12/5 with the 4th round on Sunday 12/6. Other divisions will have all 4 rounds on Saturday 12/5.

The top four finishing Virginia residents will be invited to compete for the VA Champion in January of 2021 in a safe format, details to be announced. Last year Joshua Lee 6D defeated Qingbo Zhang 5D in the final and declared the first Virginia State Champion. “We encourage more youth players and more female players,” says organizer Edward Zhang. “Our perpetual trophy will be awarded to not only the VA State Champion, but also to the VA Youth Champion and VA Women’s Champion if more than three contenders compete in each subdivision.”

Pre-registration is required to participate in the tournament. The deadline for pre-registration is 5pm ET Nov. 30. Click here to sign up. The Registration fee is waived for AGA members, and $10 for non-AGA members. Players may pay by PayPal with reference to the player’s name. All games will be played on OGS, with pairing and results information available here. For questions or inquiries, please email Jeff Zhang at AGATD1@gmail.com. For more details and to register, visit the Washington Go Festival website. Thanks go to Jeff Zhang 5D for gathering tournaments history from AGA E-Journal featured on the website, including an Open Division winners list for tournaments of the Greater Washington metro area for the past 13 years.