American Go E-Journal » Events/Tournaments

From the first arrival in Japan of top amateur go players from 62 countries through eight rounds of competition — topped by Korea’s Hyunjae Choi 6D –– and ending with a visit to the tsunami-stricken South Sanriku, the American Go E-Journal — in cooperation with Ranka Online — provided comprehensive coverage of the 34th annual World Amateur Go Championship, held September 1-5 in Sendai. Click here for full final results; here for selected game records and here for the player roster. See below for a handy clickable index to our daily reports and 19 game commentaries, as well as a Ranka/EJ team photo.
Photos by John Pinkerton except as noted. 

Reports
WAGC Daily Recap (Final): Wednesday, September 4

Ranka Online WAGC Highlights: Wednesday, September 4

WAGC Daily Recap: Tuesday, September 3

Ranka Online WAGC Highlights: Tuesday, September 3

WAGC Daily Recap: Monday, September 2

Ranka Online WAGC Highlights: Monday, September 2

WAGC Daily Recap: Sunday, September 1

Ranka Online WAGC Highlights: Sunday, September 1

WAGC Round 1 Games & An Interview with Alexandr Bukh of Kazakhstan

The Traveling Go Board: The Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, Two Years Later

WAGC Venue Exposes Go to Public Eye

Advice from Top Amateurs on How to Get Stronger

International Go Federation Celebrates Successful Year

Players Arrive at 34th World Amateur Go Championship

EJ & Ranka Coverage of 34th WAGC To Start 9/1

Game Commentaries (by Michael Redmond 9P)

Round 1: Canada-Kazakhstan
Round 1: US-Phillipines
In these first-round games, very strong players make short work of their weaker opponents.

Round 2: Finland-Colombia
Round 2: Israel-Argentina
Round 2: US-Korea
Curtis Tang was one of the brilliant young Redmond Cup participants, winning five times to become one of only two players to earn the title of Redmond Meijin…

Round 3: Brazil-Belgium
 In this game, though Black makes no major errors, by move 72, White has established a clear lead; here’s how…
Round 3: Hungary-China
Hungary’s Csaba Mero handles a challenge well and gets a fairly severe attack going on Yuging Hu of China, but… 
Round 3: Indonesia-Austria
This game features an unorthodox opening by Black that actually works fairly well up to a point.  

Round 4: Korea-Netherlands
Round 4: Russia-China
A fast but thin move early on by White sets off a cascading series of fierce battles in which the attack changes hands several times. 

Round 5: Japan-China
Black wins every ko fight in this game, but the cost is too high…
Round 5: Korea-Canada
Black doesn’t make any major mistakes in this undramatic game, yet White slowly but surely pulls ahead, building up an insurmountable lead…   
Round 5: US-Singapore

Round 6: China-Korea
This game is all about yose. The game is very close at move 101, when the endgame begins, and goes on for the next 150 moves…
Round 6: Japan-Russia
Kikou punishes an early overplay by Shikshin, but then slowly loses his advantage with slack moves and then falters in the endgame…  

Round 7: Korea-Russia
Black trades a large side for a center moyo but when White skillfully erases most of the moyo, Black’s position turns out to be too thin and things get steadily worse…
Round 7: China-Canada
After an even opening, White misses two chances to maintain the balance of territory and allows Black to get an unassailable lead… 

Round 8: Taipei-China
An unnecessary peep that turns out not to be sente gives Yuqing Hu 8D (China) a chance attack and suddenly Shin-Wei Lin 7D (Taipei) is in deep trouble…
Round 8: Ukraine-Korea
When White tries for a bigger territory, his move is just a bit too greedy, and Black immediately punishes it… 

 The Ranka-E-Journal Team (l-r): James Davies, Toshiko Ito, Ivan Vigano, John Richardson, Chris Garlock, Michael Redmond 9P, John Pinkerton, Yuki Shigeno. photo by Thomas Hsiang

The agony of defeat and ecstasy of victory on the go board were put into perspective Thursday when the WAGC participants took a somber tour of South Sanriku in Miyagi prefecture, less than an hour from the tournament site in downtown Sendai, and one of the areas hardest-hit by the 2011 tsunami.

Although the region — a spectacular landscape of misty mountains, gently-waving rice fields, stands of bamboo, wide rivers and coastal views — has largely recovered since the disaster, the go players were uncharacteristically subdued as they took in the scope of destruction, with whole towns swept away. The three-story South Sanriku emergency center’s rusted skeleton bore mute witness to the towering wall of water that took the lives of so many; the few workers there who survived did so only by climbing the radio tower atop the building.

Most affecting was a visit to the Okawa primary school where almost every student and teacher perished. The once-thriving community is gone, the houses destroyed, completely erased from the earth, leaving only the gutted school as a sad memorial to the young lives lost here. As the buses rolled through under grey and drizzling skies, guides explained how this empty patch used to be a community center, that one was a hospital, another was a neighborhood. Roads once lined with houses are now vistas of weeds and the occasional flash of a wild sunflower or glimpse of a white crane standing on a solitary leg. The rubble is gone and new houses and buildings are slowly rising. The rivers flow past quietly. Life goes on.
– Chris Garlock; photo by John Pinkerton 

As expected, Korea’s Hyunjae Choi 6D wrapped up his sweep of this year’s World Amateur Go Championships on Wednesday with solid wins over Ukraine’s Artem Kachanovskyi, who came in an impressive third — the first time Ukraine has been a top finalist — and Ilya Shikshin of Russia, who took a very respectable 4th place. In addition to a significant haul of trophies (left), Choi’s win gives him more than enough points to now become a professional go player (click here for Ranka’s interview). China’s Yuqing Hu took second place, Slovakia’s Pavol Lisy was fifth, King Man Kwan of Hong Kong was sixth, Serbia’s Nicola Mitic was seventh and Kikou Emura of Japan was eighth. Canada’s Bill Lin finished in 10th place and Curtis Tang of the U.S. placed 14th. Nepal’s Suresh Bhakta Kayastha gamely brought up the rear of the 62-player field, failing to notch a single victory. Kazakhstan’s Alexander Bukh won the Asada Fighting Spirit Prize and Suzanne D’Bel of Malaysia won a special prize from Takemiya Masaki “for showing originality and good sense”; Takemiya singled D’Bel out for playing her first move on the tengen, calling it “true Cosmic Style.”

Canada’s Bill Lin told the E-Journal that he was “a bit disappointed” in his results. “I had expected to do better, but it was a tough draw and I came up short.” Tang (right, in checked shirt) was philosophical about his performance, saying that “After losing to strong players I still got strong players but I guess that’s just how they paired it up. I tried my best. I had chances against Korea and then I had a good chance to win my seventh-round game against Romania and get a shot at a top-eight finish, but I messed it up.” Both players noted the grueling 2-rounds-per-day pace. “I made sure to get to the sauna every day to ease the pressure,” Tang said. Click here for full final results; here for selected game records and here for the player roster.
– Chris Garlock; photos by John Pinkerton 

Rounds 7 & 8 Reports: Click here for James Davies’ reports on the final rounds of the 2013 World Amateur Go Championship.

Round 7: Korea-Russia: Things Get Steadily Worse
Ilya Shikshin 7D (Russia) trades a large side for a center moyo but when Hyunjae Choi 6D (Korea) skillfully erases most of the moyo, Shikshin’s position turns out to be too thin and things get steadily worse…click here for the commentary by Michael Redmond 9p, edited by Chris Garlock. Photo by John Pinkerton.

Round 6: Russia-Japan: Losing an Advantage
Kikou Emura 7D (Japan) punishes an early overplay by Ilya Shikshin 7D (Russia), but slowly loses his advantage with slack moves and then falters in the endgame. Click here for the commentary by Michael Redmond 9p, edited by Chris Garlock. Photo by John Pinkerton.

Round 6: Canada-China: Two Missed Chances
After an even opening, Bill Tianyu Lin 7D (Canada) misses two chances to maintain the balance of territory and allows Yuqing Hu 8D (China) to get an unassailable lead. Click here for the commentary by Michael Redmond 9p, edited by Chris Garlock. Photo by John Pinkerton.

Round 5: China-Japan: The Cost is Too High
Kikou Emura 7D (Japan) wins every ko fight in this game with Yuqing Hu 8D (China), but the cost is too high. Click here for the commentary by Michael Redmond 9p, transcribed by Chris Garlock. Photo by John Pinkerton.

PLUS: Liquorice, draniki or fried pizza? Players compare the food in Japan to what they’re used to at home. 

Korea’s Hyunjae Choi (left) virtually locked up the 2013 World Amateur Go Championship in the sixth round Tuesday afternoon with a solid 4.5-point win over China’s Yuqing Hu (right) for a perfect 6-0 record (click here for the game record with commentary by Michael Redmond 9P); Hu will almost certainly take second place. But with the two final rounds yet to play on Wednesday, the rest of the top slots are still very much up for grabs. Five-game winners include Ilya Shikshin of Russia (who beat Japan in the sixth round), Artem Kachanovskyi of the Ukraine (who defeated Finland in the 6th), Nikola Mitic of Serbia and Canada’s Bill Lin, who lost to Korea in the fifth round Tuesday morning and narrowly bested Chinese Taipei by 1.5 points in the sixth.

The win by Korea ends a two-year run by China, which won the WAGC in both 2012 and 2011. Kikou Emura’s back-to-back losses on Tuesday extinguished Japan’s hopes of recapturing the WAGC title for the first time since Satoshi Hiraoka won in 2006.
– Chris Garlock; photo by John Pinkerton