American Go E-Journal » Events/Tournaments

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