American Go E-Journal » U.S. Go Congress

Wei Ding and Dalhoon Ahn leading in US Masters: Wei Ding and Dalhoon Ahn shook off their Tuesday losses in the US Masters Open to win their Round 6 games on Thursday morning, defeating Andy Liu and Ryan Li to set up a potentially decisive showdown between the two 5-1 players. Latest Masters crosstab here. Click here for the latest US Open crosstab. photo: Dalhoon Ahn, Ryan Li and Stephanie Yi 1P review the Ahn-Li game; photo by Chris Garlock

Rain helps boost Diehard turnout: This year’s Diehard Tournament — the traditional 4-round Day Off tournament — had 95 players, up from 90 last year. “The rain may have caused some people to revise their day off plans,” says TD Andy Olsen, “because many players registered at the last minute Wednesday morning.” The field attracted a good spread of players, from three 7 dans to many double-digit kyus.
Top section Winners: 1st: Tianyi Chen 6d; 2nd: David Cho 5d; 3rd: Ary Cheng 5d.
Additional prizes awarded to undefeated players: Eli Ferster 5k and Dave Whipp 7k.
photo by Steven Burrall

Aaron Ye clinches Redmond Cup Senior Division; Bao and Cheng tied in Junior; : Aaron Ye clinched the senior division Monday against Jeremy Chiu. Frederick Bao bounced back against Ary Cheng in the junior division, making the series 1-1.

Sibicky and Nyborg tops in 9×9:  Nick Sibicky 4d is the dan division winner in the 9×9 tournament and the kyu division winner is Bethany Nyborg 18k.

“Why We Play” returns: E-Journal reporter Samantha Fede has been posting new “Why We Play” profiles in the Go Congress app social feed, like this one for Greg Steltenpohl 8k (left), who’s from Madison, WI and has been playing for two years.  Greg’s favorite thing about go: “It’s kind of like programming in that you build a mental game/problem space and you get to navigate through that. I like doing that in programming and go. Solving a big puzzle. I also like to play games of go on my phone anytime I have a little time.” This is his first go congress, and he has already volunteered for next year’s Go Congress in Madison.

– reports by Julie Burrall and Matt Burrall

More than 10,000 viewers tuned in on Twitch Tuesday night to watch Andy Liu and Ryan Li pair up with AI partners in the Facebook Open Go Pair Go match. “It was a huge success,” said event organizer James Pinkerton. “I was so impressed with the incredibly high quality of the game. It was amazing how often the human players’ moves were exactly what the AI would have chosen.” The match featured $4,500 in prizes and paired both players with Facebook’s Open Go AI, which was set for approximately 30,000 roll-outs and 15 seconds per move. Stephanie Yin 1P and Managing Editor Chris Garlock provided live commentary for the audience in the Sadler Center auditorium at William and Mary College, where this year’s US Go Congress is being held. Qucheng Gong contributed insights into the AI’s assessments of the game in real time. Andy Liu/Open Go won the game by resignation after a dramatic middle-game. “Sometimes Ryan and I would just look at each other and be like ‘We have no idea,’” laughed Liu in the post-game analysis. The game included 3-3 invasions in all four corners, most initiated by the human players, both of whom have been studying AI play extensively in recent months. And as in human Pair Go games, there were periods where two partners seemed to be playing entirely different games. “It was often hard to know just what my partner was thinking,” admitted Li; “I was just trying to follow its lead.” The broadcast team included Steven Hu, Nathan Epstein, Joel Cahalan, Nate Eagle, Josh Lee and Dennis Wheeler; Solomon Smilack did the KGS simulcast. “We’re really excited to bring this open source go AI to the go community,” said Pinkerton, who works at Facebook. “We hope it’ll become an increasingly useful tool for go players around the world.”
photos by Phil Straus; top: (l-r) Yin, Garlock and Gong commenting; bottom (l-r): Garlock, Yin, Gong, Pinkerton, Liu, Li.

With the US Open at the halfway mark, here’s a quick snapshot of the leaders in each band. They’re almost all undefeated, though in the 6D section only Tianyi Chen is undefeated and in the 2D section, only Brian Wu is undefeated. Click here for the US Open crosstab. If you’d like to preserve your Open game records for posterity, send them to journal@usgo.org and we’ll add to the crosstab (be sure to complete all the game info, including result).
– Matt Burrall

“Crazy Go was insane as usual,” reports organizer Terry Benson, who says there were over 20 variants at Tuesday night’s event at the US Go Congress, including Coupon Go, courtesy of Elwyn Berlekamp and relatively new entrants like magnetic go, 9-13-19 go, and diagonal go. “It was a moveable feast of go with a voracious herd of players grazing the many weird boards or laughing at Blind Go and the intersection of go and diplomacy in 4 color go,” Benson says. Rengo Kriegspeil, the granddaddy of Crazy Go games, “was hilarious as usual” and after Benson ran one session a young player, Seth Liang, asked if he could referee the game. Benson said Sure, so Seth did “and another kid followed him, having as much fun running the game as playing. Talk about passing the baton!” Zen go had only winners and blind go got some unwanted “help” from other kids. Treasure Go took some rule interpretations. As usual, “A good time was had by all.”

Wei Ding 9P and Dalhoon Ahn’s 9P winning streaks in the US Open Masters ended Tuesday morning as they were defeated by Bin Fu 7d and Andy Liu 1P. That means there are now five players with 4-1 records (Ryan Li 1P is the fifth). Ahn “made two mistakes in the opening, and I got the better of him on two corners,” Liu told the E-Journal. “After that I had a pretty good lead.” Ahn “didn’t make any mistakes after that and was able to catch up a bit, but I just played really carefully.” Holding onto his lead “was really nerve-wracking,” Liu cheerfully admitted, “but I’m really good at managing my emotions now. I had some problems in the past winning won games, but now I know how to play safely.” He says he’s been watching a lot of AI games, “and they’re really good (at winning won games); they always keep their lead. So that was going through my head, how would a top AI keep its lead?” “This shows how good US pros are,” said Pro Coordinator I-Han Lui. “Now everyone has a chance at the title.” Round 6 is scheduled for Thursday morning; watch live on KGS, Twitch or YouTube. 
photo: Andy Liu and Dalhoon Ahn review their Round 5 game; report/photo by Chris Garlock

Wei Ding and Dalhoon Ahn leading in Masters: Wei Ding and Dalhoon Ahn are in the lead in the US Open Masters, undefeated after four rounds. With 3-1 records are Ryan Li, Bin Fu, Zirui Song and Andy Liu. Click here  for complete results – and top-board game records. Click here for the US Open crosstab; add your game records by sending them to journal@usgo.org.

Seniors tourney popularity grows: In just its third year, the Seniors Tournament has steadily grown in popularity, and this year, with Greg Kulevich directing, exceeded the original 40-player cap with a total of 46 participants. After two rounds, front-runners have emerged, but there are still two more rounds to play.
Undefeated Kyus: Moonhun Oh 1k, Bart Jacob 3k, Ray Heitman 5k, Frank Brown 6k (Moonhun Oh leads the tiebreaks)
Undefeated Dans: David Cho 5d, Eiji Hayashi 5d, Jon Thek 3d, and Jeff Horn 1d (David Cho leads the tiebreaks)

Blackout at the Lightning Tournament: Judging strictly by decibel level, the Lightning Tournament certainly sounds like the most fun, as stones fly and clocks are punched. This year saw an extra challenge, as the lights went out in the middle of the tournament (it was that kind of day; in mid-afternoon the Sadler Center was evacuated briefly when an overheated sensor set of fire alarms). Luckily the blackout didn’t last long, but every second counts in a game that is only 10 minutes with sudden death. Despite competition from a number of other popular offerings, the Lightning attracted 80 players on Monday night, split into tables of six competing in a fast-paced round robin style.
Dan table winners: Willis Huang 6d, Tianyuan Zhang 5d, Andrew Zalesak 3d, Soren Jaffe 4d, King Bi 3d, Jake Game 1d.
Kyu table winners: Terry Wang 2k, Billy Maier 3k, Tony Zhang 3k, Benjamin Coplon 5k, Tevis Tsai 6k, Tsulmuun Ganbatoor 8k, Josh Johnson 14k, Tonya Perez-Lopez 20k.
Playoffs continue through the week; Keith Arnold, as always, directed.
– reports by Julie Burrall and Matt Burrall; photos by Julie Burrall

The E-Journal’s US Go Congress broadcast coverage is achieving unprecedented audience levels this year, thanks to Twitch.tv, which hosted their first official “Twitch Plays Go” event three months ago. All Go Congress broadcasts this week are being featured on the Twitch front page, and Saturday’s Pandanet City League final stream saw a total of more than 2,000 viewers, who witnessed an exciting 300+ move battle with a half-point finish. The EJ broadcast crew includes Stephen Hu, Nathan Epstein and Joel Cahalan, along with commentators (see below).

Live broadcasts of pro commentaries and interviews can be found on the official AGA Twitch channel, and abridged version of the recordings are posted daily in the 2018 US Go Congress YouTube playlist, which includes:
– Pandanet-AGA City League Finals Board 1, Ryan Li 1p (W) vs Zirui Song 1p (B), commentary by Eodeokdung Lee 2p
– US Masters Round 1, Andy Liu 1p (W) vs Zirui Song 1p (B), commentary by Stephanie Yin 1p
– Redmond Cup Finals Game 1, Jeremy Chiu 7d (W) vs Aaron Ye 7d (B), commentary by Eric Lui 1p
– US Masters Round 2, Alan Huang 7d (W) vs Eric Lui 1p (B), commentary by Stephanie Yin 1p
– Interview with Nate Eagle, US Go Congress co-director.
photo source: Eodeokdung Lee 2p

13×13 tourney visited by phantom go player: There were 41 participants in the 13×13 tournament Sunday night, directed by Jim Hlavka. The players were spread across seven tables with six players playing round robin at each table. To make the numbers work, the final table added a phantom go player, which honorably forfeited all its games and the tournament attendees took a moment to appreciate its sacrifice. Basic time was set at 15 minutes for each game with no overtime. From a mixed dan/kyu table, emerged an unbreakable three-way tie, and the dan player moved into the dan quarterfinals, while the two kyu players will compete for the kyu quarterfinals spot. The players in the quarterfinals are as follows:
Dan section: Ary Cheng (5D), Yiduo He (6D) Ye Sun (3D), and Seowoo Wang (2D)
Kyu section: Jim Conyngham (4K), Eric Hookway (10K), Joshua Johnson (15K), and the future winner of the face-off between Jasper Emerton (2K) and Darwin Kim (2K)
– report/photo by Julie Burrall

Quick, here are the Youth Lightning table winners! Tianyuan Zhang 5d, Brian Wu 2d, Derek Zhou 19k.
– reported by Paul Barchilon

Dramatic AGA Board election results in: “Everybody won. Everything passed,” reports Arnold Eudell on the AGA Board Elections. Eastern: Gurujeet Khalsa; Central: Lisa Scott; Western: Christopher Saenz: At-Large: Paul Celmer. Details here.

Playing Facebook’s AI: Congress attendees got a chance to play Facebook’s go AI Sunday (left) in the first of three simul exhibitions, culminating in a Pair Go exhibition game Tuesday night in which Andy Liu and Ryan Li will each team up with OpenGo, competing for $4,500 in prizes, with commentary by Stephanie Yin 1P with Chris Garlock.
– photo by James Pinkerton