American Go E-Journal » World Amateur Go Championships

Top amateur go players will compete in the 33rd World Amateur Go Championship (WAGC) May 11-17 in Guangzhou, China, the first time that this event will take place in South China (click here for last year’s reports from Japan). The American Go E-Journal and Ranka online are teaming up again this year to provide daily coverage.

The field of 58 players will range in age from 13 to 67 and in official rank from 8 kyu to 8 dan. Nearly half will be newcomers to the WAGC, and eleven will still be in their teens. One teenager to watch will be 16-year-old Qiao Zhijian who has been cutting a wide swath through the Chinese tournament scene, winning the Evening News Cup to earn the right to represent China at the WAGC and then defeating the legendary Nie Weiping in the annual Evening News pro-amateur match. Three others will be Hong Kong’s 14-year-old Chan Chi-Hin, who took 15th place in the WAGC last year and then worked up to a 9-dan rating on the Kiseido Go Server, Chinese Taipei’s 7-dan Chen Cheng-Hsun, the youngest in the field, and the Czechia’s Lukas Podpera, who won the U20 division of the recent European Youth Go Championship. These four will be battling for top spots with formidable opponents from Japan, the two Koreas, Southeast Asia, Eastern and Western Europe, the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, India, and Oceania. Well-known go teacher Yuan Zhou 7d is this year’s U.S. representative.

Guangzhou, also known as Canton, is the capital city of Guangdong Province. It is enjoying great economic prosperity, flourishing development, cultural diversity and dynamic modernization. With a history of more than 2800 years, Guangzhou is forging its way ahead between its cultural heritage and fashionable skyscrapers. It offers tourists and visitors a feast of sights with unique charm, including the Flowery Pagoda, the Pearl River, the Baiyun Mountain, and the Temple of Six Banyan Trees. In 2010, when Guangzhou hosted the 16th Asian Games, the whole city improved itself comprehensively and impressed guests from all over the world with its ebullience and hospitality.

Guangzhou Chess Institute (left) has been chosen as the venue of the 33rd WAGC. Located in scenic surroundings near the Baiyun Mountain, Guangzhou Chess Institute was rated “the most culturally attractive venue of the Asian Games”. Listening to the ripple of the stream, looking around at the traditional Lingnan houses, you may think you are in a famous garden. The simple and natural design of the playing hall speaks of calmness and harmony to the players and audience.
– excerpted from Ranka Online’s report 

U.S. representative Eric Lui 7d placed third in the 2011 World Amateur Go Championship, the highest finish ever achieved by a U.S. player. Eric sent along this report on the tournament, as well as the exciting final-round game — with his comments — that clinched the 3rd-place win.
This year’s World Amateur Go Championship featured 57 players. The Japanese representative was 84-year-old Hirata Hironori who was playing in the WAGC for his eighth time, having won the tournament in 1995. The youngest player was 13-year-old C.H. Chan from Hong Kong, who is already well-known on KGS. The tournament venue was the Shimane Prefectural Assembly Hall, located right across from Matsue Castle, one of the last remaining medieval castles in Japan. Shimane is the birthplace of the great Honinbo Dosaku and Iwamoto Kaoru 9P.

The pairing system used prevented the top four seeded players (China, Korea, Japan, Chinese Taipei) from being paired together before Round 4. Several exciting matchups, including Romania vs. France and Chinese Taipei vs. Canada, occurred as early as Round 2. Since there were an odd number of players, a ‘Dummy’ player was introduced. Each round, the one player paired against ‘Dummy’ gained a free win and played a teaching game against a professional.

The stakes were high in my final-round match against the player from Chinese Taipei. Both of us had lost only to China and Korea, and the winner would finish in third place while the loser would drop to 8th. The game itself was very exciting and was the last of the round to finish. While any go player is familiar with the thrill of winning, there are no words to describe what it felt like for me to achieve this victory.
– Eric Lui (shown at right in photo, playing John Karlsson of Sweden)
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Round 6 began at 1:30pm on May 31 with China’s Baoxiang Bai and Chinese Taipei’s Tsung-han Wu squaring off. One of those two was about to lose his unbeaten status. Next to Bai and Wu, Korea’s Woo-soo Choi was paired against Poland’s Kamil Chwedyna (photo at right). One of those two players was about to lose his second game of the day, after four straight wins in the first half of the tournament. The Polish player drew white and placed his first three stones on the 9-10, 11-10, and 4-2 points, while the Korean occupied three corners.

On three other boards in the main playing room, Japan’s Hironori Hirata was playing Spain’s Joan Flos, Thailand’s Choltit Rattanasetyut was playing Vietnam’s Kanh Binh Do, and France’s Thomas Debarre was playing Eric Lui of the US. The winners of these games would still be very much in contention, provided one of them could manage to beat the winner of the Bai-Wu game.

In the outer playing area the Ukraine’s Mykhailo Halchenko had been drawn down against Romania’s Cornel Burzo. A win for the Ukranian would leave him in contention for the championship too. A win for the Romanian would mean a good chance at taking one of the top ten places, conditional on a strong performance tomorrow. Sixteen other players with 3-2 records were also playing for chances to finish in the top ten. With the stakes becoming increasingly clear, the pace of play slowed. Only a few games finished in less than two hours. Two of these ended in victories for Japan and Korea. At the two-hour ten-minute mark the Southeast Asian showdown between Thailand and Vietnam was also over, and in this game victory went to Thailand, by 9.5 points.

By this time a crowd of over thirty onlookers had gathered around the game between the unbeaten duo from China and Chinese Taipei, Baoxiang Bai and Tsung-han Wu. The situation on the board was becoming increasingly uncomfortable for Chinese Taipei, and after another ten minutes Wu resigned, leaving China’s Bai in undisputed first place, at least for the present.

Thomas Debarre and Eric Lui are both relatively slow players, and their game lasted longer. The winner was Eric Lui. His reward: a pairing against the Chinese player in round 7. In the outer playing area, the drawn-down game, another lengthy affair, was won by the drawn-up player, Cornel Burzo. Tomorrow he will first face Kanh Binh Do of Vietnam in a quest to restore Romania to a place in the top ten. In other pairings for round 7, Korea is matched against Chinese Taipei and Japan against Thailand.

Round 7: At 9:30am on June 1, chief referee Masaki Takemiya (standing in photo at left) gave the players a cheery greeting, followed by the formal call to choose colors and start play. As in round 6 the pace of play was generally slow, but three games in the outer playing area ended quickly. Franz-Josef Dickhut of Germany picked up his fifth win by beating Joan Flos of Spain in less than an hour. Next a nine-stone handicap game between Madagascar’s Manitra Razafindrabe and referee Yasuhiro Nakano ended. Both players won, Nakano on the go board, Razafindrabe by getting a bye in the tournament. Shortly afterward Costa Rica’s Mario Miguel Aguero Obanda scored his second win by beating India’s Sandeep Dave.

The first game finished in the main playing room was the match between Japan and Thailand. Thailand’s Choltit Rattanasetyut resigned at 10:40, giving Japan’s Hironori Hirata a sixth win and an assured pairing against Baoxiang Bai of China in the last round. A minute later, on a different board, Armenia’s Artak Margaryan 3k resigned against Azerbaijan’s Bahadur Tahirbayov 6D, and awhile later Zoran Mutabzja of Croatia lost to Mykhailo Halchenko of the Ukraine.  Andrius Petrauskas saw his hopes of gaining a first-ever top-ten finish for Lithuania dim considerably when he lost to Canada’s Jun Fan.

At 11:20 Israel’s Jonathan Lidor made one last attempt to resurrect a dead group, then resigned to Finland’s Mikko Siukola. Vietnam’s Kanh Binh Do chose to play out a long endgame, including a half-point ko, only to lose by a wide margin to Romania’s Cornel Burzo. Not many people witnessed these defeats, however. The spectators were massed at the front of the room where the games involving China, Korea, Chinese Taipei, and the US were proceeding.

In the China-US game, Eric Lui had been struggling without success to attack a large group in the center of the board. He was now playing in his last renewable 30-second time period, which he repeatedly used down to the last second or two, eliciting protracted beeps from his tournament clock. At 11:43 he resigned, and China’s Baoxiang Bai took a big stride closer to a world championship.

In the outer area Poland’s Kamil Chwedyna played the endgame from a standing position to win by 4.5 points against Singapore’s Xiang Zhang. At the other end of this area five armed samurai, a ninja, and two kimono-clad girls wearing hats and veils in the style of Matsue’s founding year, 1611, were posing for photographs. When the photography was finished, some of these medieval characters drifted into the main playing room, arriving in time to see Korea’s Woo-soo Choi win his game against Chinese Taipei’s Tsung-han Wu by 3.5 points.

In the last game to finish, France’s Thomas Debarre defeated Czechia’s Radek Nechanicky. In the final round the French and Thai players are paired together, as are the players from China and Japan, from Korea and Romania, and from Chinese Taipei and the US. And outside, the rain for which Matsue is also famous has let up again.
– James Davies, Ranka Online; edited by Jake Edge