American Go E-Journal » Game Commentaries

Tesuji Battle in 16th China-Korea Tengen

Monday November 19, 2012

An Younggil 8P reviews the deciding game between Choi Cheolhan 9P and Chen Yaoye 9P at the China-Korea Tengen in September. In this game commentary from Go Game Guru, the tremendously exciting game features two opposing styles of play, Chen’s solid and territorial style and Choi’s thick, fighting style.

This game involves beautiful tesuji and unorthodox moves at every turn, and comes down to the wire with two desperation kos to finish the game.

Chen won the first match in this best-of-3 series, so Choi was fighting for his life, as well as looking for revenge since he fell to Chen last year 2-0. He is 1-8 against Chen all-time – losing the last seven games in a row.
– Adapted from a report on Go Game Guru; edited by Ben Williams

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AGA Pro Tourney Game Records Posted; Women Who Get Go; Vogue interviews Xie Yimin; GoGoD Publishes Chinese Classic in E-Book Form; Go Mention in Stevie McCabe Mystery; Nice Go

Wednesday September 12, 2012

AGA Pro Tourney Game Records Posted: AGA-TYGEMGO Pro Tournament game records for both the main tournament and the Exhibition League have been added to the AGA Professional System page on the AGA website. To see the tournament draw – and download game records – scroll down to “Results.” Thanks to Dennis Wheeler and Steve Colburn for their work on this.

Women Who Get Go: Go has been catching on recently among young women in Japan, Daniel Krieger reported in The Japan Times earlier this year (The women who get go 5/15/2012). “Just last year, it started to get more popular,” said Mayumi Otsuka, 29, who has been hosting monthly get-togethers since last year at a go parlor in Osaka where she and her 27-year-old sister, Satomi, have been working (and playing up to 10 times a day) for the past three years. International Go Federation vice president Thomas Hsiang said that “To facilitate the next big change, we need a model” like a “Bobby Fischer” of women’s go, and suggested that the two best bets on the pro scene are 18-year-old Joanne Missingham, who is a sensation in Taiwan, and Hsieh Yi Min (Xie Yimin), a 22-year-old prodigy who came to Japan 10 years ago and is now at the top of the women’s game. photo: Yasuko Mantani (left) and Aya Kitano commence a game of go at the Shinsaibashi Igo Salon in Osaka. photo by AIMI NAKANO, courtesy The Japan Times

Vogue interviews Xie Yimin: In a related story, GoGameGuru’s David Ormerod reports that “Vogue Taiwan and the fashion house Chanel recently did a video interview with Xie Yimin, the Women’s Honinbo Meijin in Japan. It’s part of a series of interviews with directors, musicians, go players – basically artists.” Although the video is in Mandarin, GoGameGuru has posted an English transcript along with the video here. “When I first arrived at the Nihon Kiin, I had to learn to kneel while I played,” Xie Yimin says in the interview. “I would kneel until my legs and feet went numb. However, my Go Sensei (teacher) said that, before the goban, one must learn to display a modest demeanour before one can become strong at Go.”

GoGoD Publishes Chinese Classic in E-Book Form: GoGoD has issued another e-book on Amazon: Gateway To All Marvels. Gateway is special edition of the 1347 Chinese classic Xuanxuan Qijing (Gengen Gokyo in Japanese), which John Fairbairn says “is surely the most significant go book ever produced. It has become the foundation for virtually every problem book since, as well as being the main source for early go theory.” The new e-book version “brings together every problem and every variant from perhaps every subsequent edition, and discusses how the almost 500 problems and their solutions have evolved and varied, and also how even modern professionals often disagree on the correct solutions or, dare we say it, trip up,” Fairbairn adds. Previous GoGoD e-books include Inoue Genan Inseki and The Life of Honinbo Shuei, also available on Amazon.

Go Mention in Stevie McCabe Mystery: “Go is mentioned in the fifth novel in the Stevie McCabe mystery series, No Shadow in the City by John Callaghan, a Scottish author,” reports Su Co Chon Duc (Marjorie E. Hey). “In Chapter 4, there are several pages introducing go to the private investigator, Stevie McCabe. It is mentioned again in passing in Chapters 6 and 29. There’s some mayhem, but there are no ripping viscera, no splintering skulls. Yes, there are sexual encounters, because the characters have real lives, but no lingering erotica. It is marked for For Adults because of language.” While the first four books are available in paperback and Kindle format, Su Co Chon Duc notes that this book is currently only available on Kindle.

Nice Go: Bob Barber reports that go pops up in “Mr. Nice,” a 2010 film about a Welsh drug dealer. “There’s a minute of go at minute 19,” says Barber.

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2012 WAGC Round 8 Game Records

Wednesday May 16, 2012

Korea-Taipei (Commentary by Yang Shuang); Finland-Romania (Commentary by Yang Shuang); Japan-Bosnia; China-Germany
On Board 1, China’s Qiao Zhijian played more deliberately against Germany’s Bemjamin Teuber than he had in the preceding three rounds against opponents from Chinese Taipei and the two Koreas. As in those rounds, his game attracted the most attention from the spectators …Click here for Ranka’s complete Round 8 report.

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2012 WAGC Round 7 Game Records

Wednesday May 16, 2012

China-DPRK (Commentary by So Yokoku 8P); HongKong-Taipei; Hungary-Korea; Japan-Slovakia.
The 7th round began with a demonstration of the tombstone tesuji by China’s Qiao Zhijian in the bottom right corner on Board 1 against DPRK’s Ri Kwang Hyok. The resulting fight ended in a ko in the top right corner. Qiao won the ko but had to concede the top right corner territory and also give Kwang Hyok the superior position in the center. See So Yokoku’s commentary below and click here for the complete Ranka report on Round 7. 

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2012 WAGC Round 6 Game Records

Tuesday May 15, 2012

Korea-China (Commentary by So Yokoku 8P); Singapore-HongKong; US-DPRK; Germany-Taipei (Commentary by Yang Shuang 3P)
As always, China’s Qiao Zhijian was in his seat ten minutes early. This time, he used those ten minutes to take a short post-prandial nap, while in the facing chair Korea’s Lee Hyunjoon carefully positioned his belongings and then passed the time by looking around the playing area…click here for the complete Ranka Online Round 6 report.

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2012 WAGC Round 5 Game Records

Tuesday May 15, 2012

DPRK-Korea (Commentary by So Yokoku 8P)UK-US (Commentary by So Yokoku 8P); Taipei-China (commentary by Yang  Shuang 3P); Czechia-Japan
On Board 2, China’s Qiao Zhijian chose a variation of the Dosaku opening and played his first ten moves in less than one second each, quickly constructing a huge black framework in the bottom half of the board…Click here for Ranka Online’s complete Round 5 report

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2012 WAGC Round 4 Game Records

Tuesday May 15, 2012

US-Japan (Commentary by So Yokoku 8P); HongKong-China (Commentary by So Yokoku 8P); Czechia-Taipei (Uncommented)
With all players present except the still missing Moroccan, the afternoon round started a few minutes early…Click here for Ranka Online’s report.   

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2012 WAGC Round 3 Game Records

Tuesday May 15, 2012

China-Macau (Commentary by Yang Shuang 3P); DPRKorea-Austria; Japan-Korea; Slovakia-Romania
Fifteen minutes before the start of Round 3 on May 13, Qiao Zhijian, the main Chinese contestant, was already seated at his board…Click here for Ranka Online’s report on the round. 

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WAGC Game Report: Round 2

Sunday May 13, 2012

Despite a good opening, the United States’ Yuan Zhou 7d became the second seeded player to suffer defeat when he lost to 13-year-old Chen Cheng-Hsun 7d (at left) of Taipei  in just 152 moves. “I wasn’t prepared to play such a tough player on the first day,” Zhou confided to the E-Journal. “But it’s great to see such strong young players.” When Cheng-Hsun competed in the WAGC in Hangzhou in 2010 he was thinking of going directly from primary school into a professional career. Instead, he took the more normal course of entering middle school, but his playing strength has continued to improve and he would already be serious competition for a lot of professionals.

The game between Nadeem Prem 3d (Brazil) and Leslie Perez 4k (Chile, at right) developed into a contest worth watching, despite the wide disparity in listed rankings. Overcoming the six-stone ranking difference, Perez won handily by 17.5 points to score the tournament’s first win by a woman; her Chinese counterpart, Fang Xiaoyan, the tournament’s only other female player, had already lost her second-round game to Andreas Gotzfried of Luxembourg.

In the Japan-Netherlands game, an early mistake by Mr Nakazono gave Alexander Eerbeek the lead, and he did not seem about to give it back. As the game progressed Mr Nakazono’s expression became increasingly grim, but in the end he managed to kill a large group and Alexander resigned. Japan had had a close call, but had earned the right to face Korea in the next round.

In the Czechia-Germany game, Czechia (Lukas Podepera) launched a fierce attack on a large German group, forcing it to struggle for a minimal life with just two eyes, and kept the pressure up relentlessly until Germany (Benjamin Teuber) resigned. Ten minutes later, Slovenia (Matoh Leon 5d) prevailed over Argentina (Eduardo Lopez Herrero 5d). The winners of these two games will meet in Round 3.

The last game to end, at 4:55, was the one between the North Korean and Hungarian players, Ri Kwang-Hyok (at left) and Pal Balogh. ‘My opponent made a mistake in the opening and I got the lead,’ said Balogh, ‘but I quickly matched him with a mistake of my own. After that I think I was still ahead, but I gave him a chance to attack and he took it.’ Balogh persevered to the end but lost by 9.5 points. Ri Kwang-Hyok, a veteran of the 2010 Asian games, is another player who would be serious competition for many professionals. Although Balogh looked shaken, his final comment was, ‘I feel happy with the way I played.’
– adapted from James Davies’ report on Ranka Online; click here for latest results; Click here for online game records for the following Round 1 games: Finland-UK; Hungary-DPRKorea (Commentary by So Yokoku 8P; Taipei-US (Commentary by So Yokoku 8P); photos by John Pinkerton

 

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2012 WAGC Round 2 Game Records

Sunday May 13, 2012

Finland-UK (Commentary by Kaz Furuyama); Hungary-DPRKorea (Commentary by So Yokoku 8P); Taipei-US (Commentary by So Yokoku 8P); Japan-Netherlands (uncommented)

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