American Go E-Journal » Go News

California go players have a couple of interesting events coming up.

This Saturday, November 3 from 9:30 a.m. – 2 p.m., three visiting Korean pros — Paul Ah 9P (now living in Southern California), Seo Nungwuk 9P, and Na Joonhoon 8P — will play simultaneous exhibitions and do game analysis in San Diego. The site will be at the University Community Public Library (4155 Governor Dr, San Diego 92122, 858-552-1655. Free parking is available and doors open at 9:30a. Hosted by the San Diego Go Club. Click here for more upcoming events.

And next Wednesday,  November 7, Google DeepMind’s Thore Graepel will give a lecture on “Training Artificial Intelligence by Playing Games” at the David Brower Center, 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley. Registration is optional, but space is limited. Register to reserve a seat. The lecture is at 6p; refreshments at 5:30p.
“Intelligence can be viewed as the ability of agents to achieve goals in a wide range of environments. If we wish to use machine learning to train intelligent agents, we need ways of creating rich environments that provide appropriate challenges and feedback signals to learning agents. Just as in real life (and evolution), the most challenging environments for learning agents arise from interaction with other co-adapting learning agents. So, let’s play games with AI!”
“The first example is learning from self-play in the context of the AlphaGo project which led to the first computer program to beat a top professional Go player at the full-size game of Go. Similar ideas can be used to study the age-old question of how cooperation arises among self-interested agents. Finally, we look at training artificial agents to play the game of Capture-The-Flag, a competitive team game played from a first-person perspective in a complex 3D world.”
Theoretically Speaking is a lecture series highlighting exciting advances in theoretical computer science for a broad general audience. Events are held at the David Brower Center in Downtown Berkeley, and are free and open to the public. No special background is assumed. This event is made possible in part by a grant from the Simons Foundation.

NOTE: San Diego is in Southern, not Northern California. The post has been updated with this correction. 

This Saturday, November 3, local go players will run a workshop at Youmacon, an anime convention in Detroit, Michigan, from 5 to 7p. “Representatives from the London and Windsor go clubs from Canada, as well as the West Michigan and Columbus go clubs from the United States will be running a go workshop to hopefully spread interest and teach people about this game that we all love,” reports the Columbus Go Club’s Alexander Yehsakul. The workshop will be held in Room 141 at the Cobo Center. “It should be a good time, with plenty of play equipment, friendly convention goers, and even some prizes,” Yehsakul adds. “Also, if you follow the Twitch Go scene, streamers such as DanielML001, Balonator, and Skatmaker will be there for the duration of the event.”

Ten players participated in the Vermont Go Championship on Saturday, October 27th. Dave Felcan 2d (standing at far left) went undefeated with three wins to take first place. Second place went to Jack Homer 1k with a record of 2-1. Rich Chalmers 1d claimed third place, also with a 2-1 record. “It was a very fun and exciting day with lots of great games and tough matches,” reports organizer Pete Schumer.  All players received prizes including trophies, books, magazines, go playing cards, and DVDs. “We look forward to hearing from our fellow states!” Pete tells us.

The Fall 2018 Austin, Texas Go Tournament was held on October 20th and 21st.  Seventeen players participated. Prizes and certificates were awarded for the top three places in two divisions.  The winners were:

The Mountain View (California) Go Club hosted its first tournament on September 29th at the Palo Alto public library. Forty players filled the available space to compete in three rounds. One factor contributing to the large turnout is the growing go scene in the South SF Bay area, which is home to many tech companies. The Bay Area Go Players Association hosts regular tournaments in San Francisco and Berkeley, but this is the first tournament in the South Bay in several years. For six players, this was their first tournament. Hajin Lee 4P went 3-0 to win her third tournament of the year. Going forward, the MVGC plans to host quarterly tournaments.
– Adam Bender

The Western Massachusetts Go Club  continues to enjoy high attendance, reports Eric Osman. This photo was taken Thursday, October 18, at The Blue Wall food court of the University of Massachusetts student center where the Western Mass Go Club meets every Thursday evening. “Come join us!” says Osman.
Photo (l-r): Geordie Morse , Rachel You, Katie Williams, Micah Feldman, Chris Morse, Tom Yilun, Bryan Denley, and Bill Saltman; photo by Eric Osman