American Go E-Journal » Go News

The annual auction benefiting the American Go Foundation got a boost this year when go bowls signed by AlphaGo programmer Aja Huang and Fan Hui 2P were added to the auction, conducted at the closing banquet at the US Go Congress on Saturday, August 6. Brady Daniels’ $500 bid won him the bowls, while John Tromp’s $1,700 bid enabled him to take home the board signed by all the professional go players attending this year’s Go Congress. The American Go Foundation is dedicated to promoting go in the U.S. With its support, thousands of American children have learned go in hundreds of schools, libraries and community centers across the country. The AGF also provides scholarships and resources for youth who play go, and supports go in institutional settings such as prisons, and senior centers.
photo: Tromp and Daniels with AGA president Andy Okun (far left); photo by Steve Colburn

Newly-elected AGA board member Lisa Scott is definitely not new to the AGA scene. She served as a Central Region board member from 2010 to 2013, and has just been appointed US Go Congress Coordinator for the AGA. Scott learned to play go on KGS during her first year of college, and found out about the Go Congress in 2006, when she asked around about why most go players seemed to drop offline during the first week of August. Scott has directed the Women’s Tournament at the Go Congress every year since the Lancaster, PA in 2007, her first Go Congress. The first year, 23 women played in the tournament. Participation has been lower some years, but at the 2015 Go Congress in St. Paul 40 women played, and this year that number grew to 46. “With around 90 rated women registered for the Go Congress this year, including pros,” Scott says with a smile. “That means over 50% of them are playing in the Women’s Tournament!” Scott’s biggest goal of the tournament is to build community and give women a chance to meet other female players outside their own clubs. With the number of female registrants and Women’s Tournament players rising each year, more players are getting the chance to meet and play against new people. “I like finding people good games to play.”
– report/photo by Karoline Li, Congress Tournament Liaison

Although just one name goes on the annual Congress Director plaque, there are literally dozens of volunteers who work for months to ensure a fun-filled week of go for the hundreds of go players who attend the largest event on the U.S. go calendar. To those volunteers we say Thank You for a job well-done!
– Walther Chen, Director, 2016 US Go Congress 

Our core Congress team went far above and beyond: Jason McGibbon, Chun Sun, Yuan Cao, Matthew Hershberger, Becci Torrey, Stephen Hu, James Carrier, Neil Ritter, Dan Ritter, Andrew Hall, Li Chen, James Peters, Tim Holman, Brian Lee, I-Han Lui, Milan Mladenovic.

The core team would like to give a special thanks to the following people, who made the Boston 2016 US Go Congress possible by helping plan and prepare ahead of time, by working all day on registration day, by staying late to set up boards, by helping run events, and so much more. These people are all extended members of our core team: Srividya Kalyanaraman, Krishna Artis-Mickens, Greg Kulevich, Cat Thu Nguyen Huu, John Kane, Chris Kirshner, Ted Terpstra, Alice Peng, William Wright, Dan Steinbrook, Audrey Wang, Joe Chaves, William Luff.

We would like to thank the following people for volunteering to help prepare and run the Boston 2016 US Go Congress: Wei Shi, Shurun Fan, Keith Arnold, William Wright, Graham Higgins, Helen Higgins, David Hampton, Shawn Ligocki, Wen Zheng, Mark Huang, Eva Casey, Wanda Metcalf, Cat Huu, David Spitz, Mark Nahabedian, Gabriello Adler-Abramo, Alice (Siyu Peng), John Fuhrer, James Putnam, Rob Campbell, Thao Tran, Julia Grunewald, Michael Williams, Eric Reid, Danni Chen, Alan Yin, Spence Konde, Briana Sextonstalone, John Piermarini, Henry Galperin, Brianna Sextone-Stallone, Spence Kande, and many others!

Thanks also to the translators: Moon Ki Cho, Yumin Guo, Tracy Zhao, Yekan Ji, Xinying Jiang, Seon Kinrot, Brian Kirby, Chenchen Luo, Wei Tang, Tony Cha, Richard Dolen, Joshua Guarino

Special thanks
Community: David Kahn, the Massachusetts Go Association, and the Boston Go Community; all the friends and family who don’t play go but helped anyways
For Amateur Team Relay Go: Neil Ritter, Dan Ritter, Chun Sun, Andrew Hall, Becci Torrey, James Peters, John Kane, Tim Holman, Dave Felcan, Yuan Cao, Shawn Ligocki, Dan Steinbrook, Andrew Jackson, Nick Sibicky, Brian Lee, Tim Holman, Steven Xhu. And finally, a special thanks to the professional players who volunteered to be team captains and do commentary: Jenny Shen, Mingjiu Jiang, Yilun Yang, Feng Yun, Willian Shi, Andy Liu, Eric Lui, Calvin Sun, and Ryan Li

photo by James Pinkerton

Bao Yun Clinches ’16 US Open Masters; Battle Underway for Runner-Up: There’s still one more round to play in the 2016 US Open Masters but the name of this year’s winner can already be inscribed: Bao Yun 7D. Bao defeated Song Zirui 1P Friday night by 3.5 points to build an unassailable 8-0 lead and clinch the 2016 title. The action now moves to the battle for second place. Zhang Hanchen will have to beat Ito Kenryo to take second place; if Ito wins, tiebreaks will determine the winner. In other Round 8 action, Andy Liu let certain victory against Zhang Hanchen slip away when he neglected to secure the life of a group in the endgame on Board 2 (click here for an sgf of the commentary by Feng Yun 9P and Yilun Yang 7P); Ito Kenryo 1P beat Ryan Li by half a point on Board 3, Eric Lui 1P defeated Sun Shuo 7d by 4.5 points on Board 4, Jian Zhongfan 7d beat Zhang Siyuan 7d by a half-point on 5 and Zhaonian Chen 7d won by 8.5 points over Albert Yen 7d on Board 6. Click here for the 2016 Masters Division crossgrid, with results and top-board game records. Click here for the US Open crosstab, updated through Round 5. 

Broadcast Schedule
10a: US Open Masters Round 9 (final): Live pro commentary on the AGA YouTube Channel.
10:30a: US Open Masters Round 9: Live pro commentary on KGS.
PLUS: Check all the pro game commentaries from the week here.

US Go Congress Tournaments Schedule: Saturday 8/6
9:00a: US Open, round 6; US Open Masters, round 9

Diehard
Exactly 100 players ranging from the low 27 kyu to 7d decided they did not need a day off on Wednesday 8/3 — “because rest is for babies” — and gathered in the main playing room for the annual Diehard Tournament. Both Ted Lin 3k and Alexander Foti 4k were undefeated with four wins.

Pair Go
Click here for a Facebook album of all this year’s pairs, and read here for the tournament story and results to find out who will be representing North America in the International Pair Go Championships in Japan!

Senior Cup
Visit live.gocongress.org for final tournament crosstabs. Chunlin Xu 7k won all four games to be the only undefeated player in the tournament.

Women’s Tournament
Visit live.gocongress.org for final tournament crosstabs.

Lightning Tournament
Players are on their own to find and complete their playoff games, and both the dan and kyu section playoffs have not yet reached the semi-final round. With just one more day left of play, will they complete before the end of the Go Congress? Will we be left without lightning champions? Stay tuned to find out!

– report by Karoline Li, Congress Tournament Liaison; photos by Chris Garlock

As you might imagine, there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work that goes into broadcasting games from the annual US Go Congress, whether on KGS, Pandanet, YouTube or Twitch. Most of the time, everything works, and go fans around the world can follow the top-board action from the comfort of their own homes or at work.

But sometimes things go sideways. Like Thursday morning. With just minutes to go before the sixth round in the US Open Masters was scheduled to begin, and with Bao Yun and Ito Kenryo — the last two undefeated players left — seated at Board 1, the internet connection for the game recorder’s computers and the livestream feed went dead. The E-Journal team quickly scrambled to troubleshoot the problem, find workarounds and implement backup plans. The BU tech guys were called in, cables and adapters were swapped and software settings were rapidly reconfigured. As always, the priority was to ensure no disruption or distraction for the players while working to bring the best possible broadcast to viewers on the various platforms. At home, viewers probably didn’t even notice the 2-minute delay in the start of the round, which otherwise went off without a hitch. The way we like it.
– Dennis Wheeler & Chris Garlock; photo by Garlock

It’s only August and already Hajin Lee has had one heck of a year. She got married, stepped down from her post as Secretary General of the International Go Federation, got promoted to 4-dan professional at the Korean Baduk Association and got accepted to an MBA program in Switzerland. Oh, and there was that whole AlphaGo thing.

The AlphaGo games against Lee Sedol in March came just before the end of Lee’s tenure at the IGF and the huge crush of media interest generated headlines and news reports around the world as hundreds of journalists descended on Seoul, where she’d spent years as a pro. “Working at that event was really crazy, it was one of the busiest times of my life, but it was still fun,” she said. In addition to witnessing the most massive promotion of go in the history of the game, Lee came away with a personal memento of the moment:  “DeepMind sent me a beautiful set of Wedgewood tea cups and pots” for her wedding to fellow go player Dan Maas.

But the tea party will have to wait; Lee is moving to Switzerland this Fall to get an MBA focusing on international organizations. “When I applied for the program, I wanted to get some kind of job at the UN. But right now, I am open to other options because there are many organizations that do education or philanthropy work and I am mostly interested in those sectors,” building on her work at the IGF. “I really enjoyed working with the global community and the international context [at the IGF],” she told the E-Journal.

Lee was also recently promoted to 4P by the Korean Go Association. “In the Korean pro system, it’s a cumulative point system,” she explains. Her last promotion was to 3D in 2007. As for the question on many of her fans’ minds, Hajin — known for her popular go broadcasts as Haylee on YouTube — says this, “For the time being, my plan is to continue my YouTube broadcasts in Switzerland. The hope is to continue it for as long as I can.”
– report/photos by Samantha Fede, E-Journal special correspondent, reporting from the 2016 U.S. Go Congress . photo: Lee with husband Dan Maas at the Pair Go tournament Thursday night at the 2016 US Go Congress; photo by Chris Garlock 

The US Open Masters Division is the tournament for the best of the best, with the biggest prizes and most intense schedule. The invitational event, with 44 top players this year, is a 9-round event at the US Go Congress, with 6 rounds played at the same time as the US Open and an additional three rounds played Sunday, Tuesday and Friday nights. The new format replaced the 4-round North American Masters Tournament (NAMT) and the 4-round Strong Players Open in 2014. Eligibility in the Masters Division is limited to professionals, 7 Dan or stronger players and NAMT qualifiers. The top prize will be $5000 for first place, plus a $2000 for the top-placing North American Masters Tournament qualifier. Click here for the 2016 Masters Division crossgrid, with results and top-board game records.

Top row: Bohan An, Matthew Burrall, Fan Chen, Zhaonian Chen, Jeremy Chiu, Yuan Fu, Yongfei Ge, Thomas Hsiang, Alan Huang, Kenryo Ito, Zhongfan Jian

Second row: Xinying Jiang, Dae Hyuk (Daniel) Ko, Jung Hoon Lee, Haoshen Li, Ryan Li, Jie Liang, Tianyu (Bill) Lin, ZhiYuan (Andy) Liu, Benjamin Lockhart, Mengxue Luan, Eric Lui

Third row: Qipeng Luo, Bowen Man, Irene Sha, Gansheng Shi, Zirui Song, Gabriella Su, Calvin Sun, Shuo Sun, Zhengbokang Tang, Tongyu Wang, Zehua Yang

Bottom row: Albert Yen, Bao Yun, Feiming Yun, Cheng Zhang, Hanchen Zhang, Hugh Zhang, Lionel Zhang, Siyuan Zhang, Zhongxia (Ricky) Zhao, Xiangnan Zheng, Yuan Zhou

photos/collage by Chris Garlock