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Mark Lee scored a perfect 5-0 record to win the 2016 New Jersey Open championship March 19-20 at Princeton University. Lee (right), who lives in Los Angeles, has been having a good year, winning the Jin Chen Open on January  3, sweeping the Southern Cal Go Championship March 5-6 and winning the San Diego tournament in January. Zhaonian (Michael) Chen was second, Zhongxia (Ricky) Zhao third, Alan Huang fourth and Yunxuan Li fifth. Click here to view all player standings, ratings and pairings. A total of 155 players registered, and as many as 142 played in each round in the 2-day tournament held in Princeton, New Jersey. Click here to see tourney photos on the AGA’s Twitter feed.  The Princeton student go club organized this event with support from alumnus adviser Rick Mott and the Feng Yun Go School; Paul Matthews was the tournament director. “Thanks to Chris Garlock and John Pinkerton for broadcasting boards 1 and 2 on KGS,” said Matthews.

Winning 4 or 5 games at any level in this tournament is hard because players were matched by ratings which were dynamically updated, says Matthews.

The use of Fischer time controls and online preregistration enabled precise control of round times.

– report/photo by Chris Garlock, with additional reporting by Paul Matthews
NOTE: this post has been updated to reflect Mark Lee winning the Jin Chen Open on January  3.

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Leading contenders for this year’s New Jersey Open championship are Mark Lee 7d and Michael Chen 7d, both 3-0 after the first day of play. Eric Lui 1P and Zhengbokang Tang 7d are also in the mix at 2-1. The first round of the Open began promptly at 10a on Saturday, thanks to required online pre-registration. The 154 players got three rounds in by 6p, helped along with Fischer timing, and will return for the two final rounds on Sunday.

Click here for tourney data, including round-by-round pairings/results, and updated player ratings. Click here to see tourney photos on the AGA’s Twitter feed.
report/photo by Chris Garlock; photo: TD Paul Matthews assists with counting Chinese-style

The Davis/Sacramento Go Club held its Spring Tournament at the Arcade library in Sacramento on March 5th. There were eleven players, most from the San Francisco Bay area. Matthew Cheng 2D (right) won Division I, and Tai-An Cha 4K (won Division II for the 12th time in our last 15 tournaments. Both players had 3-1 records.
– Willard Haynes