Heather Wonder, one of the members of the Mountain Go Club in Hamilton, Ontario, made this go
themed cake. “It was made to celebrate the one year anniversary of our growing club,” reports Nick Prince.
American Go E-Journal » Go News
Go Photo: Hamilton Go Club Takes the Cake
Monday December 5, 2011
Jimmy Yang Tops Slate and Shell Open
Monday December 5, 2011
Jimmy Yang 5d went 3-1 winning the high dan section at the 2011 Slate and Shell Open in Fairfax, VA on a tiebreak with 
Josh Lee 5d also 3-1. The sponsor, Slate and Shell, donated books which were awarded to the first and second place winners in each section. Kelsey Dyer 1d, playing in her first tournament since achieving a shodan rating, won the second section with a 3-1 score in a tiebreak with Arnold Eudell 4k (3-1). The other sectional winners were Garrett Smith 9k (3-1), and Anderson Barreal 14k (3-1) with second places going to Gurujeet Khalsa 7k (2-1), and Mohan Sud 10k (2-2).
– Gurujeet Khalsa; photo: tournament winners holding their prizes from Slate and Shell
U.S. vs. Canada Youth Match Set for this Sunday
Monday December 5, 2011
The fourth annual US Canada youth friendship matches will be this Sunday, December 11 on KGS. Five of Canada’s strongest will square off against the best young players in the US. The players include Calvin Sun 7d, Hugh Zhang 7d, Andrew Lu 6d, and Vincent Zhuang 6d and Jimmy Yang 5d, for the US side and Ryan Li 7d, Gansheng Shi 7d, Jianing Gan 6d, Daniel Gourdeau 6d, and Andrew Huang 6d, for the Canadian side. Matches will be held in the AGA Tournaments Room on KGS, at 4 pm ET (1 pm PT), and the public is welcome to observe.
– Paul Barchilon, EJ Youth Editor
Li Wins Young Lions
Monday December 5, 2011
Yunxuan Li 4d topped a field of 51 players in the Young Lions Tournament on KGS last month. The tournament, organized by the American Go Honor Society, featured young players from all over the US, and a few from Canada and Mexico as well. As in previous years, the tourney brought some of North America’s strongest youth together, including current Redmond and USYGC champion Aaron Ye 5d, and Oliver Wolf 4d, former Redmond Champ. “All the games i played were very tough,” Li told the Journal, “Aaron [Ye] has awesome attacking skills and Oliver [Wolf] has a very aggressive and flexible style.” Last year’s winner in this event, Vincent Zhuang 6d, went on to represent the US in the World Youth Go Championships, Li will get a chance to make his mark in the upcoming USYGC in January. Also coming up will be the School Team Tournament, the most popular event hosted by the AGHS, with registration opening around mid-January or February. The Young Lions was directed by AGHS President Jasmine Yan, Vice-Presidents Eric Chen and Justin Teng, Viral Kotecha, Van Tran, Rebecca Cheng, and Keiju Takehara. -Justin Teng, with Paul Barchilon. Photo: Yunxuan Li, at right, in a casual game at Go Congress. AGHS VP Justin Teng is watching the game. Photo by Wenguang Wu.
Winner’s report: Division A: 1st: Yunxuan Li 4d, 2nd: Oliver Wolf 4d, 3rd: Andrei Razvan 2k; Division B: 1st: Larry Qu 2k, 2nd: Raymond Liu 6k, 3rd: Anurag Varma 2k; Division C: 1st: Zachary Peach 8k, 2nd: Benson Jay Merrill 9k, 3rd: Jerry Qiu 10k; Division D: 1st: Joshua Song 16k, 2nd: Vicente A. Cortez-Tinoco 15k, 3rd: Noah Hill 13k; Division E: 1st: Alissa 18k, 2nd: Neal Fatheringham 18k, 3rd: Monsoon Shrestha 24k.
NYC Tourney to Benefit Thailand Flood Victims
Saturday December 3, 2011
New York City go players have organized a tournament to help victims of the floods in Thailand. Pre-registration is 
required for the December 18 Thailand Flood Relief Tournament. “The floods that started this summer in Thailand are still being cleaned up,” organizer Boris Bernadsky tells the E-Journal. “As many as 17 provinces of Thailand, including Bangkok are still underwater” after the worst floods in fifty years. Bernadsky organized a similar tournament last spring to help the victims of the Japanese tsunami. Prizes for the 3-round tournament have been donated and include membership in Breakfast’s Insei League, a private lesson with Yin Ming Ming 1P, and gift certificate to local Thai food restaurants. $20 suggested donation; all funds collected will be donated to a charity benefiting the flood victims. Space is limited to 40 players, pre-register at Badukboris@gmail.com
GoGoD Game Database Passes 70,000
Monday November 28, 2011
Go Games on Disk – aka GoGoD – has passed another milestone, with more than 70,000 games now in the sgf database of 
professional games. “Many of these are modern Japanese, Chinese and Korean games which are not published on the internet, but we have also been delving back into Korean history, to find early games by Cho Hun-hyeon, Seo Pong-su, Kim In, Cho Nam-ch’eol as well as a rare sunjang baduk game from the 1970’s to add to our existing collection of such games played under ancient Korean rules, and previously unknown games from a visit Takagawa Shukaku made to Korea,” reports GoGod’s T Mark Hall. “These obviously do not appear in the collected games of Takagawa. One effect of the growth is that we now have to use two CDs, one for the database and one for the encyclopaedia, but at no extra cost to our customers.” The latest GoGoD Encyclopaedia has been updated with more details of tournaments and events, as well as updated software for accessing the database faster. Email tmark@ gogod.demon.co.uk for details.
Zhang New AGA Volunteer Coordinator; Karoline Burrall in as Tournament Coordinator
Monday November 28, 2011
Edward Zhang has agreed to take over the American Go Association’s Volunteer Coordinator’s position, after Nick Jhirad’ s recent resignation, reports AGA President Allan Abramson. Karoline Burrall has agreed to assume the Tournament Coordinator’s position. “Our thanks to Nick for his efforts, and to Edward and Caroline for taking on these new responsibilities,” said Abramson.
SportAccord World Mind Games Start Next Week
Monday November 28, 2011
The first SportAccord World Mind Games will be held December 8-16 in Beijing, China. The multi-sport event is intended to 
highlight the value of mind sports and features five games: bridge, chess, draughts (checkers), go and xiangqi (Chinese Chess). The SAWMG go tournament includes teams from China, Chinese Taipei, Europe, Japan, Korea and the U.S. The U.S. team (right), captained by Andy Okun, includes Feng Yun 9P, Mingjiu Jiang 7P, Ke Huang 7d, Jie Li 7d and Andy (Zhijuan) Liu 7d. Ranka Online will be covering the event, and you can also follow it on YouTube’s mindgameschannel.
Two Weeks at the Lee Sedol Baduk Academy: Van Tran’s Journal (#4)
Monday November 28, 2011
July 16: Today is Saturday, but the dojang is not open today because there is a tournament for the inseis. So Om, Chisu Yun, Cho Sun Ah, Masakito and I went sightseeing. We visited an old Korean palace which was really interesting and then we went biking near the lake even though it was raining really hard. There was also an awesome playground over near the river where we went zip-lining. Afterwards we went to the mall to eat and we spent some time inside a Korean music store listening to K-pop albums. When we got home there was a barbecue dedicated to the kids that went to the tournament. I can’t say Korean barbecue is good, but it was a good experience to be a part of a large gathering of celebration in Korea.
July 19: Today is the day I go back to America. It’s sad that I have to leave just when I had just started to settle in. Before leaving I got to say bye to the handful of kids that are there in the morning. It was sad to leave the dojang and Korea. It would’ve been nice if I had got the chance to stay a bit longer and learn more. I got a lot of Korean Go books as gifts when I left. I got a book each on hangmae, pae (ko), and life and death, and a Korean Baduk magazine (which is not really helpful because I don’t understand it). I left the dojang at 12:30PM on an airport bus heading back to the Incheon Airport reading the Baduk magazine that Mr. Oh had given me. One day I look forward to come back to the dojang where I have found many good friends and teachers.
Sixteen-year-old Van Tran spent two weeks in South Korea at the Lee Sedol Baduk Academy earlier this year and sent the E-Journal his report, which is appeared in the EJ this month (this is the final installment). The high school junior lives in the Houston suburb of Spring, Texas, has been playing for two and a half years and is “about 3 dan.”
Imayo Matsumoto, Pair Go Tourney’s Oldest Player
Sunday November 27, 2011
Pair Go is proud of its inter-generational appeal. Many young children, elderly players and all ages in-between are drawn to the handicap tournaments staged with the annual International Pair Go Championships, which recently took place in Tokyo (Koreans Win Pair Go Championships). For a number of years, the oldest player has been Ms. Imayo Matsuyo, who turned 90 this year and hails from Ehime prefecture on the island of Shikoku. Longtime go journa
list and E-Journal contributor John Power had a chance to interview her between rounds.
EJ: What age were you when you learned go?
IM: 60.
EJ: How often and where do you usually play? On the Net?
IM: No I can’t get the hang of computers. I play twice a week at a local go club.
EJ: What is your rank now?
IM: The female rankings are a little more generous than the male. I’d be about 3-dan in the male rankings.
EJ: What is the appeal of go to you?
IM: Being able to play with my son once a year. My daughter-in-law doesn’t mind my stealing him for go tournaments. Playing with him, I feel that I’m improving all the time. By the way, my go club team became the Ehime representative in the Nenrinpikku [a festival of a wide range of sports for players 60 and over] and took first place.
Read more about Ms. Matsumoto’s “Memories of Pair Go” in her essay submitted to last year’s 20th Anniversary Pair Go Prize Essays competition, available in English translation on the Panda Net HP. Also available online are essays by Thomas Hsiang (U.S.), Tony Atkins (U.K.), Kirsty Healey & Matthew Macfadyen (U.K.) and more.