by James Davies, Ranka Online 
Update: The US team beat Europe in the team match on December 13; see report and links below for details.
The morning event on the second day of the SportAccord World Mind Games on December 12 was the second round of the women’s double knockout. The outcome was victory for both Chinese and both Koreans. Choi Jeong needed less than two hours to defeat Natalia Kovaleva by a wide margin. In a somewhat closer game China’s rookie King Yu Zhiying defeated Japan’s Women’s Honinbo Fujisawa Rina. Japan’s Okuda Aya then bowed in resignation to China’s Rui Naiwei after a long ko fight, and Joanne Missingham (right), trailing by a fraction of a stone with only two one-point moves left to play, resigned to Kim Chaeyoung.
In the men’s team matches, Korea’s Kang Dongyoon fell to China’s Tuo Jiaxi on Board 3, followed by Korean youngster Na Hyun’s loss to Mi Yuting of China, clinching the round for China. Park Younghoon saved face for Korea by playing to a narrow but secure victory over China’s top rated Shi Yue.
The Chinese women did equally well in round 3 of the women’s competition in the afternoon, with Yu Zhiying prevailing over Choi Jeong and Rui Naiwei defeating Kim Chaeyoung by the same fractional margin by which Kim had won in the morning. Four games were also played in the losers’ bracket, with good results for Chinese Taipei and mixed results for the rest of the world: Fujisawa Rina defeated Natalia Kovaleva; Joanne Missingham defeated Okuda Aya; Chinese Taipei’s Cathy Chang defeated North America’s Irene Sha; and in an all-Russian game, Svetlana Shikshina defeated Dina Burdakova. The losers of these four games have now been eliminated. Only the two Chinese players remain undefeated, and they will meet each other in round 4.
Preliminary Round 4 results from play on December 13: Joanne Missingham d. Jeong Choi of South Korea, Svetlana Shikshina of Russia lost to Chang Kai-Hsin and Yu Zhiying beat seasoned campaigner Rui Naiwei. In the men’s team event, China beat Japan across two boards, with Tuo Jiaxi and Yue Shi winning for China while Atsushi Ida won for Japan. The USA men’s team beat Europe across two boards, Huren Yang 1P beating Alexandr Dinershteyn 3P and Danny Ko 7D beating Ilya Shikshin 7D, while Fan Hui 2P defeated Mingjiu Jiang 7P. Click here for results and here for an interview with Missingham.
Game records — including Round 3 — are available on go4go.net.
Click here for Michael Redmond’s game commentary on the Fujisawa Rina vs Yu Zhiying Round 2 match.
Click here for Ranka’s interview with Hua Xueming, China’s non-playing team captain
photo by Ivan Vigano
time to invite people on a global scale to submit go promotion projects,” says Harry van der Krogt of the European Go Centre, which organizes the awards, supported by the European Go Federation and the Nihon Ki-in. “So many people are trying so many things these days,” says AGA president Andy Okun, who’s serving on the awards jury. “I think it is great we are giving them rewards, encouragement and incentives to keep to at it.” Now called the World Wide Iwamoto Awards, the contest – with €2,000 in prizes — is named in honor of Iwamoto Kaoru, who devoted much of his career to promoting go around the world. The goal is to motivate go players “to think about how go can be promoted,” organizers say, so that “through the gathering and exchange of ideas it can lead to a higher quality of popularization of go all over the world.” A top prize of €1,000 will be awarded, and two “encouragement” prizes of €500 each will also be awarded; click here to see examples of previous winners. Deadline for submitting proposals is June 1, 2015; click here for criteria/rules and to apply online.
