American Go E-Journal » World

by Yuan Zhou

International professional go play is becoming more interesting with the recent addition of pro players in the United States, as well as in Europe. Non-Asian players have been included in some international tournaments by invitation in recent years, but it is very unusual for one of them to survive the first round of the final competition. There are a large number of international events nowadays, and the title winner can receive as much as the equivalent of $400,000 US. Most of the well-known events are open to anyone who can survive the competition in their own countries to gain a place in the international event, although some are restricted to female players and others are a competition between the winners of similar titles in other countries. In some cases even amateurs can gain admission.

The most striking thing about the current international scene has been the dominance of Chinese pros in recent international events. Only one international title is now held by Japan: Cho U 9p of Japan won the playoff between the holders of the Agon Cup from China and Japan. Recently most of the top titles were held by Chinese players, although currently the Koreans are making a comeback. The Chinese player Ke Jie 9p holds eight international titles, more than any other active player, and is widely considered the strongest active player in the world. However, Shin Jinseo 9p of South Korea has won nine games in international tournaments this year, which is more than any other player. The Korean team of five won the Nongshim (Spicy Noodles) international event in February of this year. This win-and-continue event between five player teams is one of the oldest competitions and very popular among fans. Occasionally a single player will manage to wipe out most of another country’s team. This year, Shin Jinseo 9p of Korea won the last five games in the contest, defeating two Japanese and three Chinese players, including Ke Jie of China in the last game.

One of the oldest top tournaments is the LG Cup, now in its 26th year. The second round was held on June 1st, leaving eight players in the contest. Three are from China, including Ke Jie, Mi Yuting 9p, and Yang Dingxin 9p. Four are from Korea, including Park Junghwan 9p, who has been ranked as number one in the world in recent years, Shin Jinseo 9p, Shin Minjun 9p, and Byun Sangil 9p. The one remaining player from Japan is Ichiriki Ryo 9p, who currently holds five titles in Japan, including two of the top five. All of these names will become familiar as we continue to follow the current international pro scene. The LG Cup will conclude with a three game finals match early next year. Last time’s winner of the title was Shin Minjun of Korea, who is in his early twenties, as are most of the current top pros.

A new go teaching platform, Go Magic, is now in beta. “Our project is aiming to help everyone discover Go and improve their skills in a way that is both efficient and entertaining,” says Vadim Efimenko, a 4d amateur from Russia, who’s working with professional Alexander Dinerstein 3p and Anton Proskurin, the chief author, developer and cofounder of the project. Go Magic is billed as “One platform that combines everything you might possibly need on your way to Go mastery,” and features video courses, a Skill Tree for beginners and even some gamification to appeal to modern gamers. They’ve also got a  YouTube channel, streaming on Twitch, and are on Discord as well. A 4-minute video outlines the project.

With the approach of the one-year anniversary of the passing of David Saunders, also known as dsaun, some of his friends on KGS are organizing a celebration in his honor.

The event will take place at 20:00 GMT on Tuesday, April 30th, and 03:00 GMT on Wednesday the 31^st (use this time zone converter to determine your local time). In the Tsumego room there will be three boards with 20 tsumego (life and death) problems, and the corresponding solutions will be available in the Dsaun’s Friends room as you progress.

“There are no gifts, money, or prizes up for grabs,” reports Samuel Adams. “The lucky ones will be able to find dsaun’s smile under a stone.”

Kim Eunji 2p’s AI cheating incident
Thirteen-year-old professional Go player Kim Eun-ji was suspended from competing for one year in late November after she admitted to using artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance her gameplay in an online Go competition. The Korea Baduk Association took the punitive measure against Kim Eun-ji, a 2-dan professional Go player who had been considered a genius in the Korean Go scene and the youngest professional player, for violating the rules as a professional Go player and on ethics which stipulate that a player cannot receive outside advice in official competitions. Fellow Korean pro Yeonwoo Cho devoted one of her videos to the incident.
– Excerpted from a report in The Korea Times

Playing Go with Darwin
In Playing Go with Darwin (Nautilus 12/16/2020), David Krakauer writes that “Meditating on some subtleties of (Go’s) strategy can, I think, illuminate our understanding of the strategic character of evolution.” He adds that “Go today has become an epitaph on the tombstone in the cemetery of human defeat at the hands of algorithmic progress” and says “Charles Darwin was very likely the first person to have understood nature in terms of a game played across deep time. I have wondered how much further the Chess-playing naturalist might have taken this metaphor if, like Kawabata, he had studied Go.” It’s a fascinating article about how new research elevates evolution from a tactical process to one of strategic possibility. Thanks to Peter Freedman for passing it along.

Remembering John Conway
John Conway is one of Three Mathematicians We Lost in 2020 (The New Yorker 12/31/2020), and midway through the story there’s this:
At Princeton, he could usually be found not in his office—which resembled a mathematical apothecary shop hit by a tornado—but in the large and somewhat soulless common room of Fine Hall, the massive looming tower, on the edge of the Princeton campus, that is the home of the mathematics department. The common room would come to life only in the mid to late afternoon, just as things were revving up for the daily “tea,” a small box-cookie reception roughly marking the time when most classes had ended and a few seminars were about to start. Conway would often hold court there, hard to miss, a cross between Rasputin and a Middle Ages minstrel, loudly talking philosophy and mathematics, playing the board game Go, or engaging in some other kind of mathematical competition, surrounded by adoring and admiring students, faculty, and visitors.