by Bob Bacon
Raleigh, North Carolina is often called the southern part of heaven. We’re blessed with a comfortable climate, beautiful natural scenery, honest hard-working natives, outstanding universities, progressive businesses, lots of wonderful immigrants, healthcare workers, scientists, writers, and a sprinkling of Go players. We’re also fortunate to be within traveling range of Maryland based Yuan Zhou, one of the nation’s leading Go teachers. Laoshi (teacher) Zhou conducted another of his invaluable workshops for us last weekend, and attendees were happily educated in this finest of arts.
In addition to the usual game reviews, which were very beneficial in themselves, teacher Zhou presented two lectures on games from the recently concluded 2019 LG Cup. Describing the young players Yang Dingxin and Shi Yue as “Dragon 
Hunter” and “Tank Driver” helped us understand the styles of play each player employed, and some of the deeper foundations of the game. Both games were very interesting and shifu Zhou’s explanations were enlightening.
Laoshi Zhou provided much helpful advice throughout the workshop, often presenting concepts in the guise of folk stories, making them easier to remember, such as the bear and the cornfield, and dragon lover Gong Ye.
Yuan Zhou also provided an very helpful review of the 3 3 point invasion, explaining the benefits, consequences and history of this trendy move. A prolific Go author, laoshi Zhou has written a number of books on Alpha Go, Go Seigen and the 3 3 invasion, published by Slate and Shell.
We were taught much, learned as much as we could, ate well, slept just enough and enjoyed the modern meeting facility arranged by Dale Blann, one of our club members. I can’t wait until we do it again!
Third graders at Sedgwick Elementary School, in Cupertino, CA, learned how to play go at their school’s annual Discovery Day on March 26th. As in previous years, the school invited many presenters to teach various kinds of fun activities, such as fencing, YoYo, and robotics. Wenguang Wang, Hongya Qu, and Yi Luo, from The VMware Go Club and Santa Clara Youth Go Club, volunteered as presenters and hosted the “Learn to Play Go” session for about 100 third-graders. The same session was presented to the entire third grade (4 classes of students). Students learned the rules of go and played a few games on 9×9 boards. They enjoyed the session, especially those who won! Story and Photo by Wenguang Wang.
“AlphaGo” screens Thursday at American Film Institute; volunteers wanted
Tuesday April 2, 2019
Members of the National Go Center will provide a go demonstration at this Thursday’s screening of “AlphaGo” at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, MD. The demo starts at 6:15p, and the screening begins at 7:15p. If you’re interested in
participating in the demo, contact Outreach Coordinator Patrick Sun; all volunteers receive a free pass to the movie. Dr. Benjamin Bengfort, data scientist at PingThings will introduce the absorbing documentary, which chronicles Google’s DeepMind team as it prepares to test the limits of its rapidly evolving AI technology against one of the top professional go players in the world.