Sunday August 28, 2022
American Go Honor Society (AGHS) officer applications are open for the 2022-2023 year. The AGHS is a youth-led organization dedicated to promoting go and directing tournaments for emerging young go players. North American players who are in the 8th-12th grades are eligible and encouraged to apply. The deadline for applications is September 4, 2022 at 11:59pm PDT.
Please use this form to submit applications.
Sunday August 28, 2022
By Keith L. Arnold, hka, with Patrick Bannister
August 4th found Iwamoto Kaoru in London on his European tour. He gave a lecture and scored 9-1 in a simultaneous exhibition.
The European Go Congress carried into the first two weeks of August, in Ensechede, Holland. Iwamoto made an appearance there as well, along with 120 participants from all over Europe, including visitors from the U.S. and Mexico. Jürgen Mattern of Germany was undefeated, and secured his fifth Championship. Germany won the team championship, followed by the host nation.
On August 14, James Davies played T. Miyoshi, a mystery author known as the “Literary Hon’inbo,” in a special televised match. Davies opened on tengen and secured a convincing victory.
The Meijin Title, between Rin Kaihō Meijin and Fujisawa Shūkō 9d began on August 16. Go Seigen is pictured in our photo of the match, which was won convincingly by Shūkō. In the second game, on August 26-27, our photo captures the moment, after a long game and long ko fight, that Shūkō realizes he has lost by one point. As the month closes, the match is tied. (Game records: Game One, Game Two.)
Finally on August 19-20, the Brazil Ki’in celebrated its 25th anniversary, with an incredible 218 players participating.
Photos from Go Review, game records from SmartGo One
Tuesday August 23, 2022
The competition at this year’s North American Masters Tournament was “harder than I expected,” Chinese professional Han Han 5P told the E-Journal earlier this month after closing out his 7-0 sweep of the field. “In a few of the games, I was actually behind and had to fight hard to get back in the game.” Han’s 4th-round game against Michael Chen 8D was especially tough, he said. While American professionals are improving in strength, they don’t get enough opportunities to play in high-level competitions with other professionals to develop and hone their skills, Han said.
Born in Beijing in 1989, Han Han became a professional go player at the age of 14 and achieved 5 dan in 2009. He used to play in the National Go League A and defeated more than a dozen world champions in tournaments. He has been teaching go for more than 15 years and helped many kids become professionals. He’s also lectured on go many times at Tsinghua and Peking University since 2015, and is currently a columnist for the most popular go magazine in China. Outside of go, he loves art and is zealous about classical music. He now lives in California, near San Diego.
Han’s advice to amateur players looking to improve their game is to “practice life and death problems, that’s a basic reading skill.” AI analysis is of limited use for all but the most advanced players, Han said. “The basics – life and death, tesuji – are so, so important.”
Han, who several times during the NAMT raised concerns about the possibility of cheating through use of AI go programs, said that steps need to be taken to reduce that possibility, including metal detectors at tournaments (these were used at the recent U.S. pro qualifier), having observers or referees, and either delaying live broadcasts (as is done in poker tournaments) or not permitting commentary during the broadcast.
– report/photo by Chris Garlock; thanks to NAMT TD Kevin Chao for translation assistance.
Sunday August 21, 2022
Chao Xie 6D topped the San Francisco Go Club Mountain Day Tournament, held on Saturday, August 20 at the San Francisco Go Club. The three-round tournament attracted more than 30 players, who competed for cash prizes and gift cards to BadukPop. Lunch was provided for tournament participants.
Results for the tournament were as follows:
Division 1: 1. Chao Xie 6D; 2. Jeremy Chiu 7D; 3. Will Lockhart 5D
Division 2: 1. Jaewoo Park; 2. Casey Dahlin; 3. Jason He
Division 3: 1. Ramiro Lobo; 2. Nash Shankman; 3. Youchen Zhao
The SF Go Club thanks all those who attended and contributed to the success of the tournament. The Club plans to host its next tournament on Saturday 17 September 2022 with details and sign up information to be provided soon.
–Matthew Barcus, President, San Francisco Go Club
Sunday August 21, 2022
The San Diego Go Club (SDGC) was recently challenged to an online Vanguard Go tournament by GoLegend, a go school in Hong Kong, China. Three youth players from each club and an instructor (exhibition) were matched against each other, where each game was against someone of the same rating. Representing the SDGC were Evan Tan (4d and the 2022 Redmond Cup junior champion), Elias Klingbeil 2d, Andy Zhou 1d, and Michael Zhou (6d, instructor). Elias and Michael won their games. All were spirited contests, with GoLegend arranging a Zoom connection for the players, a Twitch channel for spectators, and a go pro to do commentary. For the benefit of the American side, the communications were done in English. SDGC players now have a taste of international competition. GoLegend is interested in developing more go contacts with chapters in the AGA.
Registration is now open for two go tournaments the SDGC is hosting on Sunday, September 25, 2022: The 2022 U16 Girls and U16 Boys California State Go Championships and the End-of-Summer-Go-Tournament (for the non-youth). The competition is held at the San Diego Chess Club in Balboa Park. There is a $10 entry fee. CLICK HERE for registration and further information.
Sunday August 21, 2022
Here’s a great way to get stronger and help bring go to a wider audience: the E-Journal team has openings for volunteer game recorders for upcoming tournaments, including the Canadian Open and the New England Open. Best of all, you can do it from home! The EJ successfully tested remote game recording at this year’s U.S. Go Congress and is now planning to expand this service to provide streaming of top boards at local events. The Canadian Open is August 26-29, the Western Mass Open is September 3-4 (Labor Day weekend); volunteers need to be available for at least one 2-hour window. If interested – or for more information – email journal@usgo.org
Friday August 19, 2022
Phil Straus, for many years the E-Journal’s official photographer, though mostly retired from those duties, still takes the U.S. Go Congress and EJ staff photos as well as his own snapshots and portraits; here’s a selection from this year’s Congress.
Thursday August 18, 2022
Tournament players may have noticed in recent weeks that the Ratings listings from the AGAGD database have sometimes been very slow or generating error messages. With support from incoming AGA President Gurujeet Khalsa and incoming AGA Board Member Brad Rose, a beta version of a new interface has just been added to the website. Additional features are still being added, but given the urgency of the problems, the new version is being rolled out now. The existing ratings interface is still live for the time being.
“Developing and maintaining software applications is a classic problem for small non-profits such as the AGA,” Khalsa told the E-Journal. “Hiring even one qualified software developer would cost more than the AGA’s entire annual budget.” The AGA has relied on volunteer support for IT projects “and have received a lot of support over the years from talented and selfless individuals, for which we are hugely appreciative.”
As Khalsa takes over the leadership reins at the AGA in the months ahead, he says that a top priority is “how we can maintain critical services and offer new services to our individual members and chapters.” To that end, he said, “We will still need volunteers of all stripes – developers, project managers, designers, AI experts, business people and more, but we have to use them smartly and assure that our critical services are supported.” One approach, he says, is to use more low code no/code tools such as was done with the beta. “Another is to procure commercially supported software for services that are readily available in the IT marketplace. This will be a priority and one that will be taken up with the new Board at our first meeting in September.”
“This is an exciting time for the AGA and I’m happily seeing some fresh faces stepping forward and volunteering,” said Khalsa. “We need more of you.” For example, “there are important projects on using AI as a learning tool, and for detecting AI cheating that are very challenging and for which there are limited commercial options. I welcome feedback from our members on our direction here.” You can find Khalsa on the AGA Discord channel (user name: gurujeet) or email gurujeet.khalsa@usgo.org.
Thursday August 18, 2022
This year marks the 10th season of the Pandanet AGA City League. Through the years we have seen the best players in the country and many upcoming strong players. This year was so tough that there is a need for a second set of finals! Thats right, we’re having two sets of finals. These games will be broadcast on Pandanet over the next two weekends.
The A League will see four time winner New York City face off against Chicago. Chicago, new to the A League this season, has faced down almost every team and come out victorius. During the fifth round they faced off against New York City and came out ahead 2-1. Watch their playoff on Sunday August 28th at 3pm EST/12 PST.
Board 1: Tim Song 1p (B) vs Ryan Li 3p (W)
Board 2: Calvin Sun 1p vs Stephanie Yin 1p
Board 3: Albert Yen 8d vs Michael Chen 8d
The most competitive league has been the B League over the last few years. This has been expanded to a larger number of teams over the years to accomodate the number of strong players. This year see’s newcomer Ithaca face off against Canwa Vancouver 2. Vancouver 2 has bounced between the A and B leagues over time. Both teams never faced each other during the season. Ending with the same number of points a playoff had to take place. This will be a tough fight to see who the new challenger to the A League will be next season. These teams will face off Sunday August 21st at 7pm EST/4pm PST.
Board 1: Alan Huang 7d (B) vs Leo Tian 6d (W)
Board 2: Hongkui Zheng 7d vs Nick Jin 5d
Board 3: Aaron Ye 7d vs Kevin Wang 5d
Our other leagues and winners have played really exciting games this season. If you have not checked your cities record see how they did at the Pandanet site. Congratulations to all who played this season!
A League:
Third: Canwa Vancouver 1
Fourth: Toronto
Fifth: Los Angeles
B League:
Third: Raleigh
Fourth: Denver
Fourth: New Jersey
C League:
Winner: Washington DC 2
Second: Atlanta 1
Third: Los Angeles 4
D League:
Winner: New York City 4
Second: Los Angeles 2
Wednesday August 17, 2022
It takes a lot of dedicated, hard-working people, most of them volunteers, to enable the American Go E-Journal to stream U.S. Go Congress coverage to the world. Our deepest thanks and appreciation to every one of them, especially after all the challenges of the pandemic hiatus; here are the folks who did such amazing work this year.
Professional Streaming Commentators: Michael Redmond 9P, Ryan Li 3P, Eric Lui 2P, Stephanie Yin 1P, Inseong Hwang 8D. Pro Coordinator: Audrey Wang.
Stream Hosts-Local: Devin Fraze, Michael Fodera, Solomon Smilack.
Stream Hosts-Remote: Stephen Hu, Eric Lee, Sathya Singh, TheLovingSun.
Game Recorders-local: Keith Arnold, Ginger Persolus, Joanna Li, Jenny Ding, Solomon Smilack, Dave Weimer.
Game Recorders-remote: Angelo Di Lorenzo, Jamin Kochman, Nikolai Norona.
Producers: EvaDee Beech & Devin Fraze.
Special thanks to Shawn Ray for his help with the Friday night stream and for re-tweeting all our posts; Phil Straus for taking our team photo, and for teaching me go back in 1984 and bringing me into this wonderful community.
Masters TD Kevin Chao, US Open TD Andrew Hall, Die Hard TD Jae Donley, and of course all the 2022 Go Congress organizers and staff: THANK YOU!
Chris Garlock
Managing Editor, American Go E-Journal & Yearbook
