Applications are now being accepted for the American Go Foundation(AGF) college scholarship. The program recognizes high school students who have served as important youth organizers and promoters for the go community. To apply, download and complete the application form here. Applicants should describe their accomplishments and volunteer work in a short essay. Letters of recommendation may also be included. Applicants whose enthusiasm and ambition have helped spread go in under-served areas will be given special consideration. Strong players who spend much of their time voluntarily teaching will also be considered, although the award focuses on promoters and organizers who have made substantial contributions during their go career. Applications are due Nov. 5th this year. -Paul Barchilon, E-J Youth Editor.
Pandanet AGA City League registration begins again for a new year. Registration will be open until Saturday November 2nd.The first round will start on November 17th. Please see the updated rules for the year for any questions. Registration and questions can be sent to steve.colburn@usgo.org. We hope to see your city compete this year!
Go will be featured at this weekend’s Otakon, including a panel with Diana Garnet, who co-hosted the NHK ETV show Igo Focus with several professional players including Michael Redmond 9P. Otakon is an annual convention celebrating Asian pop culture — anime, manga, music, movies, video games, etc — and its fandom. Garnet will appear on a special Go panel with the National Go Center on Saturday from 12:35-1:45 pm and then NGC volunteers will host “The Divine Move – an Introduction to Go” workshop Saturday night from 9:30-11:30 pm.
Diana Garnet is a Tokyo-based anime-song singer, bilingual voice actress, and TV personality best known for her performance of Naruto Shippuden ending Spinning World, as well as Meow Meow Japanese History’s Thank You for the Music and Hello Again. She provides the main theme for game Dragon Marked for Death and voices characters for Bomberman, as well as Aura in the Shimajiro and the Island of Magic movie, Joule/Lumen in anime OVA Azure Striker Gunvolt, and various characters in Japanese for Meow Meow Japanese History. She’s currently voicing a variety of characters in both English and Japanese for anime and games, as well as producing new music to be announced soon.
From March 2017 to
2019, she co-hosted NHK ETV show Igo Focus along with several
professional players including Redmond 9th dan, bringing the game to a new
generation of fans with lessons focused on beginner strategies. This past
April, she graduated the program at 3-kyu and has continued to involve herself
in go related events as a guest and bilingual MC. She hopes to become a Go
ambassador and use her platform to introduce many new people to the game.
The event runs from Friday to Sunday at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center; click here for the complete schedule.
US Go Congress Tournament Schedule: Tuesday 7/16 9:00a: US Open, round 3; US Open Masters Division, round 4 1:00p: Senior Tournament, round 3 7:00p: Crazy Go!
13×13 Tournament Players gathered to duke it out on not-quite-as-tiny boards Monday evening to produce 10 table winners. Playoffs will continue throughout the week to produce the overall 13×13 champion. Table winners: Dallas Amunrud 18k, Phil Marshall 12k, Mario Espinoza 7k, Sarah Crites 6k, Paul Margetts 2k, Jonathan Crew 2k, Chen Cong 1d, Mingjian Li 2d, Kunxuan Li 4d, James Sedgwick 6d.
Earlier this year the AGA IT team made sure that the AGA Membership Manager is fully working again. The organization wants our membership to know that our membership software is fully working to accept your payments. We have worked hard over the past months to cut down on issues and problems that have been reported to us. You can follow the two video guides below to help update your member and chapter information.
Members should check their information when logging in. If you are not receiving the EJ make sure your email is up to date.
This Saturday will feature the Pandanet AGA City League Finals between New York City and Greater Washington. They will be playing LIVE from the US Go Congress in Madison,Wisconsin at 3pm CST. Find the game on Pandanet in the AGA City League rooms under the accounts AGACL1-3.
There will be a Pandanet AGA City League Meeting during Go Congress on July 18 from 5-6PM in the Humanities 1641 room.
The full list of winners for the City League are A League: Winner = TBD Second = TBD Third = Waterloo 1 Fourth = Boston Fifth = Toronto B League: Winner = Bay Area Second = Raleigh Third = Seattle 1 Fourth = Waterloo 2 C League: Winner = Cincinati Second = New York City 2
Chris Kirschner has been nominated to continue in office as the representative for the western region. So far no candidates have come forward for the eastern or central seats. If you know of someone who you believe would offer guidance and service to the AGA consider making a nomination. Nominations, including self-nominations may be made by full members for the region in which the member resides and must be received by June 15, 2019. Nominations and questions must be emailed to elections@usgo.org. Click here for complete election information and qualifications. – Arnold Eudell
Will Calvin Sun manage to stop Mateusz Surma’s winning streak and save the AGA team? Find out this Sunday starting at 14:00 EDT when the second round of the Transatlantic Professional Go Team Championship will be played on KGS and live broadcast on Twitch. The live commentary will be led by Seongjin Kim, one of the top amateur players in Europe, and Stephen Hu (a.k.a xhu).
If you missed the epic first round between Surma and Andy Liu, the video from the live-streaming is available here on the AGA’s YouTube channel.
CGA summer go camp: We’re now ready to accept registrations. As previously noted the event will take place August 18-23 2019, at Jouvence resort inside Mount Orford national park. Please go to the camp web page for more details and follow instructions to register. This is going to be a very special event, don’t miss it!
2019 CGA online league about to start: Registration closes for the first session of 2019 this Tuesday January 15th. 36 players are already registered. As always this is a great chance for some serious games with friends in the Canadian Go community.
New Go web site: Since gogameguru.com stopped active publishing a couple years back there has been a gap in English language online publishing. The web site explore baduk has now opened, and it is producing significant content. There is a book reviewing what it is like to study (as a European) at a Chinese Go school. And there a a regular sequence of articles being published with game reviews, new variations, etc. Definitely worth adding this site to your regular browsing! They are making heavy use of AI analysis, making it possible to produce studies in English that couldn’t have been done before without feedback from top professionals.
Yoon-Young Kim 4P reviews top professional games: A couple years the AGA YouTube channel regularly had this sort of review. But recently they have been focused on the Alphago game reviews, along with some of Michael Redmond’s personal games. These are wonderful, but its also nice to see top tournament games reviewed. Yoon-young kim has stepped in to fill some of this gap. Recent reviews include games from the Tianfu cup, and the Chunlan Cup. Have a look at her twitch channel, and enjoy!
The 5th World Students Pair Go Championship takes place from Nov. 30 to Dec. 5 in Tokyo this year, held in parallel with the 29th International Amateur Pair Go Championship. We are seeking one North American pair, one man and one woman, who must be US or Canadian citizens, amateur players, enrolled in college, university, or graduate school, and under the age of 30. All food, accommodation, and air fare is covered and the standard of the experience … food, play, company, tourism … is very high. Standard AGA and CGA eligibility rules apply. Please contact Andy Okun at president@usgo.org as soon as possible, but before Sept. 7. Pairs will be given preference, but often we assemble a pair out of interested individuals.
