Baltimore Go Club head Keith Arnold has announced that the Maryland Open will be postponed in light of the coronavirus outbreak. “With a heavy heart, the Maryland Open, the AGA’s longest running tournament, will be taking a year off,” says Arnold. “I will miss all of you and plan to be back, better than ever, next year.”
American Go E-Journal
China-US Internet Go Tournament seeks players
Saturday April 4, 2020
The AGA is seeking strong players to participate in an online team tournament against players from the Chinese Weiqi Association. The team will consist of six players, of which at least one will be female and at least one will be under 18 years old. The dates are April 15th and 16th at 9:30 EDT / 6:30 PDT each day. Games will be played on the Tencent – Fox Go Server (English Version). A setup tutorial video is available on Youtube. Players should contact tournaments@usgo.org to express interest by Friday, April 10.
Go Spotting: New York Times obituary for Nobel prize winner Phillip Anderson
Thursday April 2, 2020
The obituary for Philip Anderson, a Nobel prize winning physicist, appeared in the New York Times March after his death on Sunday at the age of 96, report E-Journal readers Dan Kastenholz and Larry Russ. Anderson was a professor at Princeton University and consultant at Bell Labs in New Jersey, which had an active Go scene in the 60s and 70s. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1977, and his obituary – authored by Scott Veale – ends with a mention of his being a “first degree master of the Japanese board game Go.” An anecdote describes a conversation Anderson had with economist W. Brian Arthur in the 1990s: “‘Well, I play a bit of Go,’ he said,” Professor Arthur recalled. “I pressed him. ‘Are you any good at it, Phil?’ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘How good?’ ‘Well, there are four people in Japan who can beat me.’ Then a long silence. ‘But they meditate,’ he added.”
Go Spotting: Devs
Tuesday March 31, 2020
Carol Geary reports that in the latest episode – Episode 5 – of Devs, a drama miniseries available on Hulu, one of the main characters flashes back to her childhood playing Go with her father. The series stars Sonoya Mizuno as Lily, the character in the flashback, and Nick Offerman as her employer at a tech company called Amaya with a mysterious quantum computing division called Devs.
Players use Zoom to give online Go an in-person feel
Sunday March 29, 2020
For many players, online play can lack a sense of ownership and connection, but a group of east coast players led by Haskell Small (right) is testing the limits of Zoom’s ability to bring groups together by making online play feel as ‘in-person’ as possible. By creatively positioning computer cameras, players were able to play on real boards with real stones in the first of a recurring Friday night ‘REAL Go’ club.
The camera feed was not a perfect solution for board sharing; “The board is distorted near the ends and we couldn’t see each others’ faces without leaning over, “admits Small, “but except for a few moves near the edges that needed to be clarified, this arrangement sufficed for being able to play the game without needing to relay moves aurally.”
“We limited it this time to only 4 players at a time,” says Small. “More than this might be difficult to manage, but I think doable by selecting individual participants’ video and muting others.” Here are a few tips from Haskell Small to simplify this approach:
- Look only at your opponent’s screen and your own physical board without looking at your own camera screen; the orientation will be the same and it will be easier to keep the game flowing.
- Use Zoom’s ‘gallery view’ to see all the boards through each camera view, and make any one of them larger.
- A problem came up a few times when one of us neglected to keep up with our opponent’s moves on our physical board – this was easily cleared up once discovered.
Small encourages other clubs who enjoy the tactile experience of playing with real equipment to attempt this approach and share feedback. “Of course this is still not as good as playing in person,” admits Small, “but for those of us who find playing online impersonal and prefer playing on a physical board, this was great! The games flowed easily and conversation was fluent, and perhaps that is the main advantage of this paradigm – we didn’t have to sacrifice the party atmosphere of a club environment. I had a blast (and won both of my games)!”
-photo by Betsy Small
Redmond on AlphaGo Game 39 Sunday night on Twitch
Saturday March 28, 2020
Tune in to the AGA’s Twitch channel Sunday night at 7p EDT to catch Michael Redmond 9P and Chris Garlock with their latest live game commentary on the AlphaGo vs AlphaGo series. “Michael Redmond always makes sense no matter how hard he tries to deal with the impossible and I love him for that,” says Thumper. Tune in at 7p EDT on Sunday, March 29; viewers will be able to ask Redmond and Garlock questions during the live commentary.
How we’re coping: the Walla Walla Go Club makes connections
Saturday March 28, 2020
“We have used this pandemic as an opportunity to make connections between our Go club and other regional clubs,” reports Stephan Tanner of the Walla Walla Go Club. “Last week, in place of our usual in-person gatherings, the Walla Walla Go Club of Walla Walla, Washington and the Grande Ronde Go Club of La Grande, Oregon met online for a ‘Social Isolation Swiss’ tournament on OGS. Next week we plan to do the same and invite the Idaho Go Club of Boise, Idaho to join us as well.”
“I’d encourage other clubs to see this as an opportunity!” Tanner continues. “Contact another club in your area or in the next state over and arrange to meet online. Use this as a way to strengthen the connections in regional Go communities.”
How are you coping with the COVID-19 pandemic? Playing more online go? Studying more? Producing online go content? We’d especially like to hear if you’re streaming on Twitch or posting videos to YouTube. Email us today at journal@usgo.org. We’ll share the best tips and ideas with your fellow go players!
WAGC postponed until 2021
Saturday March 28, 2020
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Go Federation has postponed the 41st annual World Amateur Go Championship – originally scheduled to be held in June in Vladisvostok, Russia – until the summer of 2021. “We kindly ask you to understand this critical decision and hope to meet with players from all over the world in Vladivostok in 2021,” said Russian Go Federation Vice President Natalia Kovaleva in an announcement. The pandemic, still growing rapidly around the world with near 600,000 confirmed cases and 27,000 deaths, has brought a near complete halt to most face-to-face activity in the world of mind games. Tournaments scheduled for spring and early summer in Chess, Bridge, Draughts, and Go have been postponed or cancelled outright in many countries. The AGA has urged its chapters not to hold meetings or tournaments for the time being, and while the US Go Congress is still being prepared for August in Estes Park, CO, AGA and Congress staff are monitoring the situation and will issue an update in April. Organizers of the European Go Congress 2020, set for Kamyanets-Podilski, in the Ukraine, have put their preparations on hold. “A decision will be made by mid-May whether EGC will be postponed or held as planned,” according to the EGC website.
-report by AGA President Andrew Okun
Corona Cup 2020 brings over 350 players across Europe together on KGS
Friday March 27, 2020
“On Thursday 12th March I was working in the garden for many hours and I knew my country was going to be in a quarantine soon,” says tournament founder and organizer Lukas Podpera, setting the scene for the tournament’s inception. “Many live tournaments had already been cancelled, therefore I started to think about ideas, what could I do for the Go community. And one of the ideas was to run an online tournament, originally planned only for Czechia, maybe Central Europe.” Originally hoping to gather about 100 participants, news of the tournament spread through international Facebook groups, prompting Podpera to send invitations to all EGF associations. “Corona Cup is an online tournament in the times of coronavirus crisis, when tournaments are cancelled around Europe and most of the Go clubs are not meeting. I’m trying to make it look as much as a live tournament as possible.”
Podpera and his team are using Google Docs to post pairings and disseminate information. The tournament will be a total of six rounds over the next three months, with paired players given a week to meet on their own time to play in the Corona Cup 2020 room on KGS and report results. The tournament is sponsored by Jena International Go School and supported by the Czech association who will also publish registration and results. Over 350 players have registered so far, including three professionals. “You can see that many European top players are participating,” says Podpera, “but I hope I can get a good result myself even in this kind of competition!”
Redmond on AG-AG Game 40 Sunday night on Twitch
Saturday April 4, 2020
Tune in to the AGA’s Twitch channel Sunday night at 7p EDT to catch Michael Redmond 9P and Chris Garlock with their latest live game commentary on the AlphaGo vs AlphaGo series. “With so many of us sheltering in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re happy to be able to connect with go players around the world,” said Garlock. Tune in at 7p on Sunday, April 5; viewers will be able to ask Redmond and Garlock questions during the live commentary.
PLUS: Check out Redmond’s brand-new YouTube lesson on The Direct 3-3 Invasion Keep it Simple!