The Japanese Friendship Garden of San Diego’s summer day camp is including go lessons, for the second year in a row. Using equipment provided by the American Go Foundation, San Diego Go Club president Ted Terpstra reports that he’s “teaching beginners the basics of go, and having them playing games on small boards within 20 minutes.” Fifteen day campers are learning about go through Hikaru no Go episodes on Hulu, as well as with books. “The enthusiastic go players have sets available during free time for playing after learning the essentials,” Terpstra adds. Each week is a different age grouping with children in grades from kindergarten through 6th, the program is running for five weeks. -photo by Ted Terpstra: third and fourth graders learn go.American Go E-Journal
Go at the Japanese Friendship Garden Day Camp
Friday July 19, 2013
The Japanese Friendship Garden of San Diego’s summer day camp is including go lessons, for the second year in a row. Using equipment provided by the American Go Foundation, San Diego Go Club president Ted Terpstra reports that he’s “teaching beginners the basics of go, and having them playing games on small boards within 20 minutes.” Fifteen day campers are learning about go through Hikaru no Go episodes on Hulu, as well as with books. “The enthusiastic go players have sets available during free time for playing after learning the essentials,” Terpstra adds. Each week is a different age grouping with children in grades from kindergarten through 6th, the program is running for five weeks. -photo by Ted Terpstra: third and fourth graders learn go.
Congress Pair Go Tourney Adds Special Festivities
Thursday July 18, 2013
At this year’s US Go Congress, the Pair Go Tournament will include special festivities including an opening ceremony, and slide show, as well as a Best Dressed Competition. Pair Go players will also receive lapel pins featuring the new US Pair Go logo (at right, designed by graphic designer Wende Mate to show the “solidifying identity” of Pair Go in the US) “and other goodies,” reports AGA Pair Go Coordinator Rachel Small. In conjunction with the World Pair Go Association, ‘Pair Go Promotion Partner (PGPP) Passports’ will be launched in the US for the first time at the Congress. “The passport is a symbol of enthusiasm for promoting Pair Go, and will be stamped at each Pair Go event you attend to track your adventures in competitive Pair Go, starting with this Congress’s North American Pair Go Championship and Youth-Adult Pair Go Tournament,” says Small. To receive your passport at the Congress, apply for PGPP membership at the Congress website . After the Congress, a short video will be released highlighting the congress Pair Go events and celebrating the culture of Pair Go in the US. ‘Like’ AGA Pair Go on Facebook to see coverage of the Congress events, including tournament results and photos from the Best Dressed Competition. To contribute photos to be included in the slide show, email pairgo@usgo.org. Financial incentives will be provided for an organizer/director for the Pair Go pro teaching workshop at this year’s Congress, a game-recorder for the top table Pair Go game, a volunteer to record video of Congress Pair Go events, and a video-editor to piece together the footage into a short promotional piece. Those interested should contact Small at pairgo@usgo.org.Kan Yao 5D Wins Skip Ascheim Memorial
Thursday July 18, 2013
Kan Yao 5d took first place in the annual Skip Ascheim Memorial Tournament on Sunday July 14th in Somerville Massachusetts, topping a field of 22. “The Massachusetts Go Association greatly appreciates the cordial relationship we have with the Boylston Chess Club in whose space we hold our tournaments,” says Tournament Director Eva Casey. Su Co Chon Duc (aka Marjorie Hey) helped run things for part of the day when Casey had to leave to deal with a family emergency. Results: 1st: Kan Yao 5D (4-0); 2nd: Tiantian Yuan 3D (3-1); 3rd (tie): Jason McGibbon 3k and Giancarlo Feula 7k (both 3-1).Rex Weyler on Life Lessons Learned from Go
Wednesday July 17, 2013
It was the problems that hooked Rex Weyler. The Greenpeace founder had just learned go from writer Rick Fields (“Chop Wood, Carry Water”) “and Rick gave me a beginner’s book — Ishigure’s In The Beginning, I think — and I took it 
home that night in 1981 and the life and death problems were so fascinating that the game absolutely hooked me. Weyler, a reknowned environmental activist and journalist, has been playing go ever since. When he co-founded the Hollyhock learning center on Cortes Island in British Columbia the following year, Weyler made sure that a go workshop was included, initially led by Canadian go player Roy Langston, and then for many years by American James Kerwin 1P. After a hiatus, the Hollyhock go workshop returned this year, this time with Janice Kim 3P, and of course Weyler, who has moved back to Cortes Island, was there. “Go fits in with the way I see the world,” Weyler told the E-Journal in an interview earlier this week in his home overlooking a spectacular view of Lake Hague. “I trained in math but became a writer, and go is a wonderful combination of logic and aesthetics. And the better you can balance the two, the better you can play.” After more than three decades of playing, Weyler says “I’m still learning lessons from go that apply to life. Be aggressive but show retraint; it’s okay to be optimistic but that’s not a strategy. You’ve got to get outside and see the bigger picture,” Weyler says, speaking as both a go player and ecologist. “Go, if you play well, teaches you different ways of thinking.”
– report/photo by Chris Garlock; photo: Weyler (l) playing with former AGA President Phil Straus at Hollyhock. Learn more about Weyler’s work on his website.
Richard Bozulich Reportedly Throws Hat Into New York Comptroller Race
Wednesday July 17, 2013
Longtime go writer Richard Bozulich, rumored to have died two years ago (Richard Bozulich Not Dead After All 11/9/2011 EJ), is alive and well and apparently running for New York City Comptroller, a race that has drawn international attention since former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer entered it a week ago. According to a post on the Liberty Lion blog, Bozulich was nominated by the Personal Freedom Party to be its candidate for Comptroller on July 3 after the party was notified that Kristin Davis, its original nominee, was ineligible. “If elected,” Bozulich pledged, “I will quickly and anonymously donate my salary to charities that are close to my heart, such as those promoting the game of go and encouraging students to study mathematics.” American Go Foundation President Terry Benson said that “We look forward to having a friend of go at City Hall.”
AGA Board Approves 2014 Budget, Plans 2013 Pro Certification Tournament
Wednesday July 17, 2013
The American Go Association (AGA) Board of Directors approved the AGA budget for fiscal 2014 at its meeting on July 7; the budget includes funds for a pro certification tournament to be completed by the end of 2013. The AGA will continue to look for new sponsors to replace Tygem, but will run this year’s tournament from reserves and from money earmarked for the AGA’s new professional system. In other actions, the Board approved the creation of a pilot program for AGA ratings of online games, which would parallel the ratings system now in place for in-person games. President Andy Okun will be pursuing implementation plans along with completion of plans to issue formal Rank Certificates to players who have demonstrated achievement at a particular rank level. The first such certificates will be awarded to top finishers in most brackets at the 2013 US Go Congress. Additionally, Bob Gilman and Royce Chen have been authorized to investigate the feasibility of bringing a Cuban player — or players — to the 2014 US Go Congress. The Board will assess options for fundraising and implementing such an effort after the committee reports back.
DC & LA to Face Off in Top Pandanet-AGA City League Finals
Tuesday July 16, 2013
It’s East Coast versus West Coast as Greater Washington is set to battle Los Angeles in the first-ever 2013 Pandanet-AGA City League finals. The two are the top finishers in the A League and will face off in the finals at the upcoming US Go Congress. Vancouver finished third, Seattle was fourth, in fifth place was Boston and New York finished in sixth. Click here for details. The rest of the leagues are expected to be completed by the end of the month.
Pandanet Marathon Cho Chikun Cup Registration Closes Friday
Tuesday July 16, 2013
Registration for the 13th Pandanet Marathon tournament, the Cho Chikun Cup, is open until this Friday, July 19. Players have 42 days and 19.5 hours — 42.195 is a marathon’s length in kilometers –to play as many games as they can. Those finishing with 300 points or more will get their names displayed on the Pandanet web page and will be eligible for a certificate signed by Cho Chikun. Click here for details and registration procedures.
Learning from the Stones: Go for Project Managers
Tuesday July 16, 2013
What’s a go lover to do when faced with the choice of a dissertation topic? For Grant Kerr, a doctoral candidate at the SKEMA Business School’s Lille campus, the choice was obvious. Kerr, an experienced manager of IT and process 
improvement projects, had become disillusioned. “Traditional project management . . . is limited by its rationalist, determinist, normative, first-order control paradigm,” he writes. “It does not sufficiently consider context, strategy, irrational decision-making, nor does it deal with effects of goal and methods uncertainty such as high rates of change and reciprocal interactions between activities.” As a longtime go player, Kerr realized that go may serve as a useful analogy to examine these issues. He notes that “the game of go has been used as a source analogue for many disciplines, e.g. military; politics (Boorman 1969; Kissinger 2011), business (Anderson 2004; Miura 1995), and mathematics (Conway 1976),” and proceeds to examine 83 identifiable principles of play. In the end finds that seven of these principles may lead to more productive problem analysis, especially when there is strong opposition to a project. “[Go] adds a new perspective to current thinking on uncertainty. It suggests that project managers learn to deal with enduring conflict.” Kerr’s thesis is available in The Bob High Memorial Library.
– Roy Laird
2014 European Youth Go Championship Venue Set
Tuesday July 16, 2013
The 19th European Youth Go Championship (EYGC) will take place at a holiday camp, a peculiarly British institution, in the seaside resort of Bognor Regis on the south coast of England from March 28-31, 2014, The British Go Association has announced. This is a Class-A MacMahon tournament in six rounds for three age categories: U12, U16 and U20. The 2014 British Go Congress 2014, which includes the British Open, will be held on that Saturday and Sunday, March 29-30. Click here for this year’s EYGC results.
– Tony Collman