Kudos for Swift Ratings: “I’ve complained before about the timeliness of ratings updates, so let me be the first to compliment those responsible for getting it done swiftly this year,” writes Brady Daniels.
The following US Go Congress tournaments have now been rated: US Open, US Open Masters, Congress Self-Paired, Congress DieHard and Congress U16 AGA Girls’ Championship. Click here for latest ratings.
American Go E-Journal
Your Move/Readers Write: Kudos for Swift Ratings
Tuesday August 25, 2015
US Open, Pro Lectures Lead in Go Congress Survey
Monday August 24, 2015
“Meeting all the other people who love to play go as much as I do”…”Pro game review is the single most important activity at the Congress” …” I have attended only two US Go Congresses in the past ten years, but follow them avidly each year
and attempt to visit each year.” These are just a few of the more than 100 responses thus far to the US Go Congress Survey. So far, the US Open and pro lectures rank highest in popularity, while the 9×9 and 13×13 tournaments rank lowest. Whether you’ve attended a Congress or not, Congress organizers would like your opinions on a few basic questions so that they can make future Congresses even better. “One of the best things is simply meeting people who love the game and playing go.” Click here to take the brief survey; participants are eligible for go prizes!
Take Go Congress Survey, Win Prizes; Got US Open Game Records?
Sunday August 23, 2015
Take Go Congress Survey, Win Prizes: The US Go Congress is the single biggest go event in North America each year, drawing hundreds of go players from across the country for a week of go events. Whether you’ve attended a Congress or not, Congress organizers would like your opinions on a few basic questions so that they can make future Congresses even better. Click here to take a brief survey; participants will be eligible for go prizes!
Got US Open Games? Make sure your US Open games are part of the tournament’s permanent record: send in your US Open game records and we’ll add them to 
the official crosstab (thanks to everyone who’s already done so!)
Email them to us at journal@usgo.org
Go Spotting: “Fist of Legend”; Podcast Picks Kageyama’s “Fundamentals”; “Ten Nights of Dreams”
Sunday August 23, 2015
“Fist of Legend”: “Just noticed a go board being used for gomoku in the 1994 Jet Li film ‘Fist of Legend,'” writes an E-Journal reader. ” The 
scene is about 1 hour 16 minutes into the film.”
Podcast Picks Kageyama’s “Fundamentals”: “At the end of the ‘Keeping Libraries and Utilities Small and Simple‘ podcast, Michel Martens picks “Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go,” writes John Hager. “Lessons” is Toshiro Kageyama’s classic book for anyone just picking up the game.
“Ten Nights of Dreams”: In the 2006 movie “Ten Nights of Dreams,” based on the short story collection by Natsume Soseki, the ninth dream has several scenes with go stones, reports David Matson. “No bowls, goban or mention of the game, but it is an enjoyable experience. If Kurosawa and Fellini had ten children together, then something like this would be the result.”
Go Instructor for Kids Needed, Funds Available
Friday August 21, 2015
The American Go Foundation is looking for someone who wants to make part of their living teaching go to children. Start up funds are available for a demonstration project that would include building a program around chess and go in the schools, based on the work of Peter Freedman and Fritz Balwit in Portland, OR. The goal is to create similar programs in any US cities that can find teachers willing to run a program. Click here for: go in the schools job description, a project overview is here: go in the schools, and a sample budget is here: go in the schools budget. Please send a letter of interest describing your background and qualifications to mail@agfgo.org.
Brugo Joseki App Returns
Thursday August 20, 2015
Brugo is back. After being down for some months, the joseki app — for iPad only — has returned to the appstore; click here for a direct link.
Brugo provides a collection of more than 10,000 joseki moves from the Brugo joseki website.
The Janice Kim Files: Everything You Wanted to Know About Go But I Was Afraid Was True
Tuesday August 18, 2015
by Janice Kim 3P
Let me start off by alienating the half of the audience that may not be alienated after reading this, by giving away the title of my next installment, Why Go Is Better Than Chess, Really (From the Non-Chess-Playing Perspective).
For those of you who aren’t having a bad day and easily saw past that ruse, may I offer some unvarnished truths, in the form of the real answers to questions that I cavalierly and annoyingly dismissed when asked earnestly by those to whom I was only too happy to present myself as knowledgeable in the past. This is in opposition to talking around the subject, which I never do despite the difficulty in following my convoluted English, which I’ve used to actually talk myself out of traffic tickets, thanks very much. I’m never not honed in like a hawk eyeing a field mouse when I’m answering a question someone asked me five years ago. I’ve either missed it entirely, or am dead on.
Q. How much is the ability to memorize involved in go-playing?
A. Let me tell you a story about my father. My father once memorized a 50-page poem when he was in high school. In English. Which he didn’t speak. It’s not clear to us whose memory is better, because he remembers things I don’t and vice versa. This has something to do with whether he or I was there or paying attention, I believe.
No one cares or truly believes this wild talent, except perhaps exes who are literally rendered speechless and apoplectic when I quote what they said verbatim years ago by way of reply to questions posed as to how I’m doing, etc. now. It really only comes in handy these days when my son asks me what lithium is and I send him running out the door with a tour of the periodic table sung to the tune of “Beautiful Dreamer,” which my father did for me when we went for a walk when I was eight.
My dad taught me how to play go by spending about ten hours a week on it with me for a long time. So that’s the answer to the other question, how did I make progress so quickly. Because I was young and it was easier to learn when I was young and I’m very smart and talented, yes, yes, that must be it. Spending ten hours a week on Netflix now has nothing to do with stalled progress. If only he’d spent ten hours a week on video games with me for a long time, I’d be a Silicon Valley venture capitalist.
Which is not to say that I think memorization of moves plays a big part in go playing. I barely remember any specific actual moves, or generally even where my opponent played last. Which is not to say I didn’t write a whole go book entitled The Palace of Memory. Which enervated many people that there were many typos. And apparently enervated no one that I said I remembered like ten things, but had a lot of jingles and off-topic anecdotes and references that actually constitute what I know about go that you may secretly suspect is true.
But seriously, folks. How many of you read Lee Sedol 9 dan’s book of commented games? When I heard about it I thought that was the holy grail and almost flew to Korea. I could not contain myself. Lee Sedol 9 dan became the world champion because he spent a lot of time on go, and that time had emotional content, because his father spent a lot of time teaching him and his father wanted him to be world champion and then his father died. Remember, Bruce Lee said emotional content, not anger. The point isn’t to get angry at ourselves or our opponents, but to find what is meaningful to us in the conversation with our hands that we are having. If we spend even a few minutes trying to extract what we and our opponents were trying to say as we played, with respect for our words, surely we can find something, if we are looking for it, that we can remember to take away with us. So I knew it would be the holy grail, before I even read it.
I actually don’t remember the moves of the games I read (I can only recreate games if I paid attention throughout and remember the first few moves and how I was thinking about them at the time and exactly who the players are, then, it all follows logically), but Lee Sedol (who means a lot to me because his brother was a good friend long ago who said he would sacrifice his own career to make sure Lee Sedol would be world champion) made one comment in a matter-of-fact, off-hand way that entirely changed my perspective on go and made me realize what I had been doing that had been frustrating me and causing me to lose most of the time even the few times when I was way ahead. It was because I was ahead. I could only knock out my opponent because I had no idea how to pull a punch and wait, and stronger opponents don’t get knocked out easily. That will be the actual subject of my next installment.
Continue reading…)
2015 E-Journal Congress Team Credits
Tuesday August 18, 2015
by Chris Garlock, Managing Editor, American Go E-Journal
The American Go E-Journal’s coverage of the 2015 US Go Congress in St Paul, MN was truly wall-to-wall this year, with more than 60 games broadcast live on KGS, 23 live video feeds on our YouTube channel, well over a dozen live pro game commentaries and nearly two dozen reports in the E-Journal, as well as numerous posts to the AGA’s Facebook page and Twitter feed. None of that would have been possible without a talented and committed team of volunteers, some of them veterans of previous congresses and some newbies, but every one richly deserving of a hearty round of applause and appreciation. Click here to see our Facebook album of team photos.
First and foremost are Assistant Manager Todd Heidenreich, Tech/IT Manager Steve Colburn and Lead Game Recorder Dennis Wheeler; their titles don’t begin to do justice to the many key roles these three play in ensuring our smooth operation. Todd, Steve and Dennis have been our core team for many years now, and hanging out with them in the EJ room each year is a joy that many others have discovered as well.
An exciting addition to the EJ team this year was our video streaming operation, managed by Andrew Jackson, who surpassed his goal of dramatically improving the current state of go video streaming, as evidenced by the impressive number of live viewers and video views. The video streaming team included Ashish Varma (fairgo) Shawn Ray (clossius), Justin Teng (odnihs),Stephen Hu (xhu98), Lionel Zhang and Calvin Sun.
Youth Editor Paul Barchilon makes sure we give proper coverage to the many exciting youth events and rising young go stars; he’s also training the next generation of the EJ’s youth team and worked with Jackson to coordinate youth coverage; special thanks to Justin Teng, who went above and beyond to organize the streaming team for the Redmond Cup games. Game recorders included Andrew Lu, Ethan Frank, and Ashish Varma.
While video streaming and social me
dia coverage have been generating a lot of this year’s interest in the Congress, our game recording team quietly went about the everyday work of broadcasting top-board games online, not only so that go players around the world could watch live, but so that the games are recorded for posterity. Dennis Wheeler anchored the team, as usual, and with the indefatigable Richard Dolen they broadcast all the morning top-board games. The evening game recording team included Solomon Smilack — who also transcribed the live pro commentary for the Friday Night Big Broadcast —David Weimer, Bart Jacob, Stephen Hu, Andrew Lu, Ethan Frank, George Schmitten, Yong Peng, Yanqing Sun and Austin Harvey. Thanks as always to Akane Negishi and the entire team at KGS for their support and help. And a big shout-out to US Open Masters/US Open TD Jon Boley, whose coordination with pairings and results data was critical to our timely reporting; plus his sense of humor made him a perfect fit for the EJ team.The professional go players have become an integral part of the EJ team each year, contributing their insights in live game commentaries, this year on our 
YouTube livestream as well as on KGS. They included: Feng Yun 9P, Cho Hye-yeon 9P, Yilun Yang 7P, Jennie Shen 2P, Shirley Lin 1P, Stephanie Yin 1P, Cathy Li 1P. Special thanks to Myungwan Kim 9P and Yilun Yang 7P for their Big Game broadcast Friday night, and to pro coordinator I-Han Lui, who provided professionals for both the KGS and video stream commentaries. And a very special thanks this year to Hajin Lee 3P and Nick Sibicki, who anchored our streaming video commentary, and to Matthew Hershberger, who also helped with the commentary on Pair Go night.
Finally, I want to thank EJ photographer — and my very good friend — Phil Straus (left, in yellow shirt), without whom literally none of this would be possible: Phil taught me how to play go 30 years ago when I showed up at the Philadelphia Go Club, which he ran out of his house in center city Philly. He’s been there for me as a go player, go journalist and friend for three decades.
Thanks to the entire team, and to you, our readers; see you next year in Boston!
photos by Phil Straus (top right), Chris Garlock (left) and Ken Koester (bottom right).
Your Move/Readers Write: Where Was Ben?
Tuesday August 18, 2015
Where Was Ben? “I enjoyed reading your story about Lockhart’s win,” writes Ted Terpstra. “But the story failed to say where the competition 
was held and where the next round will be. It is always interesting to read where our American players are playing.”
was held and where the next round will be. It is always interesting to read where our American players are playing.”The prelim was in Seoul, Korea; the next stage starts on 9/7 in Beijing, China.
Lockhart Wins Samsung Cup World Division
Saturday August 15, 2015
Benjamin Lockhart 7d prevailed over fellow American Ricky Zhao 7d in the finals of the Samsung Cup World Baduk Masters World Division in Seoul, Korea and
will play next month in the round of 32 of the top international event in Beijing. The World Division was established three years ago as a way of encouraging players from the rest of the world to excel at go; Americans have won all three years. Lockhart was in the final last year but lost to Eric Lui 7d. This year the division was expanded from eight to 12 players, with four from Europe, three from North America, one from Latin America, and four from Asia excluding the major go countries. Click here to see more photos.