U.S. representative Eric Lui 7d placed third in the 2011 World Amateur Go Championship, the highest finish ever achieved by a U.S. player. Eric sent along this report on the tournament, as well as the exciting final-round game — with his comments — that clinched the 3rd-place win.
This year’s World Amateur Go Championship featured 57 players. The Japanese representative was 84-year
-old Hirata Hironori who was playing in the WAGC for his eighth time, having won the tournament in 1995. The youngest player was 13-year-old C.H. Chan from Hong Kong, who is already well-known on KGS. The tournament venue was the Shimane Prefectural Assembly Hall, located right across from Matsue Castle, one of the last remaining medieval castles in Japan. Shimane is the birthplace of the great Honinbo Dosaku and Iwamoto Kaoru 9P.
The pairing system used prevented the top four seeded players (China, Korea, Japan, Chinese Taipei) from being paired together before Round 4. Several exciting matchups, including Romania vs. France and Chinese Taipei vs. Canada, occurred as early as Round 2. Since there were an odd number of players, a ‘Dummy’ player was introduced. Each round, the one player paired against ‘Dummy’ gained a free win and played a teaching game against a professional.
The stakes were high in my final-round match against the player from Chinese Taipei. Both of us had lost only to China and Korea, and the winner would finish in third place while the loser would drop to 8th. The game itself was very exciting and was the last of the round to finish. While any go player is familiar with the thrill of winning, there are no words to describe what it felt like for me to achieve this victory.
– Eric Lui (shown at right in photo, playing John Karlsson of Sweden)
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Baoxiang Bai of China Wins World Amateur Go Championship; U.S. Places Third
Monday June 6, 2011
Interestingly enough, in last year’s 31st WAGC, China and Korea also met in round 5 to battle it out for the championship. Korea won last year’s championship (the 31st WAGC). Other than Choi, Bai also defeated Hirata of Japan (see below for a just-posted game commentary by An Younggil 8P of Go Game Guru on the game between Baoxiang Bai and Hironori Hirata), Wu of Chinese Taipei, Lui of the US, Rattanasetyut of Thailand, Burzo of Romania, Suponeu of Belarus, and Mezhov of Russia.
The rest of the top 10 are as follows: Thomas Debarre of France, Hironori Hirata of Japan, Jun Fan of Canada, Franz-Josef Dickhut of Germany, Tsung-Han Wu of Chinese Taipei, Gheorghe Cornel Burzo of Romania, and Merlijn Kuin of Netherlands. The full results are available at EuroGoTV.
– Based on the report from Jingning at Go Game Guru; edited by Jake Edge
[Update: An Younggil 8P of Go Game Guru has commented the game between Baoxiang Bai (China) and Hironori Hirata (Japan) for E-Journal readers. The game record is below.]
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