News
from the American Go Association
April 13, 2007
Volume 8, #31 (Member's Edition)
JIE LI TO FACE YODA
NORIMOTO IN FUJITSU
HAN WINS CHI TOURNEY
YODA NORIMOTO TO CHALLENGE FOR HONINBO
WON SUNGJIN TAKES FIRST GAME IN BC
CARD CUP FINALS
YAMASHITA AVOIDS SHUT OUT IN JUDAN
WEEKEND ACTION:
Philadelphia
GO QUIZ:
Harder Than I Thought
PRESIDENT'S REPORT: Membership
Drive, Youth, N.A. Ing & WAGC
YOUR MOVE: CD
Or Not CD?
HOT OFF THE PRESS:
Think Like a Pro
ATTACHED FILE: 2007.04.13 Hot Off The Press, Think Like a
Pro, Pae, Oromedia
JIE
LI TO FACE YODA NORIMOTO IN FUJITSU: Jie Li 9D (r) has
drawn the impressive Yoda Norimoto 9P (see story below) in the first
round of the 20th Fujitsu, reports Thomas Hsiang. Li
-- the top US amateur -- won his Fujitsu berth by defeating Mingjiu
Jiang 7P in the February North American Fujitsu Qualifier. The
Li-Norimoto result and game record should be posted online
by tomorrow (Saturday) morning. photo by Chris Garlock
HAN
WINS CHI TOURNEY: Changyu Han 2d took first place in the
April 7 Chicago Spring Tournament. In the Youth Qualifier, Will Zhou 6d
won the Senior Section, while Daniel Pai 29k won the Junior Section.
Details Monday.
YODA
NORIMOTO TO CHALLENGE FOR HONINBO: Yoda Norimoto
9P (l) has won the right to
challenge Takao Shinji 9P for the latter's Honinbo title. Norimoto's 34
career titles put him in the top ranks of Japanese pros; he's been
Meijin, Gosei, Judan and more
and challenged for the Honinbo in 2004. He became a professional in
1980, and reached 9 dan in 1993. More details on Monday.
WON
SUNGJIN TAKES FIRST GAME IN BC CARD CUP FINALS: In the
best-of-three-game finals of the Korean young pros' BC Card Cup, Won
Sungjin 7P has defeated Paek Hongsuk 5P in the first game. Details on
Monday.
YAMASHITA
AVOIDS SHUT OUT IN JUDAN: Yamashita Keigo 9P won the
third game in his challenge for Cho Chikun's Judan title to make the
score 2-1 in favor of Cho. Details on Monday.
WEEKEND
ACTION: Philadelphia
April 14-15: Philadelphia, PA; 2007
U.S. Go Youth Championship Qualifier
Peter Nassar pnassar@vet.upenn.edu 215.898.6271
GO
QUIZ: Harder Than I Thought
Reports of missing Good Friday ejournals
and a non-functioning answer link made last week's question more
challenging than I had intended, so we're going to give you all another
week to submit
your answers to the following: How many different books did
Ishi Press both publish and distribute in hardback? Was it 5, 6, 7 or
8? List them for me in the comment section so I can separate the lucky
from the knowledgeable.
With no new question or old answer, I'll
take this opportunity to profile a few faithful Quiz participants: Phil
Waldron (13/13) is well known to many of us, a
contributor to the E-Journal and past president of the Canadian Go
Association. The 32-year-old has been playing for 19 years and is an
AGA 6-dan. A research officer at the National Research Council of
Canada, he attends the Ottawa Go Club. Winning two games in the 2000
Ing Cup in Denver is his best achievement as a go player, though he
modestly fails to mention representing Canada in the World Pair-Go
Championship -- twice in fact -- both times paired with his mother. Dan
Denis (10/11) has allowed school to eat into his hold on
second place. Not sure why majoring in Nuclear Engineering and
Literature at MIT would be time-consuming, but to each his own. Dan is
21, belongs to the Abington Heights Go Club and plays on KGS as a 10
kyu. He is also Captain of MIT's Ballroom Dance Team. Kim
Salamony (9/10) is a 24-year-old computer programmer,
whose enthusiasm far outstrips her brief 3-year playing career. She is
an active tournament-goer, currently AGA 6 kyu and is a main organizer
for the Pittsburgh Go Association. Check out her very nice go designs
(http://www.cafepress.com/phantomgo); I own one of her shirts, a mug
and a bumper sticker myself. Her creative side also delves into
photography and anime (she will be teaching go at an upcoming
Pittsburgh Anime convention) while her competitive side supports her
beloved Pittsburgh Pirates.
- Go Quiz Editor: Keith L. Arnold, hka
PRESIDENT'S
REPORT: Membership Drive, Youth, N.A. Ing & WAGC
by Mike Lash
Spring is in the air; the cherry
blossoms have come here and gone in Washington and the Go Congress is
just over 100 days away! Time to take a quick look at what's happening
around the AGA.
The first-ever Chapter Membership drive
came to an impressive end on March 31. As you've been reading here in
the E-Journal, we set AGA membership records in the last few months and
you can thank some of your colleagues for putting in the effort to
bring so many brand new members - not just renewals but first-timers
too - into the AGA. Results are being tabulated and confirmed with
winners to be announced soon.
Another first - the US Youth GO
Championship - is well under way with 6 of 8 qualifiers done and the
last two this weekend. Check our website for results posted next week
to see the USYGC finals list. The field is strong!
The newest AGA tournament is now being
planned to include more national qualifiers - the North American Ing
Championship at the Congress. This is for the strongest players in the
US from all corners and all ages. They will compete against each other
just to get into the Congress event and then play five rounds to
determine the best player of the year.
As we approach June 1, the start of the
AGA's new fiscal year, I am preparing the FY08 budget. With the return
of generous Ing Foundation funding for selected programs, our focus
remains on developing youth programs and membership services in 2008
and beyond. The Congress is our single largest revenue producer and
this year will be no exception. Registration is already impressive and
organizers are pulling out all the stops this year.
On the international scene, young Andy
Liu will represent the USA in the World Amateur Go Championship in
Japan next month, accompanied by our very own EJ Editor Chris Garlock,
who hopes to broadcast Andy's games live as well as report more broadly
than ever on this prestigious event.
Finally, we're already looking ahead to
the summer of 2008 in Beijing where the first ever Intellympiad is
shaping up nicely. We are waiting anxiously to see how many go players
we will be able to send and then kick off an exciting program for the
AGA's best players to hone their competitive games while earning places
at the Intellympiad.
All this and we aren't even past the middle of April yet….
YOUR
MOVE: READERS WRITE
CD OR NOT CD? "Great annual," writes Kent Secor upon receiving his 2006
American Go Yearbook. "I like the format and new look. There is a
problem with the CD. I like that it opens automatically to the CD Home
page, that is much better the previous two years. I have found that
many of the SGF links do not link up to a file. I tried to browse the
CD and can't find the files on it. Did I get a defective CD? Or perhaps
this is a problem in the master?"
As noted previously (YEARBOOK
CD GAME UPDATE 3/30 EJ), there are some errors in the game indexing on
the CD. Only the indexing is affected: all the games from last year's
E-Journal (and some extra ones) are on the CD. We regret the error and
apologize for any inconvenience it may cause. CD Editor Howard Cornett
has developed a fix for this problem, but the fix requires saving the
Yearbook CD to your hard drive and then overwriting some of the content
with the correction (of course, you could then burn your own CD and
remove the content from your hard drive). If you would like a .zip file
of the corrections with instructions, please send an email to
journal@usgo.org Another solution is the CD's new search feature, which
can be used to find any game you want. Longer term, we are working on a
completely revamped games index for the 2007 Yearbook CD that will
include all the games ever published in the E-Journal in a much more
searchable user-friendly format.
HOT
OFF THE PRESS: Excerpts from New Go Books
Think Like a Pro: Pae [Ko], by Youngsun Yoon 5P
published by Oromedia
This is the second in what one hopes is
a continuing series of books from Korea with the text in both English and Korean. It offers an
encyclopedia-like treatment of ko. There is a thorough presentation of
the various kinds of ko [pae in Korean: these books use no Japanese
words at all, including "go"] and a series of studies showing how to
create ko and to handle them in life and death, in joseki, and in the
endgame. There are also study problems and examples from actual games.
The ability to make good use of ko is a mark of a strong player. This
book offers a large step forward in that direction. There is also a
glossary of Korean go terms.
Attached is a PDF sample from the book.
Published by the American Go Association
Managing Editor: Chris Garlock
Assistant Editor: Bill Cobb
Text material published in the AMERICAN GO E JOURNAL may be reproduced
by any recipient: please credit the AGEJ as the source. PLEASE NOTE
that commented game record files MAY NOT BE published, re-distributed,
or made available on the web without the explicit written permission of
the Editor of the E-Journal. Please direct inquiries to journal@usgo.org
Articles appearing in the E-Journal represent the opinions of the
authors and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the
American Go Association.
CLICK
HERE to make name or address corrections. Story suggestions,
event announcements, Letters to the Editor and other material are
welcome, subject to editing for clarity and space, and should be
directed to:
Editor: Chris Garlock
journal@usgo.org
American
Go Association
P.O. Box 397
Old Chelsea Station
New York, NY 10113-0397