“An idea for the E-Journal,” writes Eric Osman. “Encourage AGA regular chapter go club meetings to send in pictures from their meetings, and then link to them in the E-Journal. For example, here’s a team game played last night at Western Mass Go’s weekly Rao’s coffee house meeting in Amherst, Massachusetts. They beat us by 14 points despite the 7.0 komi. Yes, it was 7.0, so we could maybe have a tie!”
Great idea! Send chapter meeting photos to us at journal@usgo.org and you could be featured in our next report!

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To encourage chapters of the American Go Association to keep the momentum from “Learn Go” week going, the AGA is offering a special deal during the month of October. Chapters that meet in October, play at least one rated game, order pizza and send in a photo of the festivities — and the receipt– and you’ll have the cost of the pizza reimbursed. “We appreciate the great work our chapters are doing and this is a fun way for them to reach their members” says Andrew Jackson, AGA VP of Operations. This offer only valid for AGA chapters; if your club is not a chapter, click here to sign up as a chapter today. Send your receipts to operations@usgo.org.

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Two French scientists have decided to apply network science to the game of go, according to a 2012 report on the Wired blog we just came across. “They constructed their networks in a simple way,” Samuel Arbesman reported in Network Science of the Game of Go (4/20/2012). “If one board position can lead to another, they are connected. Using a dataset of about 1,000 professional games and 4,000 amateur games, they began to construct these networks.” Arbesman says the network analyses in the paper “are a bit odd, though they find many classic graph structures, such as a heavy-tailed link distribution and high amounts of clustering.” And though the networks constructed from amateur and professional games were distinct, Arbesman said that “while I know that network pictures are usually inscrutable hairballs, I was disappointed that networks weren’t visualized at all.” Still, he concluded, “this a fun little network analysis and I recommend checking it out.” photo courtesy Wired blog

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The Tacoma Go Club is getting back into the go business after “a little hiatus, reports club president Gordon Castanza. The TGC sponsored three events during Learn Go Week” last week and is meeting at the Asia Pacific Cultural Center, 4851 S. Tacoma Way, Tacoma, WA 98409 every Monday from 3 – 6p. The club also meets at Bluebeard’s Café, 2201 6th Ave., Tacoma, WA 98403 (by prior arrangement. Call or e-mail Gordon or Tom), and Starbuck’s, 34024 Hoyt Rd. SW (340th and Hoyt next to Walgreen’s), Federal Way, WA 98023 (by prior arrangement. Call or e-mail Gordon or Tom).  During the Tacoma Go Club’s third “Learn Go Week” event last Saturday, “two new players appeared at the Bluebeard Coffee Shop in Tacoma to learn the fine points of both high handicap games and the subtleties of the territory-destroying ‘monkey jump,’” says Castanza. Players from left to right were Mike Malveaux, Tom Cruver, and Mark Mattson, who was playing Castanza, who doubled as official photographer.

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The mysterious death of John Bender, the Philadelphia go player who died under suspicious circumstances in 2010 (In Memoriam 10/10/2013) was the subject of the September 27 edition of “48 Hours,” reports Phil Straus, who taught Bender to play go in the mid-1980’s. In “Paradise Lost” correspondent Susan Spencer investigates “How did a Wall Street millionaire end up shot dead in his bedroom?” Bender’s go-playing is not mentioned, although his prowess at poker is.
photo: John Bender, lecturing on the importance of plans and ideas, and how unimportant details and final results are, at the 1987 US Go Congress, Mt. Holyoke College, Massachusetts. photo by Phil Straus

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The Seattle Go Center is celebrating its 19th anniversary  with a tournament this Sunday, Oct. 5.  Titled “19×19x19“, the AGA event will have an open section and several handicapped sections.  Registration is from 10:00- 10:30 at the Go Center, and the total purse for prizes will be $500.  Last year they had 24 players, with six players who were 5 dan or stronger.  More information is available at the Go Center website.    Photo: Dong Ma 6d plays Edward Kim 7d at the 17th Anniversary Tournament in 2012, with Dennis Wheeler recording the game.  Photo/Report by Brian Allen.

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The 2014 US Open Masters tournament has now been rated, and the other Congress tournaments are expected to follow suit soon. “We are
cleaning up the last few membership issues and glitches in the data,” said AGA President Andy Okun.  “I hope to have the games from the US Open rated within the coming week, with the Die Hard, Self-Paired and Midnight Madness very close behind.  I am grateful for everyone’s patience.” Okun said that the kinds of issues that sometimes delay ratings “…errant digits in AGA ids, getting everyone’s renewals and new memberships processed, handling overseas guests and the like…” are amplified in a tournament with more than 300 players like the US Open. Watch the EJ for news about Congress ratings.
photo of the 2014 US Open main playing area by Chris Garlock

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