Gu Li 9p chalked up his first win in the MLily Gu vs Lee jubango, forcing Lee Sedol 9p to resign in game 3, on March 30, 2014.

Lee Sedol (left) and Gu Li, in Chengdu, China.

Lee and Gu faced one another in Chengdu – the capital city of Sichuan, China – having traveled straight there after their game at the 10th Chunlan Cup two days earlier.

The only game that mattered

After Lee won game 2 of this jubango in February, he led the 10 game match 2-0.

Since Gu lost game 2 in regrettable circumstances, many Go fans reasonably surmised that Lee would have the psychological advantage going into the third game today.

However, over the last week, Lee and Gu have played three games together. Not only is this very unusual, but it may have helped to restore Gu’s confidence.

Gu defeated Lee in the 4th Zhaoshang Cup (a China vs Korea team tournament) on March 23, and followed it up with another win at the 10th Chunlan Cup on the 28th.

Gu Li 9 dan (left) plays Lee Sedol 9 dan in the third game of their jubango.

Because of this, it’s hard to say who had the momentum going into today’s game. Some commentators argued that Lee was saving his energy for the jubango, but perhaps that’s because they were rooting for Lee.

We do know one thing for sure though; that today’s game was the only one that really mattered to both players. And Gu Li won.

Good news for Go fans

This is, of course, good news for all Go fans – except perhaps the most die hard Lee Sedol fans. A close score increases the likelihood that we’ll be able to enjoy all 10 games.

It also makes the series more exciting to follow.

An Younggil’s brief game analysis

Go Game Guru’s An Younggil 8p discussed the game live with Baduk TV Live subscribers. This is his initial brief commentary of the key points in the game:

Black 17 was an interesting attachment, and the first fight started there. The result up to 31 was a bit better for White (Gu Li), because he became very thick and powerful at the top.

White 36 was an unusual move, and a big fight began when Black responded at 37. It was very complicated, and the result up to 61 was playable for both.

Black 63 was a severe response to White’s attachment at 62 and the trade up to 71 looked playable for Black, but it was actually an even result.

White 78 and 82 were a nice combination, and the invasion at 86 was painful for Black, because White’s influence at the top was too strong.

Gu Li’s invasion at White 86 was painful for Lee Sedol.

Black 87 and 89 were questionable, and White 90 showed Gu Li’s nice sense of play. Black 91 was an another questionable move, and White executed a nice counter-attack with 92 and 94.

White established a solid lead with 102, but Lee started to catch up again with 113 and 115. White 116 and 124 were slack, and Lee caught up through to 144.

However, Black 147 was a big mistake, and the game became difficult for Black again. And when White played at 162, the game became desperate for Black.

White 178 was a big mistake too, but Gu stayed calm with 182 and maintained his lead.

Black 185 was the last losing move for Lee. It should have been played at 186 instead. Black couldn’t find any more chances to catch up after White 188 and Lee Sedol resigned soon afterwards.

Gu Li erred with White 178, but kept his cool and won by resignation.

It was a very interesting game to watch, but both players seemed to make more mistakes than they usually do. That could be because it was a very complicated game, but they also they seemed to lose focus at some points in the game.

Recently, both Lee and Gu have played quite a lot of games and they had very little time to rest before today’s game. I think they both seem exhausted and neither player is in their best form at the moment.

Both players will work hard to recover and get back into shape – physically and mentally – in time for game 4.

More commentary to follow soon

Reviewing the game in detail will take more time, but Younggil will be back soon with his full commentary of game 3.

While you’re waiting, you can review all our articles about the match so far on our Gu Li vs Lee Sedol Jubango page.

And don’t forget to subscribe to our free Go newsletter to get our weekly updates every Thursday!

Click here to join now (it’s free)

Game record

Lee Sedol vs Gu Li

[Embedded SGF File]

David Ormerod, with Younggil An and Jingning Xue

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The Chunlan Cup is an international tournament for 24 players.

The 10th Chunlan Cup kicked off on March 26, 2014, in Taezhou, China.

The Chunlan Cup is an invitational tournament for 24 top players from around the world.

In the first round, 16 unseeded players vied for a spot in the second round.

They were joined by the remaining 8 seeded players in round two, on March 28.

Round 1

North America and Europe

This year’s North American and European representatives – Jiang Mingjiu 7p and Fan Hui 2p – are certainly no strangers to the Western Go community.

Jiang Mingjiu 7 dan represented North America and Fan Hui 2 dan represented France.

Jiang teaches Go in the USA, while Fan is the official coach for the French Go Federation.

Unfortunately, they were knocked out in the first round by China’s Tuo Jiaxi 9p and Japan’s Cho U 9p respectively.

Taiwan and Japan

Taiwan’s representative, Wang Yuanjun 7p, was also knocked out in round one, by Japan’s Iyama Yuta 9p.

Wang, who’s currently regarded by many as Taiwan’s strongest player, gave Iyama a scare in a close game. However, Iyama was able to win by half a point after Wang made a mistake in the endgame.

Japan had two other players advance to the second round after Kono Rin 9p defeated Fan Tingyu 9p and Murakawa Daisuke 7p defeated Lian Xiao 7p.

The other winners from round one were Tang Weixing 9p, Mi Yuting 9p and Gu Li 9p.

Lots were drawn to determine which seeded player the winners of the first round would face in round two.

2014′s seeded players

This year, seeds were awarded to Chen Yaoye 9p, Jiang Weijie 9p, Zhou Ruiyang 9p, Shi Yue 9p, Lee Sedol 9p, Park Junghwan 9p, Kim Jiseok 9p, and Choi Cheolhan 9p.

As we mentioned yesterday, the universe seemed to be playing some sort of joke in once again pairing Gu Li against Lee Sedol. However, it’s worth noting that several international tournaments, including the Chunlan Cup, setup the draw to minimize intra-country clashes in the earlier rounds.

Gu Li 9 dan draws Lee Sedol 9 dan as his opponent in round two.

Round 1 results table

Here are the full results from round one:

Brief commentary on round 1

An Younggil 8p provided some brief commentary on selected games.

Murakawa Daisuke (B) vs Lian Xiao

The first fight began with White 52. Up to White 88, the game was even. White 92 was questionable, and Black 101 and 103 were a nice counter-attack.

Black took the lead up to 129, after establishing a large territory. Black 207 and 209 were very nice endgame tesuji to finish the game.

Kono Rin (B) vs Fan Tingyu

The opening was peaceful, and both players seemed to like that. Black 31 and 33 were a nice sequence and, up to 37, the opening was favorable for Black.

Black 71 was big, and the game was still good for Kono. White 94 and 96 were a nice combination and the game became very close. In the end, Kono was winning by half a point, and Fan resigned.

Iyama Yuta vs Wang Yuanjun

Black started with nice opening, and the game was favorable for Black up to 67. Black developed a large territory in the center up to move 91, but he should have exchanged F17 for G17.

The game became very close up to 110. Black 175 was the losing move, and White reversed the game with 176 and 180.

Round 2

Round two was played on March 28, 2014.

Gu Li and Lee Sedol – Game 40

The majority of attention was on the game between Gu Li and Lee Sedol. This happened to be their 40th encounter.

Gu managed to give himself another mental boost before Sunday’s Jubango, by defeating Lee in a close game.

Gu Li (left) plays Lee Sedol at the 10th Chunlan Cup

A disappointing round for Japan

After a great opening round, Japan made a disappointing showing in round two.

Zhou Ruiyang had a surprisingly straightforward win over Iyama Yuta. Meanwhile, Murakawa Daisuke and Kono Rin also failed to progress to the quarter finals, falling to China’s Shi Yue and Chen Yaoye.

However, Cho U had better luck than his compatriots, defeating China’s Jiang Weijie convincingly.

Chen Yaoye 9 dan (left) defeated Kono Rin 9 dan.

Round 2 results table

The full results from round two are as follows:

Brief commentary on round 2

Here’s Younggil’s quick review of the key points from round two:

Park Junghwan vs Tang Weixing

White had a nice start up to 60 and a big fight started with Black 63. A ko fight began at move 95, and the result up to 148 was still good for White.

Black 149 and 155 were a good combination, and the game became very complicated up to 177. White 188 and 194 were good moves and Park managed to save the game.

Gu Li (B) vs Lee Sedol

The opening up to 57 was successful for Black. There was a big ko fight and the trade up to 104 was good for Black.

White 116 was a very nice tesuji, and White 132 was typical of Lee Sedol, making the game complicated. Lee caught up by attacking Black’s left side group, and the game became very close up to 218.

White 250 was the losing move, and Gu won the game with 251 and 257. In the end, Lee was losing half a point, so he resigned.

Lee Sedol after the game.

Cho U vs Jiang Weijie

Cho U started the game with a joseki he invented, at White 6 and 8. Black 29 and 31 were questionable, and the opening up to 40 was favorable for White.

White 66 and 68 were sharp, and the result up to 86 was successful for White. White 94 was a very good move and Cho maintained a solid lead up to 104.

White 132 was a brilliant move and the game was practically over at that point. It was a great game by Cho U.

Jiang Weijie 9 dan (left) was defeated by Cho U 9 dan. Cho will be Japan’s only representative in the quarter finals.

Zhou Ruiyang (B) vs Iyama Yuta

Black 29 and 31 were a nice combination and Zhou got off to a good start. Black 43 and 45 were practical and severe, and Iyama was in trouble.

Up to 67, Black made a big territory, and the game was still good for him. Iyama started to attack with 68, but Zhou’s responses were perfect up to 85.

Black 119 and 121 were very sharp, and White’s eye shape was gone. After Black 127, Iyama couldn’t find any chances to catch up, and he resigned soon afterwards.

Quarter finals

The quarter finals and the semifinals will be played in late 2014 and the final will be played in 2015. As always, we’ll keep you updated on its progress.

The pairings for the quarter finals are as follows:

• Gu Li 9p vs Cho U 9p
• Chen Yaoye 9p vs Park Junghwan 9p
• Mi Yuting 9p vs Kim Jiseok 9p
• Shi Yue 9p vs Zhou Ruiyang 9p

10th Chunlan Cup Quarter Finalists (from left): Kim Jiseok, Gu Li, Cho U, Chen Yaoye, Zhou Ruiyang, Shi Yue, Mi Yuting and Park Junghwan.

Gu Li and Lee Sedol’s busy schedule

While everyone else heads home for the time being, Gu and Lee head straight to Chengdu for their match on Sunday. They both have one day to rest in between.

Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan, a neighbouring province to Gu’s hometown, Chongqing.

The Chunlan Cup

The Chunlan Cup is an invitational Go tournament for 24 top players from around the world. In addition to players from China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, a European and a North American representative are also invited.

The top 8 seeded players proceed directly to round two, while the remaining 16 play a single elimination round, knocking out 8 players. After the first round, the remaining 16 players compete in a knockout tournament, culminating in a best of three final.

The tournament is sponsored by Chunlan Group, a Chinese conglomerate with interests in the air conditioning, domestic appliance, automotive, finance and alternative energy industries.

The Chunlan Cup uses Chinese rules, with a komi of 7.5 points, and offers a prize of $150,000 USD to the winner.

10th Chunlan Cup photos

Game records

Click here to download a selection of other game records from rounds one and two.

Gu Li vs Lee Sedol

[Embedded SGF File]

Jiang Weijie vs Cho U

[Embedded SGF File]

Zhou Ruiyang vs Iyama Yuta

[Embedded SGF File]

Jingning Xue, with Younggil An and David Ormerod.

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One more quick update before we send out the weekly newsletter.

Don’t forget that game 3 of the Lee Sedol – Gu Li Jubango is on this weekend.

Join us for live coverage of the game

Live coverage with commentary of the match will start on Baduk TV three hours after the first move is played.

The commentators will replay and analyze the game from the beginning and Go Game Guru’s An Younggil 8p will translate and discuss the game with Baduk TV Live viewers (in English).

The coverage starts at 1:00 pm Korea time on Sunday, March 30, 2014.

Which is:

• 4:00 am, Sunday morning, UCT
• Midnight, Sunday morning, US Eastern Daylight Time
• 9:00 pm, Saturday night, US Pacific Daylight Time
• 5:00 am, Sunday morning, British Summer Time
• 6:00 am, Sunday morning, Central European Summer Time, and
• 3:00 pm, Sunday afternoon, Australian Eastern Daylight Time.

You can join us for the game for as little as $2.70 with a Baduk TV Day Pass.

If you plan to watch the game from the very start, remember to subtract three hours from the times given above. Baduk TV starts the coverage three hours later because the games go for so long.

A busy week for Gu Li and Lee Sedol

A lot’s been happening this week and Lee Sedol 9p and Gu Li 9p will have played three new games together (in one week) by the end of Sunday.

Here’s a quick wrap up of recent news, with more detailed reports to follow…

The 4th Zhaoshang Cup

Korea just barely won the 4th Zhaoshang Cup on Sunday, March 23, as Younggil reported here.

One thing that was interesting about this tournament was that Lee Sedol and Gu Li were paired together in round 2. Gu Li won the game.

Park Junghwan 9p also ended his losing streak against Shi Yue 9p to win the tournament for Korea.

Gu Li 9 dan and Lee Sedol 9 dan play at the 4th Zhaoshang Cup.

The 10th Chunlan Cup

The 10th Chunlan Cup is also underway in China.

Round 1 took place on March 26, and the seeded players will join the tournament for round 2 tomorrow (Friday, March 28).

Once again, Lee and Gu have been paired to play together, which will be their second game this week. Perhaps the universe is having a joke at their expense?

The Chunlan Cup has also been interesting so far because Japan’s Iyama Yuta 9p, Kono Rin 9p and Murakawa Daisuke 7p have all progressed through the first round. They defeated Wang Yuanjun 7p (Taiwan), Fan Tingyu 9p (Ing Cup title holder) and Lian Xiao 7p respectively.

We’ll post a more detailed report on the Chunlan Cup after round 2 concludes tomorrow.

Gu Li draws his seed for round 2 of the 10th Chunlan Cup… and realizes he’s going to play Lee Sedol again.

MLily Gu vs Lee Jubango

As I said above, the third game of Lee and Gu’s jubango will take place this weekend, on Sunday March 30.

This will be their third game together in a week, and also the most important one for both players.

Lee Sedol currently leads the series 2-0, so the pressure will be on Gu Li to catch up. Hopefully his recent win in the Zhaoshang Cup will buoy his spirits.

All in all, a great week for fans of Gu Li and Lee Sedol!

We’ll be back over the weekend with more news and a commentary to follow later, of course.

In other news…

Big savings on international shipping

Based on your requests, we’ve just added a lot of new shipping options to the Go Game Guru Store.

These new shipping methods offer very big savings on international shipping for Go equipment.

Click here to see how we saved one customer $93 on a Go board

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If you live somewhere other than the US or Western Europe, you know how expensive international shipping can be, right?

Especially when you want to buy something as heavy, big and unusual as a Go board. It’s just hard to find them locally in most places.

And we all know the postal services keep increasing prices every year, so saving money is a challenge.

Go players want to save on shipping

Save money on international shipping at Go Game Guru.

We get so many emails from Go players around the world asking if we can help them to save on shipping – so many, in fact, that it was hard to keep up with it.

Our store already tries to calculate the best value shipping options it can find for you (based on geography), but today we expanded the range of shipping carriers we support and also added a new option to ship most Go equipment directly from the factory.

When shipping from the factory, you can take advantage of cheaper shipping rates and choose between seamail, aimail and express international shipping.

Now you can save time, with a better selection of instant shipping quotes, and we can save time too and spend more time talking about Go!

How much cheaper is shipping now?

Obviously, how much you can save depends on where you are and which shipping option you choose. Here are some examples of today’s best shipping rates based on a 2.4” agathis Go board – a popular board which has some weight to it (though we sell many heavier boards too):

• South Africa  – Before: $105.93 – Now: $25.70 – Savings: $80
• Brazil – Before: $78.34 – Now: $25.70 – Savings: $52
• Mexico – Before: $70.04 – Now: $25.70 – Savings: $44
• Canada – Before: $61.30 – Now: $22.30 – Savings: $39
• Finland – Before: $39.58 – Now: $22.30 – Savings: $17
• Singapore – Before: $32.37 – Now: $18.90 – Savings: $13.

The examples above are all in different regions (and in countries where we don’t already have a warehouse).

Here’s how you can can check the exact shipping rates for your country. Please be patient when checking shipping rates – they can take around 10 seconds to display because they’re calculated in real time.

The new, cheaper rates are available in many countries, based on where the shipping carriers can ship to. If it looks like they’re not available for your country, please let us know and we’ll look into whether there are other options we can add to the store.

Save another 5% with factory shipping

Another thing that’s great about shipping from the factory is that it saves us money too, we don’t have to ship the products twice!

Because of that, we can give you a further 5% discount on orders that ship from the factory, to help you further reduce the reduce the cost of your international order.

Ship directly from the factory showroom and save money.

This discount is now applied automatically at the checkout to all qualifying orders.

Save yet another 5% with bitcoin

Save money when you pay for your order with bitcoin.

And something else that can help some international customers to save money is paying for your order with bitcoin.

Bitcoin isn’t for everyone and currently requires you to be a bit tech savvy to use it properly, but you can save quite a bit of money by getting better currency conversion rates and avoiding international transaction fees if you know how.

Orders paid for with bitcoin also save us money. The payment processing fees are lower and we don’t have to worry about people using stolen credit cards at our store.

Every store has to build the above costs into its prices, but bitcoin helps to reduce those costs, so we pass the savings straight back to you as another automatic 5% discount.

If you don’t know what bitcoin is, or you don’t know how to use, you can learn about it first.

(Please no ultracrepidarian comments about bitcoin if you haven’t taken the time to properly research this technology.)

That’s $93 in total savings!

So, in this particular example, one customer was able to save over $80 on reduced shipping fees, plus another $13 in savings which we passed back to them.

That’s a total saving of $93.

While it’s true that not everyone will be able to save that much money (if you live somewhere where shipping is already cheap, you’re lucky), savings are available for all Go players and there are Go players all over the world.

Which products are included?

So which products qualify for the new shipping rates? The answer is, almost all Go equipment.

There were only two products for which we haven’t yet been able to get the cooperation of the factory. They are:

• The Dirt Cheap Go Set, and
• The Dirt Cheap Go Board.

If you live close to one of our warehouses, those two products are among the cheapest Go equipment you can buy.

However, for international orders, we always recommend the Featherweight Go Set and this Folding Go Board as better alternatives. They’re lighter and smaller to ship, so you can easily save enough on shipping to pay for the difference in price anyway – and you end up with a better quality product.

Books aren’t included

Books aren’t included, and can confuse our order routing logic because they only ship from our warehouses. If you’re trying to save money on Go equipment, please check the prices before adding books to your order.

If you want to ship books in the same package as Go equipment that’s fine, but be aware that it will reduce the number of shipping options available to you. In some cases, it can be cheaper to make two separate orders.

We’ll keep doing our best…

Since starting Go Game Guru, we’ve kept looking for ways to save money and provide better value for customers.

That’s why we ship from multiple locations around the world and that’s why we’ve taken the time to setup this direct factory shipping option for you today.

We’ll keep doing our best to keep make good quality, well made, safe Go equipment available worldwide.

Later this year, we hope to be able to add a new shipping location in Canada, and hopefully we can go local in more countries after that…

…as long you keep shopping with us

So next time you want to buy something Go related, please remember to have a look at the Go Game Guru Store (and thanks to everyone who already shops there!).

People often tell us that they didn’t even know we had a store, because we don’t advertise it aggressively. And we’d prefer it if we could keep the advertising low key.

However, the store is what helps us to keep providing all the free Go commentaries, news and more.

So, if you like what we do here, please tell your friends about our store and think of us next time you want to buy something.

And if you want your local brick and mortar games store to start selling Go sets, please tell them to get in touch with us and we’ll help them out.

In return, we’ll keep providing new and better services to the worldwide Go community – most of them for free.

Click here to have a look at our store

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Here are the weekly Go problems for week 115.

Black plays first in all problems and all solutions are labeled ‘correct’. Have fun!

Easy Go problem

Sometimes when a stone is in atari, it’s even less useful than if it weren’t on the board at all. Try to reduce White’s eyespace as much as you can.

[Embedded SGF File]

Intermediate Go problem

The opponent’s vital point is your own. How can you remove your own weaknesses while creating some in White’s shape?

[Embedded SGF File]

Hard Go problem

Normally Black’s corner group would be dead, but as we’ve seen many times, a stone is never truly dead until it’s been removed from the board.

[Embedded SGF File]

Still want more Go problems?

You can find Go books packed full of life and death problems, tesuji problems and other valuable Go knowledge at the Go Game Shop.

Discuss other possible moves

If you have any questions or want to discuss any of these problems, please leave a comment below at any time. You can use the coordinates on the problem images to discuss a move or sequence of moves.

You can also download the solutions as a PDF or SGF file by clicking the links below each problem.

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