After three successive years of declining participation, the Syracuse Go Club’s Fall Self-Paired Tournament broke its all-time attendance record last month, with the 27 players more than doubling the attendance from the previous year.  Players ranging in strength from 5d to 28k played 55 AGA-rated games.  Bob Sollish 1d of Syracuse had the best individual record, with four wins and no losses against three other dan players and a 1k player.  Every participant was able to select a prize to take home at the end of the day, including several discounted books provided by Slate and Shell.
– report/photo by Richard Moseson 

photo: Xinde Ji 5d (left) plays an unrated high-handicap game with first-time participant Yan-Yeung Luk 13k, while Luk’s daughter and a friend, also players in the tournament, look on.

via American Go E-Journal http://www.usgo.org/news/2013/12/syracuse-tourney-breaks-attendance-record/

The South London Go Club held a very successful teaching day and tournament for some two dozen kyu-players at the Quaker Meeting House, Croydon on Saturday December 7. In the morning three dan-grade volunteers from the British Go Association (BGA) gave 50-minute teaching sessions in rotation to three groups selected by grade, and in the afternoon each group played a Swiss tournament, while the teachers — joined by Paul Smith 1d, who was escorting his young son Edmund to the event — played a round-robin. For the teaching sessions, our correspondent “added a stone to the weak group”:

British Champion Andrew Kay 4d gave an extremely lucid presentation on probe stones, which he described as stones which ask a question of the opponent. It is though, he explained, actually a trick question designed so that however it is answered, it will receive a response which makes it the wrong answer. He went on to demonstrate exactly what he meant in practical terms on the board, using first a life-and-death situation in the corner, then a joseki not well-known even to low-dan players.

BGA stalwart and AGA member Francis Roads 2d (left, pointing at board) chose a game submitted to the event by one of the attendees for review as the teaching material. It became the subject of a “penny go” exercise, whereby at critical junctures in the review each member of the student group was invited to place a penny where they thought the next play should be. Showing great tact and sensitivity to the diffidence of the learners, Roads not only withheld the identity of the game’s players but even made himself absent as the (identical) pennies were placed. One of the teaching points he was most emphatic about was controlling the knee-jerk tendency of weaker players to “obey the 5cm rule”, ie unthinkingly responding to any move with a play within 5cm of the opponent’s last stone.

Tim Hunt 2d also used a game review to illustrate various teaching points, particularly in the opening. He, however, made his points using a high-level professional game, so here it was more often an analysis of why this or that move was a good one, compared to the students’ various suggestions. The game was from round 1 of the 1998 Japanese Oza qualifiers which Michael Redmond won as white against the legendary Cho Chikun. When Redmond visited the UK earlier this year Hunt had heard someone ask him his favourite game, and this was it. The teacher needed no recourse to a game record, as he had clearly studied it in great depth and knew every move as well as numerous possible variations at each stage.

After a short break for lunch, the tournament(s) got under way: three rounds with half an hour per player then sudden death, and handicaps (for the students, but not the teachers), set equal to grade difference, komi 7.5. Natasha Regan 1k of Epsom won in the first division (1k – 5k), narrowly beating Sue Paterson 4k of Arundel by one point in the third round, with Chris Volk 2k of Reading pushing Paterson into third place with one point more on aggregate. In the second division (6k – 10k) Peter Fisher 7k of Leicester was victorious, while Francis Moore 6k of the home club placed second and Malcolm Hagan 6k of Winchester third. In the third division (11+k) Gerry Gavigan 12k, also of South London, won and Adam Field 13k of Winchester and 8-year-old Edmund Smith 13k of Milton School took second and third place respectively. In the teachers’ tournament, Tim Hunt prevailed, winning all three games.

All the prizes were books aimed at improvers: Understanding Dan-level Play, by Yuan Zhou; How Not To Play Go, also by Yuan Zhou; Attack and Defence, by Ishida Akira and James Davies; Opening Theory Made Easy, by Otake Hideo;  Go Proverbs vol 1, published by the Nihon Ki-in and finally Go By Example: correcting common mistakes in double-digit kyu play, by Neil Moffat. Prizes went to all with three wins and some with two. In addition, two copies of Anders Kierulf’s SmartGo Kifu iPhone/iPad app, donated to the event by the author, went to the first takers.

The event was the first of its kind for the South London Go Club, but it is intended that it should become an annual event, though perhaps at a different time of year according to organizer David Cantrell, a man with a large beard and quirky sense of humour who signs off unofficial correspondence with such improbable self-stylings as “London Perl Mongers Deputy Chief Heretic”, or “Enforcer, South London Linguistic Massive” often appending an epigram such as, “Human Rights left unattended may be removed, destroyed, or damaged by the security services.”

Click here for further details and full results.

Report and photos by Tony Collman, British correspondent for the E-Journal.

via American Go E-Journal http://www.usgo.org/news/2013/12/south-london-go-club-hosts-kyu-players-teaching-day/

by John Power, EJ Japan Correspondent

Japan Eliminated from Nong Shim: As reported last week, Japan made a bad start to the second round, held in Pusan, of the 15th Nong Shim Spicy Noodles Cup when its third player, Kono Rin 9P, was eliminated. Yuki Satoshi 9P also lost his first game, so it looked as if Japan might suffer the ignominy of going winless. Cho U averted that with a good win, but he lost the final game in the round, so the Japanese team has been eliminated. The experiment of blooding two young and inexperienced players (Yo Chito and Anzai Nobuaki; see our report on the opening round, played October 22-25) has not been a success, though in their defense one has to say they didn’t do much worse than their seniors. The final round will be played in Shanghai from February 25 to 28. China has three players left and Korea two.
Results for the remaining games in this round follow: Game 6 (Dec. 3). Chen Yaoye 9P (China) (B) defeated Kang Tong-yun 9P (Korea) by resig. Game 7 (Dec. 4). Chen (B) d. Yuki Satoshi 9P (Japan) by resig. Game 8 (Dec. 5). Chen (B) d. Ch’oe Ch’eol-han 9P (Korea) by 18.5 points. Game 9 (Dec. 6). Cho U 9P (Japan) (B) d. Chen by resig. Game 10 (Dec. 7). Kim Chi-seok 9P (Korea) d. Cho by resig. photos courtesy Go Game Guru; click here for more Nonshim reports, photos and game records.

China Wins 15th Agon Kiriyama Cup Play-Off: For the 11th year in a row, China has won the annual play-off between the holders of the Japanese and Chinese versions of the Agon Kiriyama Cup, which is sponsored by the Agon Buddhist sect. The game was held in Hangzhou City on December 3; taking white, Lian Xiao 4P of China defeated Murakawa Daisuke 7P of Japan by resignation after 164 moves.

Unusually Strong Meijin League Starts: The 39th Meijin League started with a game between two heavyweights, Yamashita Keigo 9P and Hane Naoki 9P, on December 5. Playing white, Yamashita made a good start with a win by resignation. Go Weekly made an interesting observation. All the members of the quartet that dominated the first decade of this century, Yamashita, Hane, Cho U, and Takao Shinji, are present in this league. That is probably quite unusual for a league, as usually one of these players is Kisei, Meijin or Honinbo. There are joined by two other top players from recent years, Kono Rin and Yuki Satoshi, so that makes this year’s Meijin League a very strong one. The other three players are Ryu Shikun, Murakawa Daisuke, and Ko Iso. One of the nine players will have the unenviable task next September of challenging Iyama Yuta.

Women’s Meijin League: Two games in the 26th Women’s Meijin League were played on December 5. Newly-minted Women’s Honinbo Mukai Chiaki (B) beat Suzuki Ayumi 6P by resig. and Yoshida Mika 8P (W, at right) beat Chinen Kaori 4P by 10.5 points. For Suzuki, this was her second loss, so she dropped out of a theoretical tie with Kato Keiko 6P (on 4-1) for first. Mukai and Suzuki are both on 3-2, so they still have a chance if Kato stumbles in the final round.

Promotion: A win on December 5 was Yoshioka Kaoru’s 150th as 7-dan, so it earned him promotion to 8-dan.

via American Go E-Journal http://www.usgo.org/news/2013/12/the-power-report-japan-eliminated-from-nong-shim-china-wins-15th-agon-kiriyama-cup-play-off-unusually-strong-meijin-league-starts-womens-meijin-league/

December 14: Arlington, VA
NOVA presents the Slate and Shell Open
Gary Smith gary@novagoclub.org 703-254-6429

Get the latest go events information.

via American Go E-Journal http://www.usgo.org/news/2013/12/this-weeks-go-calendar-arlington/

“I taught go to 371 classroom teachers in 12 states last year,” Georgette Yakman (right) told the E-Journal over lunch recently on New York’s Upper West Side before heading home to Vermont. She had attended a math education conference to promote ST∑@M, the framework for integrated instruction she began to develop in 2006 (YOUTH GO: Improving School Scores 11/19/2007 EJ). ST∑@M has become a full time occupation, with certified educators and programs throughout the US and as far away as South Korea, where ST∑@M is now a part of the standard national curriculum for K-12 public schools. “When I help a school begin to apply the ST∑@M framework, I start with a two-day workshop,” she said. “I spend about two or three hours of that time teaching them go. It’s a perfect medium that pulls together science, technology and engineering concepts in a mathematical context – you need math skills to figure out who won – while also presenting challenges in the realm of the arts. The game itself has a kind of aesthetic; players need language arts to learn by studying and analyzing games; and go players can further enrich their connection to the game through the fine arts, understanding its context in history social studies and ethics and so on.”  ST∑@M is a further evolution of the STEM framework, which encourages educators to blend lessons from the fields of science, technology, engineering and math into integrated lessons in project-based learning applications. Yakman contends they didn’t go far enough. “Without the language arts, how will students communicate with each other to build projects? Without the liberal and fine arts, how will they appreciate and express the context and meaning of what they’re doing? What good is an architect who builds ugly or non-user friendly buildings, or a scientist that can’t explain what he’s doing? I use go for interdisciplinary learning, because it offers a fluid blend of technical and human-related (left and right-brained) skills, and is a natural way of progressing all types of intellectual development.” photo: Yakman delivering acceptance speech for NCTC’s STEM Teacher of the Year 2009
– Roy Laird 

via American Go E-Journal http://www.usgo.org/news/2013/12/from-stem-to-st%e2%88%91m-teaching-go-along-the-way/

Allen Louderback 1k (right), won the upper division and Tai-An Cha 5k (left), won the lower division at the Davis/Sacramento Go Clu Winter Quarterly Tournament on December 7 at the Arden-Dimick library in Sacramento. The Club Champions were announced for the club members who won the most games during the year, with Jeff Horn, 1d, winning the upper division and Jeff Murphy, 4k, winning the lower division. – report/photos by Willard Haynes

via American Go E-Journal http://www.usgo.org/news/2013/12/louderback-cha-win-in-davissacramento/

Nearly two dozen players braved wintry weather to attend the Evanston Go Club’s quarterly tournament on Saturday, December 7. “Nobody guessed the meaning of the tournament’s name, ‘Caught Ya Nappin’” reports organizer Mark Rubenstein. The answer is that on December 7, 1991, The Recording Industry Association of America sued the peer-to-peer file-sharing service Napster, alleging copyright infringement, in A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc. In an effort to increase tournament attendance, the entry fee for the next tournament in March 2014 will be free for anyone who has not attended an Evanston tournament in 2013. “We’ve averaged 34 players per tournament over the last 21 years”, said Rubenstein, president of the Evanston Go Club. “This is our way of encouraging people who have been absent for a while to come back. See you in March!”
Winners: Albert Yen 6d, Ezra Teitelbaum 2k and Crystal Lin 14k.
photo: Albert Yen plays Lixin Cheng; photo courtesy Mark Rubenstein

via American Go E-Journal http://www.usgo.org/news/2013/12/albert-yen-tops-wintry-evanston-caught-ya-nappin-tourney/

The 1st MLily Cup finished on December 6 with China’s newest 9d player Mi Yuting (left) at the helm. On his journey to his breakthrough win, the 18-year-old Mi defeated Lee Sedol 9p, Kang Dongyun 9p, Kong Jie 9p, Dang Yifei 4p, and Wang Xi 9p. Final challenger Gu Li 9d hoped to end his three-year runner-up streak but Mi dominated 3-1.

The MLily Cup is a biennial international go tournament sponsored by MLily Meng Baihe. It is intended to alternate with the Bailing Cup every other year. For more information about this year’s MLily Cup including photos and game records, please visit Go Game Guru.
— Annalia Linnan, based on a longer article by Go Game Guru; photo courtesy of Go Game Guru

via American Go E-Journal http://www.usgo.org/news/2013/12/mi-yuting-triumphs-at-1st-mlily-cup/