After-school go club teachers in Seattle have often used handouts with go problems, but this year they have started giving each student their own workbook with their name on it.  The results were surprising: the beginners really liked the books, sometimes more than playing.  One student told me he was going to sign up for the spring session just so that he could finish his workbook!  The go clubs are in local elementary schools, and most of the students are in grades 1-3.  The Center is mostly using English translations of the “Level Up” books by Lee Jae-Hwan, with some of the “Speed Baduk” workbooks by Kim Sung-Rae as well.

The workbooks have been an education for the teachers as well.  The books use a lot of repetition, and progress much more slowly than the typical introductory class at the Seattle Go Center.  “Level Up” doesn’t introduce the concept of “two eyes” until the end of the 2nd volume.  Apparently, the students like the repetition, as it makes the problems seem easy.  But over time, they get a thorough grounding in the fundamentals.  The “Level Up” series has 10 volumes; the “Jump Level Up” series follows that.

Finding the beginning volumes of either series in the U.S. can be hard, but the “Level Up” books can be ordered directly from Korea.  They are shipped by international surface mail, so it takes a while for them to arrive.  One order took about 2 weeks, another order, about 8 weeks.  To order books, contact Baduktopia at info@baduktopia.co.kr.  More information on Baduktopia can be found on Facebook.  Photo/Report by Brian Allen

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Li Keqiang’s Go Metaphor: In a departure from previous years, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang did not cite any traditional Chinese sayings or poems at a recent news conference after the annual National People’s Congress. Instead, he used a go metaphor to convey his message. “In weiqi – a chessboard game invented by the Chinese – one has to both plan the big picture and also get the key moves right,” he said, explaining his strategy in managing China’s economy.
– Based on a report in the South China Morning Post; thanks to Melanie Manion and Dave Weimer for passing it along.

More on Legal Go Positions: “A colleague of mine 30 years ago offered a very clever way of accurately estimating the number of legal go positions, (Number of Legal 18×18 Go Positions Computed 3/17)” writes Eric Osman. “His name is Peter Sichel and his clever way was this: generate random board arrangements, and see what percentage of those are legal. If you want more accuracy, generate some more! The estimate for the number of legal positions is merely your percentage of legal ones multiplied by the total number of possible positions which of course is 3 to the square of 19 power.”

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March 28: Arlington, VA
NOVA Cherry Blossom Festival Tournament
Gary Smith gary@novagoclub.org 703-254-6429

March 28: Cambridge, MA
Boston Spring Open 2015
Walther Chen walther.chen@gmail.com

March 29: Cupertino, CA
19th Jujo Jiang Cup Youth Goe Tournament
Mingjiu Jiang mingjiu7p@hotmail.com 650-796-1602

Get the latest go events information.

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The AGA Go Camp will take place from July 18th through July 25th at YMCA Camp Kern in Oregonia, Ohio (just 40 minutes from Cincinatti). Directors Amanda Miller and Nano Rivera return to organize the event, and they invite campers of all skill levels, between the ages of 8 and 18, to join them for a week of go-playing and fun.  More information regarding the camp will be available soon, and registration should open within the next two weeks,  keep your eyes out for future announcements in the E-J. Potential campers who participated in the NAKC or Redmond Cup are eligible for a $400 scholarship, and need-based scholarships will also be available. Any questions can be e-mailed to Amanda Miller at agagocampeast@gmail.com. -Story and Photo by Amanda Miller.

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The School Teams Tournament has extended their registration deadline to this Wednesday, to catch any last minute teams that didn’t have time to sign up.  The tourney starts this Saturday. All matches will be played online, and schools from Canada, the US, and Mexico are all invited.  Scholarship and cash prizes will both be distributed.   To register, fill out the form here, by March 25. More information may be found on the AGHS website. 

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Players from the University of Tokyo edged out players from UCLA in an online friendship match on Saturday, February 14. The University of Tokyo team defeated the UCLA team with a 3-2 record. Players from both teams are active members of their university go clubs. On the top board, Chaohao Pan, the UCLA team captain, yielded to Kentaro Tsutsumi after he lost a string of key stones when trying to capture Tsutsumi’s invading white dragon. On the second board, Norman Tsai from UCLA lost to Hikaru Ishikawa in a game that was peaceful and balanced until the eightieth move, when Ishikawa fatally punished an overplay by Tsai. Leo Zhang scored UCLA’s first victory with a win on the fifth board against Takaya Matsuura, whose mistake in the early endgame cost him the life of a huge group. The game on the fourth board was also decided by an endgame error, but in this case it cost UCLA’s Chenyi Zhu the game against Keito Tabuchi. UCLA’s other win came from Izuki Matsuba, the only club member from Japan, who defeated his compatriot Shuhei Nakajima with a solid lead throughout the game. “It is a great experience to play with the Japanese players,” said Chenyi Zhu. “They are strong, but I am confident that the victory will belong to us the next time.“

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Julie Burrall 1d topped the Davis/Sacramento Go Club’s Spring Tournament at the Rancho Cordova library on March 14. There were 10 players. Burrall won the upper division, and Tai-An Cha, 5k, won the lower division. The library co-sponsored the event and advertised it at the library. “In addition to the tournament, we set up an area to teach beginners about go,” reports Willard Haynes. “We introduced the game to five people. We also celebrated Pi Day with a chocolate cream pie.”
photo: John Patterson teaching.

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Number of Legal 18×18 Go Positions Computed; 19×19 On The Horizon: “It took about 50,000 CPU hours and 4PB of disk IO, but now we know the exact number of legal 18×18 Go positions,” johntromp wrote in a recent post on slashdot. “Seeking computing power for the ultimate 19×19 count,” the post continues. “Thanks to the Chinese Remainder Theorem, the work of computing L(19,19) can be split up into 9 jobs that each compute 64 bits of the 566-bit result. Allowing for some redundancy, we need from 10 to 13 servers, each with at least 8 cores, 512GB RAM, and ample disk space (10-15TB), running for about 5-9 months.”
Thanks to Steve Colburn for passing this along.

Latest XKCD Go Comic: In a possibly related development, here’s the latest go comic from xkcd, “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”

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John Power, Japan Correspondent

China Beats Japan in Agon-Kiriyama Play-off: The 16th Agon Kiriyama Cup Japan-China Play-off was held at the Kyoto headquarters of the Agon sect of Buddhism on March 14. Representing China, the 17-year old Ke Jie (right), winner of the Chinese version of this title, beat Iyama Yuta of Japan, so China won this title for the 12th time in a row. Holding white, Ke secured a resignation after 146 moves. Iyama seems to be in the worst slump of his career. Besides this defeat, he lost the two title matches he played at the end of last year and he has just lost three games in a row in the Kisei title match. The seventh Kisei game is going to be extremely important for him.

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Hungarian Schoolkids Championship: The Hungarian Schoolkids Championship, a class C tournament, played on 3/7/2015 in Budapest, Hungary, was won by Dominik Boviz 4d (photo), second came Viktor Toth 13k and third was Barnabas Kollner 8k. Result table.

Trigantius: The Trigantius, a class A tournament, played on 3/7/2015 in Cambridge, United Kingdom, was won by Charles Hibbert 3d, second came Andrew Simons 4d ( photo ) and third was Alex Rix 3d. Result table.

In-seong’s Spring Go Camp: Set for April 16-19 near Freiburg, Germany. Info/registration here.

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