China was way ahead in this year’s Nongshim Cup with three players left even after Japan was eliminated and Korea had only one player left.

Turned out that strength is not always in the numbers: the last man standing from the South Korean team, Lee Changho, single-handedly won the cup for his country after defeating all remaining Chinese players: Liu Xing, Gu Li and Chang Hao.

Lee Changho defeated Chang Hao by resignation.

In the game with Gu Li, Lee Changho also won by resignation.

You can find the complete tournament table at Mr. Kin’s website.

Just a few days after Cho U captured number one Japanese title, Kisei, from Yamashita Keigo the same two met again in the first game of the Judan title. This time Cho U is the title holder and Yamashita Keigo is the challenger.

Cho U captured Judan from Takao Shinji last year. Takao then put up a good fight in the qualification tournament to become challenger, but was defeated by Yamashita in the final of the knock-out tournament that decided the challenger.

Cho U started his defense of the Judan title well and won the first game. The next game will be played on March 25th.

Here is the game record: Cho U played black and won by resignation.

You can see also the complete tournament table here.

I played at the New Jersey Open again this year, and had a great time.

Many of my old friends were present. One old friend who had been conspicuously absent for years made an appearance. Don DeCourcelle, who hosted the New Jersey Yang Workshop for two years, made the NJ Open his first tournament in his return to the go scene after an absence of at least five years.

I played at the rank I "earned" at the Hoboken tournament last year, which is 9k. I was very close to 8k and would like to have played at that level, but I know that the AGA has a policy against one stone self promotions, so I didn't try to push it at registration.

I came to find that, as last year, they were lax in enforcing the policy against one stone self promotions. I found this annoying. I guess it doesn't pay to know and follow the rules.

I went 2-3 and solidified my rating of 9k achieving a revised rating of 9.11 with a sigma of 0.48.

I took my Macbook with me to the tournament and used it to record my games, which drew some attention from the younger set. During the fist game I carelessly misplaced a stone, and recorded only up to the point where it mattered. With the remaining four games I was much more careful and recorded up to the last move of these games. I actually think that recording hurt my games rather than helped them, but at least I have the game records for analysis.

I have already had Yilun Yang review Round 2 and Round 3. I will have him review Round 4 and Round 5 during our next lesson.

Round 1:

I played white against a Chinese Opening. I won that game by 13.5, and did not find myself feeling under pressure during the game at all.

Round 2:

I played white again. This time it was a very close game which I lost by 0.5. I was able to pinpoint a totally unnecessary move on my part which cost me the game. I was so ashamed by the offending move that I was tempted not to show it to Mr. Yang because I knew what he would say about it. I showed it anyway, and he said exactly what I expected, "This is a 25 kyu move." I definitely didn't deserve to win that game. I did take comfort though in knowing that I was playing at the right level by coming in so close in spite of such a terrible mistake.

Round 3:

This game was with a young girl who I had played at the Oza two years before. She had won all her games when she played me, and I think she may have gone on to win the rest of them. I lost this game by 14.5. I was surprised, however, when Mr. Yang reviewed it I was told that I should have won the game. I made some bad errors that prevented me from doing so, but apparently I started out well. This game was the third game of the day, and I don't really like to play more than one serious game per day, so by the time this game was under way I was exhausted. I actually stood for this game to remain focused. It probably worked against me though by making me even more tired.

Round 4

I was refreshed the next morning, and this game I had high hopes of winning. Early in the game I captured quite a large group. Unfortunately my opponent fought back valiantly, cutting off a couple key stones which added significantly to his territory. I lost that game by 3.5.

Round 5

This game was against a young woman who had won all four of her previous games. At the end of the game she told me that I had offered her the biggest challenge of the tournament. During the game she actually said at one point that she would really like to get sente. I know the feeling well. I won that game by 18.5.

I'm not disappointed with my results since two of my losses were so close.

Game five of the 34th Kisei title resulted in Cho U’s win, which ensured his capturing of the title from Yamashita Keigo by a 4-1 score. Yamashita captured the Kisei title in 2006 from Hane Naoki, then defended it for 3 consecutive years.

It looks like Cho U’s bad form from 2009 has not followed him in 2010.

Here is the game record from the last game: Cho U played white and won by 1.5 points.

More photos here. You can also see a couple of videos from the previous game here.

Kong Jie of China has all the reasons to be happy: he has defeated Lee Changho of S. Korea in the final of the international LG Cup.

Kong Jie won the best-of-three final with two straight wins. Since he has already won Samsung Cup and Asian TV Cup, this win puts Kong Jie in the number one position in the world judging by the number of international competitions won in the last year.

Here is the record of the first game. Kong Jie, playing white, won by 2.5 points.

Here is the record of the second (and last) game. Kong Jie, playing black, won by 1.5 points.

You can find the complete tournament table here.

Yamashita Keigo won for the first time in this year’s Kisei title match, trying to defend the title against Cho U. The score is now 3-1 for Cho U, who has 3 more chances to capture the title from Yamashita.

Here is the record of the forth game. Yamashita Keigo, playing white, won by 7.5 points.

Next game will be played on February 25th and 26th. You can find the complete tournament table here.

Vermont: From the Word Go Tournament February 13 2010

• Game 1: even against a shodan, I killed myself in byo yomi, oops.
  
• Game 2: even against a shodan, I ate a lot of his stones, including a basic corner shape when he ignored the sente descent. Study paying off ^^
  
• Game 3: giving 2 stones to a 2k, and he grew much bigger than I did, oh well.
  
• Game 4: giving 4 stones to a 4k, feeling way behind, but finagling one of his corners into a carpenter's square which sadly passed away, so I won that game.
  

The strongest female professional player in the world, Rui Naiwei 9 dan, has defended Women Myeongin (the Korean equivalent of the Japanese Meijin) title by defeating Cho Hyeyeon 2:1.

Interestingly, this is the third year in a row when Cho Hyeyeon became challenger against Rui Naiwei.

Cho Hyeyeon started this title match well, winning by resignation in the first game, but Rui Naiwei won the following two games. Here is the record of the third game. Rui Naiwei, playing black, won by resignation.

You can find the complete tournament table at this link.

Cho U seems to be back in good shape after a bad year: he is just one win away from capturing the Kisei title from Yamashita Keigo.

Here is the record of the third game. Cho U, white, won by 8.5 points after a very confusing multi-step ko fight involving a large black group.

Next game will be played on February 18th and 19th.

The complete tournament table is here.

Park Jieun 9 dan won the 8th Jeongganjang Cup for South Korea. Since all other Korean team members have been eliminated in the first 2 stages of this competition, Park Jieun had to defeat the last member of the Japanese team (Suzuki Ayumi) as well as the three remaining members of the Chinese team (Song Ronghui, Ye Gui and Li He, who won this competition last year for China).

China had a very strong start this year, just like last year, after Wang Chenxing won three games in a row, and it looked for a while as if it will have an easy win.

You can see below a photo and the record of the decisive game between Park Jieun and Li He.

Park Jieun played white and won by resignation..

You can find the complete tournament table here.

From: “magpie” alaskamagpie@me.com

Hello Folks,

For our iGo/Baduk demonstration at UAA on January 23rd at
11:30am to 2:30pm we will meet at the Edward & Catyryn Rasmuson Hall of UAA.

A map of UAA is here:

http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/map/upload/uaa_main_campus.pdf

Enlarge and find building #5 … that’s the place.

Hope to see you there … and remember, Thursday at 5:00pm
at Title Wave books off Northern Lights and Spenard Rd.

Magpie Jon

I wrote about Fenghuan City match from China in an older entry which contains some pictures and videos of the commented game. Just found today a very nice video from the event itself showing tourists, people dressed as Go stones moving/dancing on the board, etc.

Many thanks to kennabee for the video.

Amazingly, Lee Changho lost to an amateur player (Han Taehee) in the 2nd BC Card Cup, in less than 100 moves!

Here is the game record.

BC Card Cup is a mixed tournament as amaterus can also participate. There were five Korean amateurs who each managed to defeat three professional players in a row to make it through the preliminaries, but of the five ones only Han Taehee won in the main tournament.

Yu Bin, a famous Chinese player who used to be in the top a few years ago, also lost to an amateur (Na Hyun).

Here is the game record between Yu Bin 9p and Na Hyun 6 dan amateur: Yu Bin, playing black, lost by half a point.

Iyama Yuta of Japan then restored things to “the natural order” and eliminated Na Hyun. Here is the game record: Iyama Yuta, playing white, won by resignation.

You can find the tournament table at this link; make sure to look at both top-most (main tournament) and second from the top (preliminary) tables.

Cho U, challenger in this year’s Kisei title match, won game one against title holder Yamashita Keigo.

In their most recent encounter, Yamashita captured the Tengen title from Cho U last month.

The record of game one is here. Cho U, playing white, won by resignation.

The tournament table is here. Game two will be played on January 27 and 28.

A while back, I divided up the work on PromoteGo.org into three distinct phases:

1. Build a better club list for usgo.org.
2. Provide tools for helping new clubs to form.
3. Provide a service to schedule games in public.

It's now time to start work on Phase 2, building new clubs. There are a few different angles I want to tackle on this: 1. Encouraging people to put club entries into the system for clubs they want to form, 2. Creating a new kind of "club interest" listing to help connect people looking for clubs, and 3. Messaging people via email and through the site when there is information about new clubs.

Getting new club entries into the system

To get new club entries into the system, we'll have a flag indicating that a club entry is in its formative phase. This will enable us to highlight new clubs that are likely to need support from the community, and new clubs that might be in need of more interest before they can meet regularly. The club owner can remove the flag from his/her entry when the club has matured and has a regular meeting time.

Club interest listings

I think this should really be about individuals, not about clubs. When people don't find a club nearby, they should be able to enter private addresses that indicate work or home addresses, places where they spend time and might be able to attend a club nearby. Then, the system will search for clusters of people who are interested in forming clubs, and help them get in contact with each other through the site.

Messaging about clubs

This would be a Facebook-style status page. If you've indicated that you're interested in new clubs, or in forming new clubs, then the system would add a message to your status page to that effect, and send an email to the user to let them know that they have a new message. These messages could also be used to communicate between members who don't yet know each other, as a safe alternative to email.

Summary

This is just a rough sketch of what I'm planning on building in phase 2. If you have feedback, I'd love to hear it. Just leave a comment here, or contact me at the following email address: contact at promotego dot org.