The 5th US-Canada Youth Friendship Tournament will be held Saturday, February 9, at 4pm Eastern time (1pm Pacific) in the AGA Tournaments Room on KGS. Organized by Lawrence Ku, the popular transnational match pits the strongest youth in North America against each other, and often draws large crowds of observers. Canada has won for the past three years in a row, and the US is itching for a win. The current crop of contenders (with US players listed first) features Calvin Sun 7d vs. Bill Lin 8d; Hugh Zhang 7d vs. Jianing Gan 8d; Albert Yen 6d vs. Irene Sha 7d; Andrew Lu 6d vs. Andrew Huang 6d; Vincent Zhuang 6d vs. Oliver Wolf 5d; Aaron Ye 5d vs. David Fan. -Paul Barchilon, E-J Youth Editor
Insight Into the Universe is a new film about Yasui Santetsu, a go player and famous Japanese astronomer, better known as Shibukawa Shunkai. The creator of the Japanese Jokyo calendar and the author of many books about astronomy, he also played with his friend and rival, Honinbo Dosaku, in the “castle games.” The famous game between Dosaku and Santetsu, where Santetsu opened on tengen, is depicted in the 2012 film, which was directed by Yojiro Takita and stars Junichi Okada, a Japanese actor, singer, and member of the pop group V6. The heroine in the film, played by Miyazaki Aoi, works at a shrine which still exists today; click here to see Cho U 9p dedicating some of his famous go problems to that shrine. An English-subtitled version of the film does not appear to be available at this time.
- thanks to Go Game Guru
“Regarding Roy Laird’s article, ‘SGFs and iStuff’ (2/1 EJ),” writes Eric Anderson. “Please — if you’re going to do a comparative product review, please spend the effort to investigate the features. Otherwise, you’re using your powerful and respected platform to spread casual (and misleading) opinions, and it’s really quite unfair to your readers. Specifically — ‘Seems worth the extra cost unless you really need to import large databases.’ Um, no. SmartGo Kifu is an excellent problem and game collection, combined with a Go playing engine. It includes a form of SGF editor; but that editor is not particularly suitable either for recording games or for constructing problems — at least, not compared to EasyGo, which is specifically (and very well) designed to do … SGF editing. Bulk file import and export is only one of the features you’d want in an SGF editor; other features include tree-editing capabilities (ever tried fixing a recording mistake in SmartGo Kifu?), problem editing (ever tried entering un-numbered initial conditions?), and variation analysis. Don’t take my word for it. Here’s an independent review. Although at first sight EasyGo looks like a close-cousin to SmartGo Kifu, it is not. They share a goal though: analyzing games, exploring variations and solving problems. But they focus on different sets of features, and work very different. That review — only six paragraphs long — is much more insightful and thorough, and helpful to readers, than your ‘Seems worth the extra cost…’”
“All that seemed necessary was to copy the linked-to sgf on the web page onto my desktop,” suggests Kirby Smith. “Then I could use the ‘edit’ mode of the KGS interface (CGoban3) to view it and its commentary. I recall that The Many Faces of Go will also open these. Thanks for your journal’s many interesting articles.”
A number of readers also suggested this solution, which works great for desktops, but Laird’s review was specifically referring to smartphone apps available for Apple products.
“This is the last chance to sign up for the Brunei Friendship Cup,” reports Andrew Huang, AGHS Tournament Organizer. ”Registration will close Wednesday night at midnight. The team is still short on female players for pair go, so ladies, I urge you to find a partner and try for pair go.” More info can be found on the AGHS website. To register, follow this link. -Paul Barchilon, E-J Youth Editor
February 8-12: Parsippany, NJ
North American Go Convention
Edward Zhang www.ngol.us@gmail.com 703-888-9240 407-810-4098
February 9: Palo Alto, CA
Bay Area Go Players Association Monthly AGA Ratings Tournament
Roger Schrag rs1249@bayareago.org 510-501-2701
Steve Burrall sburrall@comcast.net 916-688-2858
February 9: Simsbury, CT
Simsbury Open Scholastic Go Championship
Michael Scudder michael.j.scudder@gmail.com 860-738-7350
Gert Hilhorst gert@hilhorst.onmicrosoft.com
February 10: Phoenix, AZ
2013 Phoenix Chinese Week Go Tournament
Quan Li qb081449@gmail.com 602-326-7556
Bill Gundberg bill@azgoclub.org 480-831-5567
Get the latest go events information.
Two German brothers are collaborating to create a free movie trailer to spread the game of go. Sven Walther is a go player and computer scientist, while his brother Lars is an actor and filmmaker. Sven says he’s driven to “inspire people with interesting stuff” while Lars is “wowed by the stories and the drama in a game that appears to be so simple.” The brothers have teamed up to crowd-source $8,000 “to make a short video clip, like a movie trailer, to promote the game of go.” Rather than explaining the rules of the game, the Walthers intend to work with real actors and real movie people to create a professional clip that will create a “fascinating atmosphere to represent the game. The novice will see it and say ‘Whoa, what’s that game? Wanna learn more!’” They’ll make the video available on YouTube, so anyone “can use it to promote the game wherever you want.” With 50 days to go, the duo has already raised just over $2,200 in pledges. With several other professionally-produced shorts – the romantic French go video The Album Leaf Within Dreams (Go Art: Romantic Go Video 12/3/2012 EJ) and the 2012 European Women’s Goe Championship promo (The Red Dress Tesuji 8/26/2012 EJ) – already available, and the feature-length documentary The Surrounding Game now in production, a critical mass of go videos seems to be building.
Young American go players can now sign up for the 20th annual Redmond Cup Tournament. For the first time, the tourney will be held on KGS instead of IGS. There are two divisions in the Cup; the Junior league for kids under 12 years old, and the Senior league for those under 18, on August 10 2012. The two finalists in each division win a free trip to the 2013 US Go Congress to play the final games in person. Competitors in the Senior League must have an AGA rank of 1 dan or higher, in the Junior 5 kyu or stronger. The participants must be members of the American Go Association or the Canadian Go Association and either residents of the U.S., Canada or Mexico, or citizens of the United States living anywhere in the world, provided that they are also members of the AGA. The tournament director for the Redmond Cup is Michael Bull; AGA rules for all games. To register e-mail youth@usgo.org with your name, phone #, date of birth, AGA rating, KGS ID, and citizenship. The registration deadline is March 10, 2013. The Cup is sponsored by Michael Redmond 9P and his family, the American Go Association and the American Go Foundation. Photo: 2012 finalists, Jianing Gan 7d (l), and Calvin Sun 7d(r) compete at the US Go Congress in Black Mountain, NC. – Paul Barchilon, Youth Editor.