Foreign News

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Nihon Ki-in and they will hold the Summer Go School from 26th August 2014!

Major New Features 2014: - You will play at Japan’s most popular amateur tournament called ‘Takara Shuzou Cup’ at which over 1000 people play! All participants will be given fantastic prize by the sponsor.

• You will visit Kamakura city where the 10th game was played by Go Seigen and Kitani Minoru. (Kamakura is a very popular tourist destination. Kamakura offers numerous historical monuments and Kamakura's sand beaches attract large crowds during summer)

• You will visit the most famous and traditional Goban shop in Tokyo. You can see more than US$100,000 expensive go boards and a very old goban from 16th century!

Special Offer! :
If you register before 30th April 2014, you will get 10% discount of the fee!

Vanessa, who's now studying in California, has been nominated to represent Europe in the 2nd Bailing Aitou Cup in Beijing starting on 13th March.

The event is a mixed amateur and professional one, with a total of 64 players in the Main competition phase (16 professionals are seeded into this), and is held every two years.

The amateur group will be part of the Preliminary section with 16 Chinese, 8 Koreans, 4 Japanese, 2 Chinese Taipei, one each from the USA and Europe. The remainder of the Preliminary section is open to all professionals, so it will be quite tough for any amateur to reach the Main competition phase, in which money prizes are awarded to all players: from 20,000 Yuan for first round losers to 1,800,000 Yuan for the winner.

We wish her every success!

Playing Go in a sumo ring

Since I have moved to England in Autumn 2012, I have played more Go tournaments than I would have ever thought of. One day in Spring 2013 I logged on to an online Go platform and read about the Osaka Go camp August 2013 in Japan. It sounded like the right combination of joy and learning, and it didn’t take me long to sign up.

That was certainly one of my best decisions that year, so in this story I’d like to write you a bit about my experience in Japan.

The Go camp was held at a Sumo training center, so some of the tables were in a Sumo ring that you would now and then stumble over. Casual playing and invidual learning usually last till late in the night.

We had professional Go training and a camp league where we would play with each other.

19th August 2012 in the Online Daily Telegraph:

It is billed as the Olympics of the mind. As the world's athletes flew home from Britain last week, competitors of a different kind were gathering just across the English Channel for an international contest of their own: the World Mind Sports Games. William Langley reports from Lille on the mental battle being waged by bridge, chess and Go players from 70 nations.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/9484579/Olympics-of-the-mind-Furrowed-brows-and-frenzied-thinking.html

The Nihon Ki-in have announced that Noriyuki Nakayama, 6 dan professional, died on 16th February 2010 aged 77. He was a well known and much loved professional teacher at many European and American Go Congresses and author of the book "The Treasure Chest Enigma".

When President Obama visited China in November 2009 he presented Preident Hu Jintao with a Go or Weiqi set. It consisted of a US-made wooden board and Chinese jade stones in American glass bowls, showing a fusion between the culture and skills of the two countries. You can see see the board being made in the AGA E-Journal report. No doubt Obama's knowledge of Chinese culture gained through this gift helped when he met the Dalai Lama on 18th February 2010.