Korea Prime Minister Cup: Interview with Schayan Hamrah (Austria)

Published on Sunday, 28 October 2012 21:20

Schayan Hamrah, the Austrian player at the KPMC, found himself facing China's Hu Yuqing in the fifth round. Ranka interviewed him just after the game ended.

Schayan Hamrah (Ito Toshiko)Ranka: How did it go?
Schayan: I was crushed. He was too strong.

Ranka: Well then, tell us about your games yesterday.
Schayan: In the first round I had an easy win against the player from Iran. In the second round I played Milan Jadron from Slovakia. I had played him before. Slovakia is not far from Vienna, so I often go to Slovakian tournaments, and Czech tournaments. I like his fighting spirit. Games with him are always full of action, and this time I won. Then my game against Kwinten Missiaen from Belgium went very smoothly for me, and I won by a safe margin of about 15 points.

Ranka: Tell us something about yourself.
Schayan: I was born in Vienna, but I come from a Persian background. My parents are Iranian. They settled in Vienna in 1990, where my father was a university student. I'm now 17 years old, attending high school. I've been playing go for three and a half years. I have dual citizenship, so I might be able to represent Iran at some future tournament.

Ranka: How did you get started?
Shayan: I encountered the game by coincidence on the Internet. Then I saw the movie 'The Beautiful Mind', about a mathematician, in which there is a scene with a go board and they get very emotional about it. That was when I decided to learn to play, so I went to a go club in Vienna.

Ranka: Are you glad you started playing?
Schayan: Of course. What a question!

Ranka: Do you play on the Internet?
Schayan: I like to play lightning games on KGS, but I don't like to play long games on the computer. It's a bad atmosphere. I made an exception to play in the Pandanet team tournament, however, for the sake of Austria.

Ranka: Thank you very much.

Korea Prime Minister Cup (First Day)

Published on Sunday, 28 October 2012 07:25

Yeomju Gymnasium Arena (Ito Toshiko)The 7th Korea Prime Minister Cup International Amateur Baduk Championship is being held October 27-28 in Gwangju. The tournament is hosted by the Korea Amateur Baduk Association (KABA) and the Gwangju Amateur Baduk Association, and is sponsored by the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the Korea Sports Promotion Foundation, the Korean Olympic Committee, Guangju Metropolitan City, Korean Air, and the Hana Bank. Also cooperating are the Korean Baduk Association and the Asian Go Federation (AGF).

The tournament is organized as a simplified MacMahon system. On the basis of declared ranks, the field is divided into two halves, the top half starting out with one extra point for pairing purposes. This year the top-ranked player is China's Hu Yuqing, 8-dan, twice former world amateur champion and recent winner of the Qingdao Cup in China. Next in rank are three 7-dan players from Canada, Chinese Taipei, and the USA, followed by 6-dans from Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, and five European countries (Azerbaijan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia,and the Ukraine). Notable among the 5-dans is the hometown favorite, Korea's Han Seung-Joo. Also competing are includes four Korean extras, ranked 7-10 kyu, who were added to fill out the bottom half of the full field of 72.

The tournament was preceded by an orientation meeting on October 26 at the players' hotel, where the pairings for the first round were announced. Loud cheers went up when it was revealed that Russia would play the USA.

Alexei Lazarev (Ito Toshiko)The tournament itself is being held at the huge Yeomju Gymnasium, located next to a world cup soccer stadium. At 9:30 a.m. on October 27 the constestants were seated at their boards in half of the gymnasium arena, awaiting the start of the opening ceremony. The other half of the arena was being prepared for a children's team tournament. The opening ceremony consisted of a rapid succession of speeches by the sponsors, starting with a rousing welcome from the Gwangju's mayor Kang Un-Tae and ending with a rousing command to start playing, given by KABA's president Cho Kun-Ho. The players fell to with a will.

In the first round, the 6-dan-7-dan confrontation between Russia and the USA turned into a long and determined battle that lasted more than two hours and ended in victory for Russia's Alexei Lazarev. In other first-round games, the Asian big powers (China, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea) defeated opponents from Luxembourg, Australia, Madagascar, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. Singapore and Thailand also won, against Belarus and Brazil, getting the Asian zone off to a good start. Meanwhile, the rain that had been falling since early morning had turned into a downpour, and most of the players were content to remain inside the gymnasium complex for lunch.

Chen Chi-jui (Ito Toshiko)In the second round, the Asian players began to encounter each other. Another 6-dan-7-dan confrontation took place between Chinese Taipei, represented by 12-year-old middle-schooler Chen Chi-jui, and Hong Kong, represented by 19-year old Chan Nai-san, a freshman at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Although Chen outranked Chan, age and experience proved their value: victory went to Hong Kong. Chan Nai-san's comment: 'I was lucky.' In a greater upset, Vietnam's Mai-duy Le (2-dan) beat Singapore's Xiang Zhang (6-dan). Meanwhile New Zealand's Doyoung Kim defeated Czechia's teenaged hope Lukas Podpera, and in a match between two more European teenagers, Poland's Mateusz Surma defeated Germany's Jonas Welticke.

Yongfei Ge (Ito Toshiko)Mateusz continued his winning ways in the third round, at the expense of Hungary's Rita Pocsai. Canada's veteran 7-dan Yongfei Ge defeated Ukraine's Artem Kachanovskyi, generally regarded as one of the best two or three players in Europe. Wearing what he described as a lucky jacket borrowed from one of the interpreters in defense against the falling temperature in the gymnasium, brought on by the rain, Finland's Juri Kuronen handed Doyoung Kim his first loss. Alexei Lazarev scored a third straight win by beating Mai-duy Le. Also remaining undefeated were Hu Yuqing, Han Seung-joo, and Austria's Schayan Hamrah, who defeated France's Danguy le Calve, Thailand's Apidet Jirasophin, and Belgium's Kwinten Messiaen, respectively.

The big game in the third round, however, was between Hong Kong and Japan. Chan Nai-san took the lead by capturing a group in the opening, but Japan's Kinoshita Nagatoki fought back gallantly and the middle game became close. The two players struggled through a nerve-wracking endgame that stretched well beyond the scheduled 6:00 p.m. closing time and ended in victory for Japan. The players then all went out for a traditional Korean dinner at a nearby restaurant.

- James Davies

Gregor Butala Regains Slovenian Championship

Published on Friday, 12 October 2012 19:30

For the past decade, each autumn has brought Slovenian go players to the Gulf of Trieste to compete for the Slovenian Championship. This year the field of ten included five members of the Slovenian Pandanet team: Janez Janza, Leon Matoh, Andrej Kralj, Gregor Butala, and Timotej Suc; mechanical engineer, computer programmer, economist, editor, and doctor, a good cross-section of Slovenia's white-collar workforce. The games were played in six rounds October 5-7 at the Hotel Barbara Fiesa in Piran, right by the sea.

Gregor ButalaAfter two rounds only two players were undefeated: Gregor Butala, Slovenian champion in 2009 and 2006, who bested Andrej Kralj in round 1; and Timotej Suc, who upset Leon Matoh, champion in 2011 and 2010 and ten times before that, in round 2. This set up a match between Gregor and Timotej in round 3.

Last December the relatively young (under 30) Dr. Suc had beaten Gregor to win the Peter Gaspari Memorial tournament. This time, however, victory went to Gregor, and he followed it with a victory over Leon in round 4.

In the last two rounds Gregor defeated two veteran players, Radovan Golja and Janez Janza to finish with a perfect 6-0 score and his third Slovenian championship. Timotej won his last three games to finish second, Leon won his last two games to finish third, and Andrej edged out Janez on SOS points to finish fourth. Complete results are here.

A parallel five-round, mainly kyu-level tournament (the Tenuki Tournament) was won by Dusan Milavec.

Four-by-Four Go

Published on Tuesday, 09 October 2012 08:45

In 2010 Chang Hsu, owner of four of the top seven go titles in Japan (where he is known as Cho U), began teaching his four-year-old daughter to play--on a four-by-four board. To make the game interesting, instead of black and white stones he used red and green discs resembling apples, with a board designed to look like an apple tree. His daughter was quite pleased.

In January 2012 the results of his experience with his daughter appeared in the form of a book entitled Yonro no Go no Hon (Four-Line Go Book). The book takes the reader through the basic rules, techniques for capturing stones, territory, double life, and ko, and has a final challenge section. Mainly it is a collection of 100 puzzle-like problems, red to play and win, each with the answer shown in diagrams on the next page. The text is in Japanese, but the diagrams are self-explanatory.

As the author says, the problems are not particularly hard, but they are not trivial either. They take you through snapbacks and eyes and then into ko timing and under-the-stones tricks. You soon realize that they come from a clever and creative mind. In one problem, for example, red wins by sacrificing seven stones--on a four-by-four board (see image at the bottom)! The problems do not teach much about standard life and death shapes or tesuji--the board is too small for that--but they are an excellent way to practise reading a situation out, move by move, until you see it completely and arrive at a definite conclusion. For learning that all-important skill, the four-by-four board may be just the right place to start.

The publisher (Gentosha) also sells a boxed set including the board, the apples, and a booklet with an earlier set of elementary problems. For those interested in go visibility, this is an excellent tool. The board does not take up much space at a cafe or bar, a game does not take more than a few minutes to finish, and the apple tree is a good eye-catcher. It will not be hard to get someone interested, and then you can use the puzzle problems, or you can just play a few games (the interesting challenge is to make sure your novice opponent wins most of them).

Better yet, there are now i-phone/i-pad app versions available in three languages, with the apples replaced by animal characters in a story mode and by normal black and white stones in a serious mode. Easier to obtain than the book or boxed set, these apps are a bargain for players at all levels, including dan levels. Highly recommended.

The book, the boxed set, the app.

Problem 89: red wins by sacrificing seven stones

Emura to Represent Japan in 2013 WAGC

Published on Wednesday, 26 September 2012 07:07

The Japanese selection tournament for the next World Amateur Go Championship was held at the Nihon Kiin in Tokyo on September 15 and 16. Like the Amateur Honinbo and Amateur Meijin, it is a knockout among representatives from each of Japan's prefectures and a group of seeded players. This year the seeded players were former world amateur champions Imamura Fumiaki (1980, 1987, 1991), Hiraoka Satoshi (1994, 2006), and Hirata Hironori (1995), plus two more recent WAGC contestants: Mori Hironobu (2007) and Tsuchimune Yoshiyuki (2008). Several other past WAGC players declined to participate. This year's player Nakazono Seizo explained why when he said, 'I really want someone younger to get the experience of competing in this world event.'

Left to right: Nagayo (3rd), Emura (1st), Yokozuka (2nd), Togino (4th) - Photo courtesy of Nihon KiinAnd so it happened. Imamura, Hirata, and Tsuchimune fell in the second round. Hirata (age 86) lost to ex-insei Yokozuka Riki (age 17), a Tokyoite now studying for his unversity entrance exams. In the third round Hiraoka, heavily favored after winning the Amateur Honinbo in August, blundered fatally against 16-year-old Togino Kazuki, a high-school student representing Ishikawa prefecture. Togino then beat Mori, the last surviving seed, to reach the semifinals, where he was paired against Yokozuka.

The other semifinalists were Hyogo representative Emura Kiko (age 32) and Kanagawa representative Nagayo Kazumori (age 28), the latter a former insei who opened his own go academy last year. Nagayo has competed with considerable success against professional opponents in the Agon Cup, but he had less success against Emura, who won by resignation. Emura then went over to watch the other game and see which teenager would be his last opponent. Here insei experience proved its value: Yokozuka came from behind to reach the final round, as he had done in the Amateur Meijin knockout in July.

The final game devolved into an endgame struggle in the center of the board. Yokozuka, playing black, thought he was slightly ahead, but did a double-take when he filled the last neutral point and realized he had lost by half a point. Emura attributed his victory in part to the teachings of Kansai Kiin 9-dan Sonoda Yuichi and in part to a prayer offered at a Shinto shrine in the middle of the night before the tournament began. Although Emura is currently studying for his law exams, he was World Student Oza in 2006 and is keen on making up for Japan's indifferent showing in the past six WAGCs.

New Faces Dominate Field for World Mind Games in Beijing

Published on Monday, 24 September 2012 07:10

Joanne MissinghamThe field is set for the 2nd SportAccord World Mind Games, to be held in Beijing in mid-December. Sixteen men and twelve women representing the best of Asia, Europe, and the Americas have been selected to participate. Men and women will compete separately on an individual basis, instead of as teams and pairs.

The surprise is that nearly 80% of the field is new: the only returnees from last year are Li He (China), Choi Chulhan and Park Jeonghwan (Korea), Mukai Chiaki (Japan), Joanne Missingham (Taipei), and Vanessa Wong (Great Britain). This reflects the astounding rate at which young players have been rising to the top all over the world during the past year or so. Nearly one-third of the contestants are under 20, and all but five of the rest are under 30.

Chen YaoyeIn the Asian zone, China used its internal rating system to select its two best women and two best men, and added LG Cup-winner and world meijin Jiang Weijie as its third man. Korea and Chinese Taipei held qualifying tournaments in which young players did conspicuously well. Japan followed their lead by entering five of its best young players. In the European zone, three men selected in a special qualifier held in Lille in August are joined by the top three finishers in the recent European Women's Championship. In the North American zone, two young Canadians won the men's and women's qualifiers, shutting out the United States. Only in South America was youth denied: Argentina's famed veteran Fernando Aguilar rebuffed five rivals from Argentina, Mexico, and Chile to become the first South American go player to compete in the SportAccord World Mind Games.

List of contestants

Men
China: Chen Yaoye, Jiang Weijie, Tuo Jiaxi
Korea: Choi Chulhan, Kang Dongyoon, Park Jeonghwan
Japan: Fujita Akihiko, Murakawa Daisuke, Uchida Shuhei
Taipei: Lin Chi-han, Lin Chun-yen
Canada: Tianyu (Bill) Lin
Czechia: Jan Hora
Hungary: Csaba Mero	
Russia: Ilya Shikshin
Argentina: Fernando Aguilar

Women
China: Li He, Rui Naiwei
Korea: Choi Jeong, Park Jieun
Japan: Mukai Chiaki, Okuda Aya
Taipei: Joanne Missingham (Hei Jia-jia), Su Sheng-fang
Canada: Irene Sha
Great Britain: Vanessa (Lok Ying) Wong
Hungary: Rita Pocsai
Russia: Natalia Kovaleva

Francesco Marigo: Italian Champion Again

Published on Monday, 17 September 2012 12:40

Francesco Marigo (left) and Andrea DonatiiThe 2012 Italian Championship was played in five rounds on September 8-9 in Pisa, Italy, with 75 players participating. The undefeated winner was Francesco Marigo (4 dan), pride of the Milan Go Club. He was followed by Carlo Metta (3 dan), who lost only to Francesco, Alessandro Pace (2 dan), who lost only to Francesco and Carlo, and Andriy Zakharzhevskyy (2 dan), who lost to Francesco, Carlo, and Alessandro. Alberto Zingoni (2 kyu) lost to Carlo and Alessandro and finished fifth.

Francesco started competing in the Italian championship in 1998, when he was in his mid-teens. He has now won it ten times since 2001, and has also won ten straight Italian tournaments since last December.

A recent and beautifully illustrated interview with him (in Italian) can be read here.

Photos of the championship are avilable here.

Hiraoka Regains Amateur Honinbo Title

Published on Monday, 27 August 2012 21:21

Left to right: Tanaka (3rd place), Hiraoka (1st), Nakazono (2nd), Hong (4th). Photo courtesy of Nihon KiinJapan's annual Amateur Honinbo tournament starts with regional Honinbo tournaments in each of Japan's prefectures and ends in a showdown at the Nihon Kiin in Tokyo. This year the 64 players who gathered in Tokyo included the Prefectural Honinbos, five Student Honinbos (primary, middle, and high school, university man and woman), women's amateur champion Arai Miyu, and other seeded players, notably the reigning Amateur Honinbo Nakazono Seizo and Amateur Meijin Hong Suk-eui. They ranged in age from 11 (Takahashi Keisuke, Prefectural Honinbo from Iwate) to 86 (1995 World Amateur Champion Hironari Hirata).

The showdown began with two preliminary rounds played on August 24. Among the thirteen players who lost both games and were eliminated were Takahashi Keisuke and former Amateur Honinbo Tanaka Masato. The first of the six main rounds was also played on August 24, eliminating 19 more players, leaving 32 to compete in the second round the next morning.

The second and third rounds saw the departure of the two women and four more former Amateur Honinbos: Harada Minoru, Miura Hiroshi, Hirata Hironari, and Samejima Ichiro, who in total have won the title 17 times. Mr Samejima's defeat came at the hands of Hiraoka Satoshi, World Amateur Champion in 1994 and 2006 and Amateur Honinbo in 2005 and 2009. By the end of the day the field had been reduced to four: Hiraoka, Hong, Nakazono, and Student Honinbo Tanaka Nobuyuki, a senior at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. In the semifinal round, played in the morning on August 26, Hiraoka beat Hong by half a point and Nakazono recovered from a lost position to defeat Tanaka by 5.5 points.

The final game took place in the afternoon of the 26th, with a public commentary by former pro Honinbo Wang Mingwan (O Meien). Mr Nakazono, playing white, produced an imaginative opening and led for most of the first half of the game, according to Mr Wang. Mr Hiraoka remained calm, however, and won by 2.5 points. His steady and extremely accurate endgame play drew high praise from Mr Wang, who said, 'I thought white was ahead, but Mr Hiraoka may have known all along that he was going to win.' In the third-place playoff, Mr Tanaka defeated Mr Hong.

At the awards ceremony Hiraoka, Nakazono, Tanaka, and Hong received silver cups and gifts from the sponsors (Sagawa Express and the Mainichi Newspaper). Chief referee Takanashi Seiken (7p) lavished further praise on Mr Hiraoka's endgame play, especially in his half-point win over Mr Hong. Mr Hiraoka, his voice finally betraying his excitement, said he was particularly happy to have some progress to show after losing to Mr Nakazono in the final round last year, and Nihon Kiin Managing Director Hirano Norikazu expressed gratification at the large number of young players in the field of 64, a good sign for the future of Japanese go.

2nd SportAccord World Mind Games

Published on Saturday, 25 August 2012 04:09

The 2nd SportAccord World Mind Games will be held in Beijing, China, December 12-19, 2012. The go competition will include an individual men's tournament (16 players), an individual women's tournmant (16 players), and a mixed doubles tournament.

The European Go Federation has already selected its three players, Ilya Shikshin (Russia), Csaba Mero (Hungary), and Jan Hora (Czechia), who took top places in the qualifier held during the 2nd World Mind Sports Games in Lille, France.

The 2nd SportAccord World Mind Games will be preceded by the 2nd SportAccord World Mind Games Online Tournament, which will be played on the Internet Go Server (IGS, aka Pandanet). This tournament is open to amateur players in all countries and territories belonging to the International Go Federation. The winner will receive an expenses-paid trip to Beijing to watch the Mind Games and meet the players, and other prizes will be given out as well. Registration closes on September 10, 2012, and play starts on September 16. Full details are available here.

European Go Congress 2012

Published on Tuesday, 14 August 2012 08:18

Jan Simara, European Go Champion 2012The European Go Congress was held at Bonn, Germany from July 21 to August 5. Among the over 600 participating players, three 7-dan visitors from Korea stood out. In the 10-round main tournament, Song Jun-Hyup finished first (undefeated), Kim Young-Sam second (losing only to Song), and Ryu Seung-Hee fourth (she lost only to Song, Kim, and Germany's Zhao Pei). In the five-round weekend tournament, Song finished first (again undefeated), Kim second, and Ryu fifth. Song also won the six-round rapid tournament and the 13 x 13 tournament, and Kim won the lightning tournament, while Ryu took third place in the rapid and second place in the lightning event. In addition, Song and Ryu teamed with Korean 5-dan Choi Woon-Sub to win the rengo tournament.

But that is not the whole story. There were two team tournaments: the Pandanet team tournament, which the Russian team of Ilya Shikshin, Alexander Dinerchstein, Dimitri Surin, Oleg Mezhov, and Alexei Lazarev won by edging out the Czech team of Ondrej Silt, Jan Simara, Jan Prokop, Jan Hora, and Lukas Podpera on tie-breaking points; and the Itemis team tournament, won by a Polish team led by Mateusz Surma. And there were two pair tournaments: an open tournament won by German 4-dan Manja Marz and Chang Huai-Yi, a 3-dan pro from Taipei; and a handicap tournament won by Russians Marina Popova and Alexey Kholomkin.

Returning to individual competition, German 4-dan Jonas Welticke won the handicap tournament and the Sanjang Baduk tournament (go with traditional Korean rules), and German-Canadian 4-dan Oliver Wolf (age 13) won the youth and children's tournament.

In man-machine competition, Romanian 5-dan pro Catalin Taranu gave Crazy Stone a four-stone handicap on a 19 x 19 board, winning one game and losing another, while Japanese 6-dan amateur Noguchi Motoki, playing even against Zen, split two games on a 13 x 13 board and lost twice on a 9 x 9 board.

Throughout the congress, Catalin and a host of professional attendees from the Far East, including the legendary Chinese star Nie Weiping, were busy giving lessons and lectures and commenting on games. But that is still not the whole story.

For top European players, the most important event of all was the European Championship, a three-round playoff among the eight European players with the best scores at the end of the seventh round of the main tournament. The eight qualifiers were Ilya Shikshin (Russia), Cornel Burzo (Romania), Ondrej Silt (Czechia), Thomas Debarre (France), Antti Tormanen (Finland), Pavol Lisy (Slovakia), Jan Simara (Czechia), and Mateusz Surma (Poland). Thomas, Pavol, and Mateusz are still in their teens, and Ilya and Antti are in their early twenties, but youth did not prevail. The winner was Jan Simara, who defeated last year's champion Ilya Shikshin in the final game after having lost to him in the seventh round of the main tournament. Pavol Lisy beat Thomas Debarre in the playoff for third place.

An interview with Jan Simara can be read here. Fuurther results and photographs can be accessed through the EGC website.