Older News From 24 September 2000:
China's biggest go server Lianshu (http://www.ourgame.com) has joined forces with the Japanese ISP nifty to form a new multilingual internet go club in Japan. The URL is http://www.nifty.com/shibuigo/top.html (in Japanese) and it began operations on 5 September 2000 under the slogan "Shibui! Igo no Iori" (Cool! The House of Go). It claims the capacity to host games for half a million members in Japan, China and America. It is a paid-for service, though subscription fees are low by current Japanese standards at 900 yen a month. This follows hard on the arrival in Japan in late August of the joint Chinese-Korean internet go club Neostone (aka Qingfeng). Games other than go are catered for on these sites, especially versions of chess, renju and bridge.
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Panama has begun to establish itself as part of the international go family. Following a visit in 1999 by Japanese pros Hisajima Kunio 9-dan and Tokimoto Hajime 8-dan, the Panama players held their second tournament in August 2000, and were able to enjoy joint support from the embassies of Japan and Korea. The local paper El Universal gave it a huge splash. Winner was Edgar Ivan Escobar
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Older News From 9th September 2000:
The 8th International Four Cities Girls Tournament, held this year in Miura City, Japan, ended in an embarrassing wipeout for the home nation. Teams from Tokyo, Beijing, Pusan and Taipei play five-board matches against each other, and the Koreans came out top with a 3-0 score (11 boards to 4). Taipei was second on 2-1, Beijing third on 1-2 and Japan last - 0-3 and a 0-15 board score.
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Older News From 21 August 2000:
2ND IBEROAMERICAN GO TOURNAMENT
Players in Latin America have little enough chance to meet those outside their own country. But at the 2nd Iberoamerican Go Tournament held at the Nihon Ki-in of Brazil, in Sao Paulo, on 11th-13th August, the local Brazilians played host to a number of Argentinian players, and also visitors from Cuba and Uruguay, in a tournament of around 40 players.
Two well-known Japanese professionals, Magari 9 dan, a pupil of the late Iwamoto 9 dan, and Nagahara 6 dan, author of several books available in English, visited the event and taught. Iwamoto, who worked to spread Go internationally over several decades, retired to Sao Paulo after selling his club in Tokyo. The city now has a Chinese Go Club, a Korean Go Club, the Nihon Ki-in of Brazil for players of Japanese extraction, and the Brazilian Group of Go Players, all of which were involved as organisers.
The winner Kim 7 dan was from the local Korean group, but second place was taken by the Argentinian Ferdinand Aguilar (6 dan, IGS 3d), well known from appearances in the Fujitsu Cup and World Amateur.
- Rafael Caetano
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Older News From 29 July 2000:
The Qingfeng World of Goserver set up in May by a group of eight Chinese pros teamed up in July 2000 with the Korean internet company Neostone to provide what is claimed as the world's biggest internet go club.
The original Chinese conception appears to have been an attempt to overcome the vastness of China, and to provide a way that talented young players in the remoter provinces could have access to top quality games. The list of the eight sponsoring pros will illustrate the quality: Yu Ping, Shao Weigang, Zhou Heyang, Liu Jing, Luo Xihe, Wang Lei, Zou Junjie and Huang Yizhong. But many other young pros associate themselves with this concept, and supporters include pros from regions that do need extra support: for example, Duan Rong 6-dan from Yunnan, Li Chunhau 5-dan from Hebei and Zhang Xin 3-dan from Hunan.
The ultimate goal, according to Yu Ping, who appears to act as a spokesman for the group, was seen as a training camp rather than a go club, but the tie-up with the commercially minded Korean company may well shift the emphasis. Details of what the merger will bring are scarce at present, but it seems that one highlight will be weekly games between pros and amateurs.
The Qingfeng (cool breeze) site can be viewed, in Chinese only, at www.qf.com.cn.
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Older News From 12 July 2000:
MILLENNIUM GAME ENDS WITH A WHIMPER
The Trans-Millennium game ended in July 2000 after just 151 moves and two major breaks. When a heavy hint was dropped to Ma Xiaochun that he should resign, since he was well behind in territory, he brought to an end an experiment that began with high hopes but petered out rather rapidly.
The format chosen, by which five 9-dans pruned down the available choices for the amateur voters, was less than satisfactory and often farcical - there was often just a single choice. In many cases the only move was totally obvious, but it was still necessary to go through the voting procedure and wait for 48 hours for the next move. This is a problem inherent in go, of course (compounded by the very large number of moves in a game), and is no fault of the players or the organisers, but the fact remains that go is far less well suited to this sort of experiment than chess. It seems unlikely it will be repeated.
Here is the downloadable sgf file of the game.
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Older News From 6 May 2000:
MSO xiangqi colleague Bill Brydon reports that Vietnam held a go tournament in March to select a player for the world amateur go championships in Japan (see also below).
The tournament was held in conjunction with Vietnam's national xiangqi (Chinese chess) championship in Ho Chi Minh City. Eight players from different parts of the country took part: two each from HCMC, Hanoi, and Danang, and one each from Can Tho and Binh Dinh. According to Vietnam's national chess magazine, "Nguoi Choi Co" ("Chess Player"), Le May Duy of HCMC defeated all his rivals, and will go to Japan in June. The magazine added that Vietnam currently has no players that are ready for professional go tournament.
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Older News From 3 May 2000:
A survey by the Chinese go magazine Weiqi Tiandi in May 2000 produced the list of the top ten players of the go world in the 20th century as seen through Chinese eyes. The magazine ensured a large poll by using the internet.
Top with 2636 votes was Go Seigen. The full list was:
- Go Seigen (2636)
- Yi Ch'ang-ho (2626)
- Nie Weiping (2597)
- Cho Hun-hyeon (2595)
- Ma Xiaochun (2548)
- Fujisawa Hideyuki (2494)
- Cho Chikun (2462)
- Takemiya Masaki (2434)
- Kitani Minoru (2358)
- Chen Zude (2271)
A rather different survey in Japan attempted to find the world's top player at present on the basis of results in international tournaments. Giving 2 points for winning a title and 1 point for being runner-up over the past five years in the Fujitsu, Chunlan, Tong Yang, Samsung, LG, Ing and Asia TV Go tournaments, Yi Ch'ang-ho came out on top with 24 points. No surprise, but what was a surprise was that the second place player, Ma Xiaochun, was so far behind with 10 points. The full list was:
1. Yi Ch'ang-ho (24)
2. Ma Xiaochun (10)
3. Yu Ch'ang-hyeok (9)
4. Yoda Norimoto (7)
5. Cho Hun-hyeon (5)
6. O Rissei (4)
7. Liu Xiaoguang (3)
8= Kobayashi Satoru and Yu Bin (2)
10= Cho Sonjin, Chang Hao and Nie Weiping (1)
Note that Cho Chikun and Kobayashi Koichi do not even get a mention. Like several other players in Japan, they tend not to take international go as seriously as domestic events.
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Older News From 21 April 2000:
The success of O Rissei and O Meien in Japan has led to a surge of interest in go in their native Taiwan. The latest significant event was a visit on 6 April 2000 by a large party of schoolchildren and parents from Taiwan to the Nihon Ki-in in Tokyo. Highlight, of course, was an autograph signing session by O Meien 9-dan, but the children also played against Japanese children from the school of Iwata Hajime 8-dan. Ominously for Japan, the Taiwanese kids seemed rather stronger.
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A 19-strong party led by famed amateur and teacher Kikuchi Yasuro made a goodwill visit to St Petersburg in Russia in March and April 2000. Though the trip was especially strong on sightseeing (and who can blame them!) they saw a fair deal of Russian go, and what they did see impressed them. They reported a go population of around 30,000 with over 100 high-dan players (Lazarev 7-dan at the top). There also seemed to be a healthy mix of adults and children. It ws remarked that Russian contacts in the Far east tend to be in Korea and China. This trip may be the start of an attempt to redress the balance.
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Older News from 15 April 2000:
It seems that no stone will be left unturned as the indefatigable Haruyama Isamu 9-dan scours the world for go players. His latest trip, in March 2000, took him and Kanai Tenpei 9-dan to Hong Kong and Vietnam.
They were surprised at what they found in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. In Hanoi there were over a dozen dan players, and most of the players were college students - good long term potential - and several were converted strong chess players. The go-playing population is, of course, bolstered by expatriate Japanese and Koreans.
The biggest lack is literature, it seems. Haruyama was given to understand there is only one 10-page booklet on the rules in Vietnamese.
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Older News from 11 April 2000:
The biggest ever international tournament on the Internet was being held from 1 to 6 April 2000. The organisers were the Korean Internet venture company Iocean ( and also www.badukcraaft.co.kr) and China's equivalent, Zhongguo Dianwang (www.cis.com.cn). Off-net preliminaries were held in each country to produce 1,000 players each. These 2,000 fans will play on the intent to produce a last 16, all of whom will be invited to play Ma Xiaochun 9-dan of China in an Internet teaching game. They will also play against each other to produce a last four, who will then play live in Beijing for a 5 million Korean won first prize.
Apparently the two Internet companies are putting up a joint $300,000 dollars to fund the event, which has an uncanny resemblance to the future plans of braingames.net and Garry Kasparov to hold a worldwide Internet event to produce a best 25 who can challenge for the world title.
This is, incidentally, an example of what may prove to be a growing trend - Koreans and Chinese banding together and ignoring Japan - and serves Japan right, say many Japanese. Apart from the insulting lack of respect paid to international tournaments by many Japanese pros, one of the big issues on the IGS go server used by most westerners is that Japanese users have to pay, but for everyone else (including many Chinese and Koreans) it is free.
