Older News From 22 November 2000:
More news on the item referred to earlier (11 November: Garosu.com Cup); the first prize will be 15 million won, second prize 10 million won and 3rd prize 5 million won. Programs will have to run on Windows 98/2000/NT or Unix/Linux and be networkable. Applications are required by 31 December 2000 to baduk.snu.ac.kr or ebaduk.co.kr. We understand the SNU College of Engineering in Seoul can be contacted also on 02-880-6755 or Garosu.com on 02-3471-8422, but MSO cannot act as intermediaries. The event is planned for March 2000 in Seoul.
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Older News From 19 November 2000: INTERNATIONAL AMATEUR PAIR GO CHAMPIONSHIP
The North Korean pair of Kwon Mi-Hyon and Rim Hyon-chol won the 11th International Amateur Pair Go Championship in Tokyo on 19 November, defeating the South Korean team of Bae Yun-jin and Lim Dong-Kyun in the fifth and final round. Pair go is for teams of one female and one male player, who play alternately without consulting (Japan Pair Go Association official
page).
Taking part at the Crown Plaza Metropolitan Hotel were 32 pairs from 22 countries - this year 11 Japanese teams were involved. Highest placed amongst the countries outside the orient were France (Marie Claire Chaine and Farid Ben Malek) with 3/5, winning against Germany, Austria and the Netherlands.
Older News From 17 November 2000:
The Japanese appear to be making more of an effort to save their international face for the next Japan-Korea go exchange to be held in Seoul from 3 to 8 December 2000. A prime mover in the exchange is Kikuchi Yasuro, head of the Ryokusei Academy, and several of his students will be there, including three 7-dans:Yamashita Keigo, Akiyama Jiro and Mizokami Tomochika. But top of the list is Yuki Satoshi 9-dan, and there are stars from the schools of Cho Chikun (Kim Sujun 6-dan), Kobayashi Koichi (Kono Rin 5-dan) and Fujisawa Hideyuki (Takao Shinji 7-dan). The Kansai Kiin is also well represented.
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Older News From 11 November 2000:
The Chinese program Wulu won the annual Ing Computer Goe Cup at home in Guangzhou at the beginning of November 2000, beating last year's winner Go4++ into third place. The team behind Wulu (Lei Xiuyu, Chen Guobao and Li Zhihua) are all students of Chen Zhixing who was professor of quantum chemistry at Zhongsan University in Guangzhou. Prof. Chen, now retired, finished in second place with his Goe version of Handtalk, GoeMate. He and his students are all about amateur 5-dan strength and so represent a formidable team. Mike Reiss, author of Go4++, is still a kyu player.
According to Nick Wedd in rec.games.go, rumours that the Ing Foundation may be pulling out of the event, with its million-dollar prize for the first program to beat an insei, can perhaps be discounted although it may transmute into a "new, well-funded, event on the computer go circuit, based in North America." The SNU College of Engineering in Seoul is also said to be preparing to launch an international computer go event, the Garosu.com Cup.
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Older News From 3 November 2000:
This year saw the 27th annual Japan-Taiwan Goodwill Exchange, but instead of holding it in Japan as usual, the players went to Taipei for a special occasion in October 2000. Rin Kaiho 9-dan, regarded as Taiwanese even though he was born in Shanghai, is revered as a guoshou (supreme national champion) there, and so he led a party of 18 professional players that included Kudo Norio 9-dan and Ogawa Tomoko 6-dan, and 60 amateurs, on a four-day trip. As is usual nowadays in international events, the Japanese were totally outclassed, but it is reckoned that a Taiwanese amateur 1-dan is now equivalent to a Japanese 6-dan.
Part of the reason for the visit was for Rin to visit the Haifeng Cultural Foundation named after him (his name is Lin Haifeng in Chinese) and opened in Spring 1999. This foundation, intended mainly to promote go among Taiwanese children, was set up by Lin Wenbo, a greater admirer of his namesake, and it currently enjoys funds of 100 million yuan (approx. US$ 3 million).
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Older News From 5 October 2000:
Rafael Caetano dos Santos has reported from Brazil that South America's representative in the next Fujitsu Cup will be Fernando Aguilar 6-dan from Argentina. On 1 October 2000 he beat Wang Senfeng 7-dan of Brazil in a decider played at the Nihon Ki-in chapter in Sao Paulo. Aguilar and Wang have virtually alternated as the South American representative ever since the 2nd Fujitsu Cup in 1989.
