The fifty 2006 Shodan Challengers are our biggest crop ever and we’ll continue to track their progress as we draw ever closer to the US Go Congress in August.
6 February 2006
I wonder whether the Shodan Challenge is still going. It was initially a challenge to rise into the dan ranks by the time of the US Go Congress, becoming an annual event.
Since only a rather talented DDK can become a dan in that time, it evolved into a looser idea in which one would try to advance to a certain milestone of one’s own choosing, with the stronger challengers still aiming for the titular shodan.
John Howard’s words in this issue are a little too familiar –
A five kyu still trudging slowly toward shodan myself, I realize I know next to nothing about the game. I can spell it, I know who goes first and I know when to remove a stone from the board (though I have been known to forget the latter), but beyond that there is very little I know about go that I don’t doubt regularly.
I don’t even know how to spell it.
Is it Go? Goe? Goh? And with, as I call it, the “first capitalisation” go; the second, Go; or the third, GO?
It could also be argued that White moves first in a handicap game, although some people consider Black’s placement of the handicap stones as constituting a move. In addition, there were certain situations of etiquette in classical Japan in which White would move first in an even game.
The New Jersey State Board of Education has recognized 5th-grader Lionel Zhang for his outstanding performance as a go player. “We are proud to salute this young man’s 21st Century achievement in a board game several centuries old,” said Governor Richard J. Codey.
9 January 2006
several centuries old
Shame they couldn’t get a quote from “professional Go master Lee Changho”.
There’s quite a lot about Lionel’s endeavours in the journal at this time. However, he doesn’t seem to have stuck with Go in a big way since he doesn’t have an SL page, or indeed any hits apart from his attendance of a youth tournament in 2007.
THE PLAYING LIFE: Painful Medicine
By John Dawson 3d
[30 January 2006]
… When Bill takes back blunders, he is simply preventing himself from learning the discipline to think thoroughly about each move. Resigning a blundered position may be a painful medicine, but you will find it much harder to advance beyond sloppy play until you force yourself to accept the consequences of your thoughtless errors. Of course, when playing with close friends, it feels like a shame to let an impulsive blunder spoil an otherwise interesting or well-played game.
But the less of this you allow yourself, the less often such blunders will happen. I believe that learning to think about each move is an important part of this game, quite aside from the fact that it will make you a stronger player. Isn’t thinking about moves what we enjoy? And don’t you feel irritated when, just as you discover what was wrong with an opponent’s move, he takes it back?
I think asking for advice during a game is a similar mistake. An occasional teaching game, identified as such before play begins, can be quite useful, but to frequently ask for suggestions during play simply prevents you from learning what you ought to be thinking about. You wind up playing the other person’s game rather than your own. There is always a difference between what the issue is locally and what the whole board situation is, and when you ask for help about a move, your opponent cannot help but tell you something about the general situation as well as about the local move.
Your subsequent moves will then be based to some degree on his or her assessment of the whole board. Instead of “following his hand” with your moves, you wind up “following his mind” with your ideas and never learn to think for yourself. This is a kind of laziness that will keep you from getting better.
When Jujo Jiang 9P was visiting in New York many years ago, we used to have a lot of fun where he would play endless games, giving even the high dan players enormous handicaps and just demolishing them. Periodically just for fun he would shout “Atari!” and his opponent would scramble to connect, even when not actually i n atari. Jujo never took more than a few seconds to move, except for just once, when his opponent played a move and Jujo looked at him in astonishment and said, “That’s sente!”
NORTH KOREA OPENS UP GO TOURNEY: The Baduk Association of DPR (North) Korea has issued an invitation to go players to enter the Go Competition of the 2nd International Martial Arts Games (IMG) to be held August 22-29 in Pyongyang, Korea. “The Games are an important opportunity to exchange experiences and cherish friendship among go players worldwide,” says Ryu Song Il, President of The Baduk Association of DPR Korea and the 2nd International Martial Arts Games.
10 February 2006
In the serialized manga Hikaru no Go, Hikaru raises the suspicion that he’s the one behind “sai” - the amazingly powerful and utterly anonymous new player on the Internet go servers.
Magister / Master vibes, anyone?
3 March 2006
Named after the Esperanto word for comb, Kombilo is designed to comb through game records for positions or players of interest.
Murakami Bunshō wins the Amateur Best Ten Tournament, 1971
My posting it here is cheating a bit, since although the post was made in the E-Journal (or the modern blog version of it), the photos are from Igo Club.
There’s also a greyscale photo of Ishida winning the Honinbo.
On 14 May 1971, Goishi Day, the Kyōto Branch of Nihon Ki’in raised a burial mound for go stones and held the first Goishi Kuyō. Goishi Kuyō is a memorial service for broken Go stones, and also for the stones that were captured or died on the board that year. The attendees joined in a tournament in honor of the occasion. Rin Kaihō Hon’inbo … gave commentaries for some of the day’s tournament games.
The event had elements of a funeral – a burial mound where attendees offered flowers, and a Buddhist priest chanted sutras on behalf of the stones – but the tone wasn’t completely solemn. After all, stones that “die” on the go board are collected at the end of the game, soon to be played again. … Goishi Day is a rhyming pun: May 14 = 5 14 = GO I SHI.
The Ki-in’s weekly educational program on NHK-TV, ‘Go Focus,’ flipped format a few weeks ago. For years, the format has been a 7 or 8 dan men’s pro assisted by a low-ranking women’s pro. During problem analysis, the woman’s role was to ask naïve questions on behalf of the TV audience and to express surprise when the man revealed a clever solution. But now the analysis is provided by a woman, Ueno Women’s Kisei, and the junior role is filled by a man.
Incidentally, the Nihon Ki-in does not recognize Ing Cup games as official games, because of differences in the rules, such as buying time with stones instead of having byo-yomi. Also, the Ing Rules recognize suicide moves, which can be used as ko threats. Ironically, this rule was not applied this time, as the games were played on the net and the software couldn’t be modified in time.
27 February 2021
Can OGS’ Ing rules mode handle suicide?
Let’s get in that niche! :D
The second game [of the Kisei] was played in the Shokoji Temple in Takaoka City, Toyama Prefecture, on January 22 and 23. When the players and officials arrived for the game, they found that the city had just had its heaviest snowfall for 36 years. In some places, the snow was 120 centimeters deep. It was a little cold, but the players praised the refreshing clearness of the air.
Most prize money won [in 2020]
For the 10th year in a row, Iyama topped the list of prize-money winners and once again reached the enviable bench mark of 100,000,000 yen (approx. $961,000 at $1 = 104 yen). Actually, the first time he came first was the only time he fell short of this mark, but, with 91,000,000, not very short. The most he has made is 172,000,000 in 2015 and the least is 106,000,000 (these figures are rounded off). Just for the record, only three other players have reached seven figures: Kobayashi Koichi (three times), Cho Chikun (four times), and Cho U (four times). Note the figures below include tournament prize money and game fees but not other income, such as for doing public commentaries or lectures, appearance money, teaching, book royalties, etc.
The Western go world lost one of its early leaders when Britain’s John Barrs passed away on January 31. Barrs learned to play at age 15 in 1929. He would found the London Go Club in 1953 and founded the British Go Association at the same time. He was President until his death. Also a past president of the European Go Federation, he was the first Englishman to win a shodan certificate, He represented the United Kingdom in the First and Second International Go Tournaments in Tokyo in 1963 and 1964. Francis Roads was named BGA President pending an election.
7 February 2021
He was also an Olympic weightlifter, presenting the UK in – iirc – 1948.
I started playing Go in the 1970’s. I only knew one other person who played, a friend whom I had taught. I didn’t know much back then, but I was enthralled by the beauty of the game. My friend had a set of stones; I don’t know where he got them, but I thought they were spectacularly cool. I had a waterbed that he thought was cool. So we swapped.
Years went by, my friend moved away, and I put away my prized stones and stopped playing. I picked it up again in the mid 90’s. At some point I lost track of those stones.
Lately I had begun thinking about them, and started looking around the house for them. But I couldn’t find them. I started wondering if I had mis-remembered the swap all those years ago; did I trade the waterbed for the stones, or the other way around?
Then, while rummaging around in the basement looking for something else, I came across two small cardboard boxes. And there they were!
I washed them carefully and have been playing with them these last few weeks. I’ve never seen any stones quite like them. Each one is unique. I love the way they look and feel.
During the excavation of Silla ancient tomb No. 44 at Jjoksaem in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, ongoing since 2014, archeologists unearthed a variety of treasures including about 200 Go stones buried beneath the feet of the tomb’s occupant. The size and location of the tomb, along with the jewelry and other ornaments found inside, indicate that the tomb belongs to a young woman of very high class, likely a member of a royal family.
9 December 2020
A few days ago I remarked that a lot of the historical references to Go, even in the late 17th century, describe there being 200 or 250 stones in use, not the 361, say, in the Ing rules.
This interests me because the average length of a scored game on a 19x19 board is about 250 moves, so wouldn’t one run out in long struggles of 300 moves or more?
Of course, less stones would be necessary to finish a game on a 17x17 board, but those historical sources also specify that the board was 19x19.
One minor explanation is that stone counting rules, which function practically like area scoring with group tax, enable prisoners to be returned and replayed onto the board without affecting the score. Still, though, the matter is puzzling to me.
Ah, an interesting thought occurs to me: perhaps good stones, being expensive, were handed down through families over many years.
The stones originally made for 17x17 boards (on which 200 or 250 would easily suffice) would have been found basically sufficient for play on the new 19x19 boards and preserved, resulting in the mismatch.
Of course, we have to accustom ourselves in this case to the idea that the shift from 17x17 to 19x19 may have not been at all smooth or universal, eg. with the 17x17 board clinging on longer in different parts of the Orient, particularly rural ones.
