3 November 2009, 6:59 am
On 11/2, the first round of the 14th SamSung Cup International semi-final was played in Shanghai. The two best-of-three matches are QiuJun 8p vs Lee Changho 9p, KongJie 9p vs Gu Li 9p.
In a very slow and close yose style game, QiuJun 8p managed to pull ahead and forced Lee Changho 9p to resign at move 207. On the other side, GuLi 9p and KongJie 9p played a very difficult fighting game. There were 3 separate ko fights and lots of dead stones. Eventually GuLi 9p had more dead stones on board and had to resign with 222 moves.
The first Kong-Gu game will be posted shortly after. I will wait on the result of the semi-finals and determine which game to comment. The next update should occur on Sunday.
23 October 2009, 8:40 am
This week’s go scene is not as exciting. There was no international tournaments, as Samsung cup’s semi-final won’t resume till early Nov.
One worth noting game is the first match of the Japanese OZA. The title holder Cho U 9p defeated Yamada Kimio 9p with only 106 moves. The interesting thing is that the game ended up with 3 ladders…
Game record and comments will be provided later today or tomorrow.
15 October 2009, 8:51 pm
This week's Go scenes was rather exciting. On Oct 13-14, the Samsung Cup held the quarter-finals. Three Chinese players (Gu Li, Qiu Jun, Kong Jie) and one Korean player (Lee ChangHo) advanced to the semi-final. There were some very interesting games between top pros that I will examine later this week.
In Japan, Yuta 7P successfully challenged Cho U 9P in the Meijin tournament with a 4-1 score, setting a new record as the youngest Meijin title holder at the age of 20. Yuta is also promoted to 9P by winning one of the "Big 3" title tournaments in Japan.
I will provide the Meijin final game with some comments tomorrow.
12 September 2009, 1:41 pm
Here is a LA public radio station's news coverage about the 2009 Go Congress in DC. Nice exposure of Go to the public. Cheers to the Southern California Go clubs for the good work.
http://www.scpr.org/news/2009/09/07/go-convention/
2nd BC Cup, Lee ChangHo vs Amateur 6d
In the 2nd World BC Cup tournament, many spectators were shocked when Lee Chang Hao 9p of Korea lost to another Korean Amateur 6d in the second round. A few years ago, who would believe that an amateur player can beat Lee Chang Hao?
The game was also very short, with Lee 9p taking black, resigned after only 96 moves. There was no tricky joseki, no complicated fighting, and no yose. Lee 9p did not think he had enough territory and simply resigned before yose.
Lee Chang Hao 9p has not been in good shape in the last couple of years. However, Lee Sedol 9p recently returned to the Go world after taking a leave for half a year. The next few months will be interesting, as we can find if Lee Sedol 9p is still as sharp as he used to be…
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