This year’s U.S. Go Congress will take place Saturday July 8 through Sunday July 16 at Kent State University, in Kent, Ohio, near Cleveland. Almost all activities will be in the Kent Student Center. Details will be announced soon on the Congress registration website. “Volunteers are needed!” says Steve Zilber, the Cleveland Go Club president, who’s co-directing this year’s Congress with Jerry Jaffe. Email steve.zilber@gocongress.org 2023 logo created by Michael Samuel, who has designed most of the Congress logos.
Yilun Yang 7P has been creating original annual problems based on the digits of the New Year for many years now. Yang is one of the most popular go teachers in the US. His original tsume-go problems are a regular feature in the Member’s Edition of the American Go E-Journal. You can reach him at yly_go@yahoo.com.
Join the AGA now and receive the weekly E-Journal with members-only extras such as game files with professional commentary. Plus: participate in local and national tournaments, the national rating system, and attend the annual US Go Congress –- the largest go event in North America. https://www.usgo.org/news/2023/01/yilun-yangs-2023-new-years-puzzle-solution/
This will be the first of three posts devoted to three games in which Arthur was involved. Before beginning I would like to give kudos to the folks at the “New” United States Chess Federation website. The coverage has been exceptional and the article from which the picture of young Mr. Guo was obtained is an excellent example (https://new.uschess.org/news/day-3-rancho-mirage-drama-builds-invitationals). The picture of the three winners was also taken from an article from the USCF website that appeared as I was putting this post together. With the Chess Olympiad ongoing there is currently much Chess activity the world over. In addition, the 2022 U.S. Go Congress (https://www.usgo.org/) is happening concurrently.
There is simply not enough time to follow everything even though the AW has been burning the midnight oil in a futile attempt to stay abreast of all things games, and has blurry vision to show for it. Nevertheless, here I sit, punchin’ & pokin’ while spending even more time looking at a computer screen. That is OK since I can no longer get my kicks on Route 66 they come vicariously when watching the action while keeping the brain’s neuron synapses firing. It can also be called having the time of my life. Those that cannot do, watch. Let me tell you watching is much easier!
There I was minding my own business when this position was reached in the game between IM Arthur Guo and FM Sandeep Sethuraman the third round of the Denker Tournament of High School Champions:
Position after 9 Bd2
8 Qd3 was a shock, and it can be found in only 31 games in the Big Database at 365Chess. In reply black castled before IM Guo played a move I cannot ever recall seeing played, 9 Bd2. The question is, why would Arthur play such a tepid move?
a resident of Kyiv, has posted movingly on Facebook about how the Russian war on Ukraine has affected the go community and his own life and work as EGJ editor. When the war started, Kachanovskyi had to leave Kyiv and was forced to stop printing and distributing physical copies of the journal. He plans to continue producing the journal and distribute it digitally as a PDF until he is able to distribute hardcopies again. He takes subscriptions through Patreon and has about 235 subscribers right now. It’s $6.50 a month for a personal subscription to the monthly PDF version of the journal, and he offers a $3.50 per-person club subscription to groups participating in a Go club. – Spencer Rank
Longtime Go-player Richard Cann, 68, died on Sunday, Oct. 6th of ALS. A memorial service will be held Nov. 16th from 1-4pm at the Hopewell Valley Vineyards, 46 Yard Rd, Pennington, NJ 08534.
Born in Pasadena, California he grew up in Denver, Colorado and lived for many years in Hopewell Township, NJ. He received a BA in 1972, and a Ph.D. in 1978 from Princeton University. He was a member of the United States Chess Federation, the American Go Association and the Recording Industry Associates of America. He was the IT Director for the Atlantic Trading Company from 2002 until the time of his death.
Richard was known for his passion for music; the game of Go, which he played at a 2 dan level; and his joy in skiing the black diamond trails of Colorado with his brother. He enjoyed fishing and hiking on his trips to Colorado. He had 30 years of Sunday morning hard fought racquetball games with a dear friend. He was a skilled competitor with a generally superior ability at games of most sorts. His talented musicianship on guitar, violin and piano was expressed by the musical bands he formed and played with over his lifetime. He was known for his warmth, kindness, quiet sense of humor and his easy smile. He had a gift for teaching, whether it was a game, a musical instrument or a physics theory. He had great love for his family as well as the numerous dogs who were valued companions throughout his adult life. He is terribly missed.
Condolences can be sent to his widow, Joanne Sheehan at joanne.sheehan@pobox.com.
photo by Phil Straus
Bill Frezza and his colleague John Gaby have developed an online go variant called GO Without Borders (http://www.gowithoutborders.com/HowToPlay.aspx) that they say is perhaps the first practical online implementation of Toroidal GO, the concept of removing the edges of a go board by allowing the board to “wrap around” both horizontally and vertically.
“What is most fascinating about playing GO Without Borders is the fresh approach required regarding tactics and strategy because every joseki you ever learned is useless,” Frezza, a 12 kyu player, tells the E-Journal. “There is also a premium on good fighting skills. And yet it is still go with all the same rules.”
The Official Chess Club of the University of Toronto
Some call it synchronicity. It made me think of a friend named Ron Sargent, who was shot in the face by a Viet Cong bullet. He underwent many operations. Some said he could have been a world class pool player. T I was playing in the first round of a weekend Backgammon tournament. My opponent, a nice woman who was a weak player. I had one checker left and was off next roll. She had four checkers left on her six point. Only one roll would win for her, double sixes. She rolled box cars. “Sposed to happen,” came a voice from behind me. It was Ron. I had to grin because he was right, it is supposed to happen once every thirty-six times, on average. “Oh Mike,” she said, “I’m sorry. You could win this tournament. What were the odds?” What could I say other than, “thirty-five to one.”
It was found after reading an article at the American Go E-Journal earlier this month:
AGA YouTube channel hits 10,000 subscribers
The American Go Association’s YouTube Channel hit the 10,000 subscriber mark this week. “This is an awesome number to hit for a channel,” said the AGA’s Steve Colburn. “We are reaching almost every country on the globe,” added AGA president Andy Okun.
(http://www.usgo.org/news/2017/12/aga-youtube-channel-hits-10000-subscribers/)
The USCF proudly boasts “1,147 subscribers.”
There have been, though, 26,308 views of a video, Chess in Less Than a Minute, posted on Sep 28, 2011 by Jennifer Shahade.
Google’s AlphaZero destroys highest-rated chess engine in 100-game match
Thursday December 7, 2017
Chess changed forever today. And maybe the rest of the world did, too.
Chris Garlock writes the AGEJ and this is his take on the development:
“A little more than a year after AlphaGo sensationally won against the top Go player, the artificial-intelligence program AlphaZero has obliterated the highest-rated chess engine.
Stockfish, which for most top players is their go-to preparation tool, and which won the 2016 TCEC Championship and the 2017 Chess.com Computer Chess Championship, didn’t stand a chance. AlphaZero won the closed-door, 100-game match with 28 wins, 72 draws, and zero losses.
Oh, and it took AlphaZero only four hours to “learn” chess. Sorry humans, you had a good run.
That’s right — the programmers of AlphaZero, housed within the DeepMind division of Google (https://deepmind.com/), had it use a type of “machine learning,” specifically reinforcement learning. Put more plainly, AlphaZero was not “taught” the game in the traditional sense. That means no opening book, no endgame tables, and apparently no complicated algorithms dissecting minute differences between center pawns and side pawns.
This would be akin to a robot being given access to thousands of metal bits and parts, but no knowledge of a combustion engine, then it experiments numerous times with every combination possible until it builds a Ferrari. That’s all in less time that it takes to watch the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. The program had four hours to play itself many, many times, thereby becoming its own teacher.”
“Think of the endless possibilities for silicon based cheating. It is going to be a challenge for the anti-cheating committees to compare games and catch someone who is using a new algorithm based on AlphaZero. The unique and paradoxical moves may not be comparable to known move selection by present programs. If the chips are small enough, virtually anything could become the device that can be used to generate moves quietly, stealthily, and effectively.”
Armchair Warrior 