The Mystery of 361

34th Japanese Meijin Final Match

This is the final match of the 34th Japanese Meijin title tournament. White player is Iyama Yuta 8p, one of the young Japanese pros. Black player is Cho U 9p, who currently holds 4 of the titles in Japan (after losing Meijin).

In this Meijin tournament, Yuta lost the first match by 0.5 point. However, he picked up pace and won the next 4 games straight. Meijin is the second biggest Go tournament in Japan, and this achievement certainly placed Yuta as one of the top pros in Japan.

Enjoy the game and comments.

This week in review - Samsung Cup and Final match in Meijin

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.

Piao vs. Sun 2009 Chinese Agon Cup Final

First update for October. The next update will be around mid Oct or earlier if possible.

This game is between two young Chinese pros for the Chinese Agon Cup. I think it is a very interesting game. There was a very short opening then both players proceeded to the fighting without hesitation. This style is vastly different from the games in the 1995-2005 decade, showing how much Go has evolved.

LA radio news coverage on Go

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/

Gu Li v. Lee Sedol on 2009 August 28

As we know, Lee Sedol 9p of Korea is currently taking a 1.5 year leave from professional Go tournaments. During his hiatus, he will play very few games. It is surely a loss for the Go world since Lee 9p is one of the strongest pros out there.

This is the game he played in a special match against Chinese top player Gu Li 9p. Both players are famous for their relentless fighting styles. It is always enjoyable to watch their match. Of course, the game usually turns to be very complicated and reading intensive whenever they play.

Website upgrades

I inadvertently messed up the website during an upgrade. As the result, some updates are lost and I am looking for a way to recover them. For now, I am revamping to the old platform for stability. Fortunately, the sgf viewer still works with the old platform.

I will not be able to post very often with my current schedule. Still, I will try to update 1-2 times a month to cover some major national and international Go events.  Please stay tuned.

Testing SGF viewer

Testing SGF viewer with a game from 2001 North American OZA Tournament

Update: to reduce frontpage clutter, all future game comments will be in the individual posts.

21th World Fujitsu Semi-Final, Lee Chang Ho - Liu Xing (Graph 1-7)

This is one of the semi-final game of the 21th World Fujitsu in Tokyo. Although his performance is not as impressive as a few years ago, Lee 9p is still arguably one of the strongest pros in the world. Liu Xing 7p from China also performed well in Chinese domestic tournaments this year. Hard to predict the outcome of this game.

Liu Xing 7p often plays very unusual moves. In this game, he chose to play at 5 instead of L3 for the miniature Chinese opening. White 6 is very solid, and black 7 is speedy.

Fujitsu Semi-Final

Happy July 4th Everyone!

The World Fujitsu Semi-final was played in the Nihon-Kiin today. Here are the results.

Lee Chang Ho 9p (W+R) - Liu Xin 7p
Gu Li 9p (W+R) - Chang Hao 9p

The Final match will be between Lee Chang Ho 9p (Korea) and Gu Li 9p (China) on the 7th. Both players are among the strongest pros in the world. The final match will be very exciting!

My reflection of the Semi-final games will be posted later today.

Coming updates

Hi All,

There were no international tournaments for the past 2 weeks. However, the upcoming summer months will be exciting!

In July, there will be the semi-final and final games of the World Fujitsu, and the preliminary rounds of the World Samsung Open.

In August, there will be the World OZA tournament in Tokyo. Since I will be playing in the OZA, I will try to bring live coverage from Tokyo if time permits.

I will also attempt to update with more game comments once a week between the Big international tournaments. Please stay tuned. :)