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BRITISH GO JOURNAL NO 134 SUMMER 2004 ~ CONTENTS

Editorial ................................................................................................................................ 2UK News and Tournaments .................................................................................................. 4Styles of Play ........................................................................................................................ 8Introducing Go to Schools .................................................................................................. 10Teaching 200 Children to Play Go ..................................................................................... 12Enigma Variation: A Go Event at Bletchley Park ............................................................... 13Go - A Tool for Learning - George�’s View ......................................................................... 14President�’s Report, 2003 .................................................................................................... 16Ten Years Ago ..................................................................................................................... 18Get Strong at Scoring: Chapter 6 Chinese Counting .......................................................... 20Thrilling Semeai Games - Part three .................................................................................. 22A Tesuji not all Kyu Players Know - Part 1 ....................................................................... 24The Value of Komi ............................................................................................................. 25On Speculative Conversations and Where They May Lead .............................................. 26Internet Go Servers ............................................................................................................. 28A Brief Talk About the BGA KGS Tournament ................................................................. 31The BGA KGS Go Tournament - A report ......................................................................... 32Diary of a Go Plonker ~ For he�’s a jolly good chi ............................................................. 34The Catherine Wheel .......................................................................................................... 35Go In Singapore ................................................................................................................. 362004 Challenger�’s Tournament .......................................................................................... 387th European Pair Go Tournament ..................................................................................... 39Li Shen vs Macfadyen ........................................................................................................ 42Chinese Whirlwind Hits South Wales ................................................................................ 49A Game from the London Open ......................................................................................... 50The BGA Bookshop ........................................................................................................... 54Review of Go Dojo: Sector Fights ..................................................................................... 56Letters And Short Contributions ........................................................................................ 58A Short Introduction to Exploitation .................................................................................. 62World News ........................................................................................................................ 63A Tesuji not all Kyu Players Know - Part 2 ....................................................................... 66Answer to the Catherine Wheel .......................................................................................... 67A Tesuji not all Kyu Players Know - Part 3 ....................................................................... 69BGA Officials ..................................................................................................................... 71BGA Club List .................................................................................................................... 72Notices ................................................................................................................................ 75Glossary of Go Terms ......................................................................................................... 76

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EDITORIAL journal@britgo.org

Welcome to the Summer 2004 British Go Journal. First of all, I would like to thank you foryour support and enthusiastic response to the last issue. The Journal has received a greatdeal of positive feedback and many of your ideas will be incorporated over the next twoissues. In particular, the idea of a theme was very popular and therefore I am planning toexpand upon this in the future, while also developing regular features for the Journal.

Over the past few months, people have been encouraging me to play more Go. As I live 30miles away from the nearest Go club this has, at times, been something of a challenge.Following prompting from Ian Davis, I have started to explore Internet Go. I can now oftenbe found in the British room on KGS using the handle Editor. Where I have been taking partin the first BGA online tournament. This has enabled me to talk with many of the Journal�’sreaders and has even helped to improve my Go a little. My next adventure will be to attendthe Isle of Man tournament in August.

Just prior to writing this, I returned from a very exciting weekend in Manchester, where Iattended the first UK Go Challenge Final. This was a superb event and a great success. TheJournal was happy to provide two copies of Go++, �“the strongest Go program in the world�”(www.goplusplus.com), as prizes for the best scoring schools. Planning ahead, I recordedseveral of the games which will feature, along with a full event write up, in the Autumnissue.

FeaturesThis issue starts to explore the relationship between technology and Go, taking Internet Go asa central theme. The youth and schools section continues to develop with several articlesabout introducing Go.

After the last issue, there was a lot of interest in Sheila Wendes article, �“Go �– A Tool ForLearning�”. This has subsequently been reprinted in the American Go Journal and George,the boy featured, has also come back with some comments of his own.

Following popular demand, this issue sees the return of the Letters Section. In previousyears this encouraged discussion of events and articles. I hope that it will be a friendly routefor first time writers, as well an interesting outlet for the journal�’s faithful contributors.

I am also happy to announce the addition of a Go Puzzle Section Editor to the Journal team.The British Youth Champion, William Brooks, has taken up this challenging task. Its aim isto provide material to stimulate Go players of all abilities. The section will become a regularfeature, starting in the next issue with the topic, �“Ladder and Loose Ladder Problems�”.

To encourage contributions there will be a prize for the best puzzle in every issue. Nextissue this will be a £10 BGA book voucher. The puzzles will be judged taking into account

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Journal comments and contributions: journal@britgo.orgEmail for general BGA enquiries: bga@britgo.orgBGA web site: www.britgo.org/BGA email lists for general discussion and announcements: gotalk@britgo.org

three.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/gotalkFor discussion of how the BGA operates: bga-policy@britgo.org

two.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/bga-policy

USEFUL EMAIL AND WEB ADDRESSES

the grade of the contributor and the quality of the problem. Remember that a problem doesnot have to be difficult to be interesting.

House KeepingAlthough there are few visible changes to the Journal in this issue, a great deal of work hasbeen done behind the scenes. This has involved examining Journal advertising, devisingmethods of encouraging new contributors and, as always, finding ways to increase the overallquality of the journal. In particular, I would like to thank Barry Chandler who is assisting inthe production of guidelines for writers and proof readers.

Next IssueThe next issue�’s theme will be small board Go. This was inspired by the UK Go Challenge,which was played on 13x13 boards and will include articles suitable for all levels of players.

The contributions deadline for the next issue is 10th September 2004. As always all yoursuggestions, articles, reviews, stories, games, problems and poems will be gratefullyreceived. This is your journal based on your contributions, ideas and feedback. I lookforward to hearing from you.

Andy Brixey

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UK NEWS AND TOURNAMENTS

Tony Atkins ajaxgo@yahoo.co.ukSafety MatchOn 1st February there were two Go eventstaking place. The first, as reported in BGJ133, was the Youth Championships inAston, where William Brooks was thechampion and Antony Keen (30 kyu HighWycombe) won the puzzle competition.The other involved William�’s home club;Cambridge beating Oxford 11-5 in the 2004Varsity Match, an event reported as havingbeen first held in 1967.

Cheshire CheeseThe 7th Cheshire Tournament was held asusual during the Crewe Chess Congress, on7th February 2004. Again it was held atBentley Motors Works Restaurant in Creweand attracted 24 players from the NorthWest and further away. The weather waswarmer than expected, but the film crew,who wanted to make a documentary, werenot allowed to film there. As usual it wassplit into two sections. Winner of the opensection was Andrew Morris (1 danLancaster); second was Baron Allday (1 danWest Wales). Winner of the handicapsection was Ed Blockley (2 kyu Worcester)with a perfect 5. On 4/5 were Steve Bailey(3 kyu West Surrey) and John Nicholas (8kyu Manchester). Paul Blockley (13 kyuWorcester) was best youth player with 3/5.The 10x10 winner was Richard Newman-Thomson (9 kyu Lancaster) with 6 out of 6.

Games Shop70 players from 5 dan to 15 kyu attendedthe Oxford Tournament on 14th February,held at its regular venue of St. EdmundHall. Prizes were sponsored by HoylesGames Shop who had a sales table in thelobby. As usual the dining room and

common room were used as playing areas,and student lunch was available if thedelights of Oxford did not tempt yououtside at lunchtime. This year the eventwas very ably run by Daisy Wan whoseemed to stay cool, even in a crisis. Winnerof the tournament was a new name inWenhao Li (5 dan), a Chinese player fromCardiff. He beat two 5 dans, Young Kimand J.K. Shim, and then Alistair Wall in thelast round. Players on 3/3 were NiallCardin (1 dan Oxford), David M King (1kyu Swindon), Elinor Brooks (6 kyuSwindon), and Richard Scholefield (14 kyuMilton Keynes). William Brooks (2 kyuCambridge) won the 9x9 side event with 3/4.

Cresta Run87 players from 5 dan to 15 kyu attendedthe Cambridge Trigantius on Leap Day, 29thFebruary. Only one car failed to arrivedespite the snowy start that made the M11like the Cresta Run. The event was held asusual in the University Centre on Mill Lane,and the spring-like day quickly melted thesnow. Last year�’s winner, Young Kim (5dan London), lost in the last round to LiShen (5 dan London). This won the 12-year-old £100 and the Trigantius title. BestKyu player was local Paul Taylor (1 kyu).The others winning all three were JonathanChin (1 dan Cambridge), Brian Brunswick(1 dan Epsom), Matthew Woodcraft (1 kyuCambridge), Roger Peck (4 kyu MiltonKeynes), Paul Russell (4 kyu Cambridge),Chris Goldsmith (6 kyu Cambridge), TonyPitchford (7 kyu Cambridge), Garry Sturley(10 Kyu Cambridge) and RichardScholefield (13 kyu Milton Keynes).Nobody played in the continuous 13x13, but�“CB1A�” from Cambridge won the teamprize. Paul Smith also ran a successful

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Novices�’ Tournament in a crowded upstairsroom. It is hoped that the loss of a purseand some money did not spoil the day toomuch for those involved.

Comfort InnThe Candidates�’ Tournament was played inLeamington Spa on 20th and 21st March.Joined on the Sunday by the LeamingtonTournament, the event took part again in thecomfortable surroundings of theOddfellows�’ Club, though the weather wasnot as pleasant as the previous year. 20players from 2 kyu to 5 dan qualified andplayed. It was good to see British YouthChampion William Brooks taking part witha 2 kyu (soon to be 1 kyu) grade. PiersShepperson (5 dan), Alex Rix (4 dan), MinYang (4 dan), Tim Hunt (3 dan) and JohnHobson (2 dan) qualified for theChallenger�’s League. They would joinMatthew Cocke, Dave Ward and Des Cannin the League, but subsequently it wasdiscovered that John Hobson and Min Yangwere unable to take part, so 3 dans AndrewJones and Alex Selby were invited to play(having the same score as John but lowertie-break making them reserves). 31 playerstook part in the third four round rapid playLeamington Tournament. Winner yet againwas Des Cann (4 dan Milton Keynes).Second and third with three wins were PaulBarnard (1 dan Swindon) and Nick Wedd (2kyu Oxford). Both Nadeem Rahim (11 kyu)and Neil Dowse (16 kyu) won four gamesfor Aston School. Others on three winswere: Chris Kirkham (2 kyu Manchester),Ron Bell (4 kyu Reading), Peter Fisher (4kyu Leicester), Nicola Hurden (11 kyuBracknell), Ewart Shaw (14 kyuLeamington) and Zac Tsai (14 kyuBirmingham). Between rounds, somegames from the Candidates�’ werecommented on by Matthew Macfadyen andDes Cann.

Concrete CowsMilton Keynes, home of concrete cows, wasthe venue from The British Go Congressfrom 2nd to 4th April. Tim Hunt, AndrewGrant, Roger Peck and Fred Holroyd ran the37th Congress in the very comfortableHoliday Inn, handily placed for thesurprisingly attractive city centre. As usualthe weekend featured the British Lightning,British Open, and the BGA AGM on theSaturday night. The Friday night Lightninghad a mere 19 players. None of themmanaged to score 5 of 5. Scoring 4 winswere Steve Bailey (3 kyu West Surrey),Michael Charles (2 dan St Albans), JonathanChin (1 dan Cambridge) and David M King(1 kyu Swindon). David won the event onthe �“CUSP�” tie-break. The British Openalso had a lower than expected entry at 67players. T Mark Hall (4 dan London) wonit for the second year running with fivewins out of six. Second, topping a groupwith 4/6, on tie-break was Dan Gilder (3dan Manchester). On 5/6 was FredericSmadja (13 kyu London). Martin Li (5 danBorlange (Sweden)) and Fred Holroyd (4kyu Milton Keynes) won 4/5. There were14 people with 4/6 who all won EasterEggs. They were: Andy Price (12 kyuLeamington), Jonathan Englefield (9 kyuMaidenhead), Anna Griffiths (7 kyuEpsom), Peter Fisher (5 kyu Leicester), TomWiddecombe (2 kyu Devon), Helen Harvey(1 kyu Manchester), William Brooks (1 kyuCambridge), Phil Beck (1 dan Cambridge),Gerry Mills (1 dan Monmouth), JonathanChin (1 dan Cambridge), Michael Charles(2 dan St Albans), Ulf Olsson (4 danGothenburg (Sweden)) and Young Kim (5dan London). Azan Aziz Marwah (10 kyuLondon) scored 3/3. William Brooks wonthe MK Map Tournament with a perfectscore of 5 and the Currency Quiz was wonby the Pauline and Steve Bailey whoidentified more than 40 out of 50 foreigncurrencies. The Nippon Club Team Trophywas won by the Central London team of

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Piers Shepperson (5 dan), Mike Nash (1kyu), Frederic Smadja, Mark Todkill (7kyu) and Azan Aziz Marwah, by a narrowmargin. They scored 16 wins out of 27(59.26%). Second was Cambridge with 20wins out of 34 (58.82%). The StaceyTrophy for most top group wins during theyear went for the first time to Young Kimwith 26 wins, one more than veteran winnerFrancis Roads. The day before thetournament BBC Three Counties Radiointerviewed Andrew Grant for 5 minutes,hopefully giving the local Go club a boost.

Egg CitingThe Thames Valley Team Tournament,usually known as the �“T�’s�”, was held atBurpham near Guildford on 12th April. Sixteams competed for the Broken Go StoneTrophy and a handmade chocolate egg byAnnie Hall, appropriate for Easter Monday.Swindon�’s Christian Scarff (2 dan), PaulBarnard (1 dan) and Matthew Griffiths (11kyu) won, aided by Paul and Matthewwinning all 3 games. Also on 3 wereAlistair Wall (4 dan Royal Standard) andJong Ug Kim (2 kyu Epsom). Bill Streetenand David Hall won the 10x10.

AnniversaryThe first Durham Go Tournament was heldto celebrate 10 years of Durham Go Club.The event was played on the 17th and 18thApril in the Riverside Cafe of DunelmHouse, the student union building. 38players attended the event well run by thelocals led by Jenny Radcliffe and EdwinBrady. Appropriately, the club�’s founderSimon Shiu (4 dan Bristol) was the winner,with a perfect 6. Second was Gang Xiong(2 dan Durham) with 4/6. Also on fourwins were Alan Thornton (2 dan St Albans),Paul Taylor (1 dan Cambridge), DanielGilder (3 dan Manchester), William Brooks(1 kyu Cambridge), Claas Roever (3 kyuDublin), Chris Morris (6 kyu Durham),

Celia Marshall (11 kyu Isle of Man),Russell Haswell (15 kyu Newcastle) andJames Liu (21 kyu Durham). The 13x13tournament was won by Peter Nuttall (19kyu Durham) with 4 wins, on a tie breakfrom William Brooks. The self-pairedlightning tournament was won by MatthewHolton (2 dan Teesside) with 3 wins.Durham Go Club also took the opportunityto publicly express their gratitude for abequest of Go equipment and books theyreceived earlier this year after the sad deathof Brian Wilson, a keen local Go player.

Talk of the TownFour teams of six players each attended theNippon Club in Piccadilly for the springLondon International Match on 25th April.The Out of Town team, headed by DavidWard (4 dan Cambridge) and Jim Clare (3dan Reading) won the match, beating theWanstead, Central London and Orientalteams.

OlympiadThe Cambridge Mind Sports Olympiad(MSO) was reduced to two days this year,which seemed to concentrate activity andwas very successful. Most popular gamewas Tantrix. A large group, including manyplayers from the continent, played this loop-making tile game in a well-run competition,unusual in not being on the Internet. Asusual there were lots of kids playing Chess,groups playing Scrabble, Backgammon,Othello, Oware and the British ShogiChampionship, sadly only attended by sixkyu-grade players. As for Go, theChallenger�’s League played the middle twodays there, starting and ending in TrinityCollege, and the Barlow was there on thesecond day 2nd May. 30 kyu players(including a 1 dan ghost) played the Barlow.Winner was Jong Ug Kim (1 kyu Epsom)with 5 wins. Matthew Woodcraft (1 danCambridge), scored 4/5 as might be

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expected only losing to the winner. A largegroup of 9 players who started above the 6kyu bar won 3/5 to come third. Best juniorplayer was Kay Dackombe (18 kyuBromley) who won 3 games. Also winning3 and beating two 4 kyus was AlenaPieterova (7 kyu), a Czech student fromLondon.

In LeagueIn the Challenger�’s League, played from30th April to 3rd May in Cambridge, the 8players between 3 dan and 5 dan were quiteevenly matched. Four of the highest gradeplayers lost games early on: Des Cann (4dan) and Piers Shepperson (5 dan) lost inround 1 (the latter against Alex Selby (3dan)), and Matthew Cocke (5 dan) andDavid Ward (4 dan) lost in round 2. In factit was Alex Rix (4 dan) who took an earlylead, winning his first 5 games before losingto David Ward who was also doing well.Matthew Cocke beat David Ward in Round5, but lost to Tim Hunt (3 dan) in round 6.In the last round Alex Rix lost to MatthewCocke by half a point and David Ward wonon time against Andrew Jones (3 dan), whohad previously beaten Des Cann. This leftthree players on 5 wins. Matthew Cockeand David Ward had to play off for firstplace, selected ahead of Alex Rix onqualifying order. Piers Shepperson won 4,Alex Selby and Des Cann won 3, Tim Huntwon 2 and Andrew Jones won 1. In anexciting play off David Ward won by half apoint against Matthew Cocke, so becomingthe new challenger to Matthew Macfadyen.

ClassicThe Bracknell Tournament on 9th Maystayed again at the Woosehill CommunityCentre in Wokingham. Unfortunately theSunday date saw travel problems as thelocal trains were all buses and the ferryfrom the station was in fact a car.Nevertheless 53 players turned up, almost

exactly the same number as the previousyear. Also the same as the previous yearwas the winner in Jon Diamond (5 danKent) who beat Piers Shepperson (5 danLondon) in the last round. Winners of 3games were William Brooks (1 kyuCambridge), Matthew Selby (3 kyu Epsom)and Nicola Hurden (10 kyu Bracknell).William Brooks also won the 13x13. Apuzzle sheet set by Ian Marsh had a GoProblems section, mostly solved by JimClare (3 dan Reading), and a side withclassic coin problems that equally could bedone with Go stones. The photo for thecaption competition showed three playerscrouched around a go board outside whichled to many lines based on Macbeth, butTony Atkins won the prize by spotting thatthe mutant shopping trolley in thebackground was about to make off with TMark�’s Coke can.

PairsThe Pair Go Championships were held on23rd May at the now regular venue of theFoxcombe Lodge Hotel at Boars Hill nearOxford. As usual the hotel made theplayers very welcome and put on a hugebuffet at lunchtime. Also as usual theweather was fine, and maybe even too hotto play serious Go outside. In theChampionship group, Kirsty Healey andMatthew Macfadyen won to retain the PairGo Championship for a fourth year. Theybeat Natasha Regan and Matthew Cocke inthe final. Third were Sue Paterson and JimSadler, Jackie Chai and Francis Roads, alsoon two wins. Helen and Martin Harveywon the fighting spirit prize this year. Inthe 5-pair handicap group the Guildfordmother and son, Pauline and Steve Bailey,were runaway winners with 4/4. The best-dressed pair was judged by a member ofpublic as Natasha and Matthew. Byconnecting cities to states and counties on alist, geography quiz winners were Anna

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Griffiths and Tony Atkins; Pair Go photospot the year quiz winners were ElinorBrooks and Erik Hall.

Photograph shows Jackie Chai with thePair Go Championships organiserFrancis Roads. Suppied by KirstyHealey.

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Example 1

I have selected three sample games from the GoGoD database, one from the Castle Gamesplayed in 1801, and two from the mid 1930s. The latter two were played in the Oteai, whichwas the main tournament at the time and used to set player�’s ranks. They sprang to mindbecause I am at the moment recording games from both the Castle Game series and thoseplayed by Hashimoto Utaro.

I would suggest you look at thediagrams or play the moves out on aboard. To make the situation simpler,I have included only the first 20moves of each game. What I want tohighlight is that there is an obviousstylistic difference between one of thegames and the other two. One gameis obviously taken from the Shin-Fuseki (New Fuseki) period followingthe publication of the book �“the NewFuseki Method�” by Yasunaga Hajime,in collaboration with Kitani Minoruand Go Seigen, in 1934. However,the other two games are notparticularly different and I challengeanyone to specify which is the earlierand which the later game, eventhough they are separated by about130 years.

STYLES OF PLAY

T. Mark Hall tmark@gogod.demon.co.uk

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Example 2

What interested me in this was thatprobably most players now take theNew Fuseki ideas for granted, sincethey have been there for all the timethat we have played, in the games ofTakagawa, Takemiya and Go Seigenhimself. But put yourself in the mindof someone like Kitani; one of histeachers was Suzuki Tamejiro, who hadbeen taught by Iwasaki Kenzo, who wasone of the star pupils of the Yasui housein the days before the Meiji revolution.Despite all the changes that hadhappened in Japan and the Go world,the way of play typified by these twogames had an enormous weight oftradition behind them of hundreds ofyears and an equal number of players.Who were they to say that there was abetter way to play? Kitani and Go wereboth potentially great players at thetime, but both had gone into slumpsafter their promotions to 5 dan (Kitani1930, Go 1932); Kitani had in fact lostall his games in the Oteai in 1932 andGo was having to cope with playingmost of his games with White. Howcould they now turn round and say thatall they had learned needed to berevised and that there was a better wayto play?

The fact is that they did and we are theultimate beneficiaries.

John Fairbairn raises an interestingpoint about the New Fuseki. At thesame time, in the Chess world, therewas the introduction of the Ultra-Modern style (of which I know nothing,having given up Chess when I foundGo, almost 40 years ago). But he askswhy both should appear at the sametime, one in Asia and one in Europe, torevitalise the way of playing for both.

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INTRODUCING GO TO SCHOOLS

Toby Manning toby.manning@ntlworld.com

Figure 1

Richard Thompson and I, of Leicester GoClub, have recently visited two schools tointroduce Go. The first school was aninitial visit, the second a follow-up to a visitby Peter Wendes 8 months earlier. Bothschools were primary schools. This articlediscusses the approach we adopted.

For equipment we had a 9x9 demonstrationboard and twenty small 9x9 sets sold byPayday Games. These are cheap, and idealfor schools. I am convinced that 9x9 is asensible board size; it is not worth going to13x13 or (heaven forefend) 19x19 until the9x9 board has been mastered (which Idefine as being able to win taking a 3 stonehandicap against a dan player).

Complete NewcomersFor the complete newcomers, Richard and Istarted off by playing a game on the 9x9demonstration board, giving a commentaryand explanation as we went. An earlycrosscut enabled us to rapidly demonstratethe rule of capture, within the context of acomplete game.

This took about 10 minutes. We thenhanded out the 9x9 sets and asked thechildren to play each other, aiming for thefirst capture. The children were asked toput their hand up whenever they managed tocapture a stone. We walked around theroom, checking that any capture was correctand otherwise offering help. In fact a lot ofthe children didn�’t stop the game aftersecuring the first capture, but went on toplay for territory. We even had severalrequests for help with counting.

An issue found in several games concernedgroups with no liberties that the childrenhad NOT identified as being captured. Butthen this has occasionally been seen ingames between strong players.

After about 10 minutes of individual play, Ithen set up a number of very simpleproblems on the demonstration board, suchas shown in Figure 1. We asked thechildren questions about each position. CanBlack kill? How? And then encouragedthem to come up and show us. Weemphasised that after playing the stone thatcaptured a group, the captured stones shouldbe removed from the board.

A further time for individual play wasfollowed by a second set of problems on thedemonstration board. This left time for afinal short period of individual play beforeit was time to pack up.

We did not teach the rule of ko, nor explainsome of the more esoteric issues such asseki. We concentrated on first capture sodid not really say much about counting.

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Figure 2 Figure 3

Some of the children seemed to pick up theprinciples very quickly; others were slower(as would be expected). Several childrencame up afterwards to say they liked thegame and to thank us for introducing it.

A Second SessionAt the second school we again found anenthusiastic (and well behaved) group ofyoungsters.

We started by putting three simple problemson the 9x9 demonstration board (see Figure2) to see how good the children were; weasked them for answers (Where shouldBlack play? Why?) Some of the childrencould solve them, some not. We wentthrough the problems, showing the correctsolutions.

We then played some games. They hadbeen using 13x13 boards, but 9x9 seemedmore appropriate for their level. Again, wesometimes had to explain that some groupshad no liberties and should be removed.

I then gave a short talk on the �“second lineproblem�” (Figure 3). Having discussed thisproblem with Black to play, we asked thechildren what would happen if it wasWhite�’s turn to play.

There was then enough time for a littlemore play before it was time to finish.

Our ObservationsWe learned the following lessons from thetwo visits:

Use 9x9 boardsAn hour is not a long time - you cannotteach much in that time (and expect it tostick)Don�’t overestimate the children�’s ability.Be pleased if they go faster than you hadexpected, not annoyed if they go moreslowly.Remember Go should be fun: it is better forpeople to enjoy playing badly than to bemiserable playing well.

Buon Giorno from Milano www.pandanet.co.jp/English/members/shigeno

Yuki Shigeno has changed her web site and is now sponsored by IGS-Pandanet. Shenow provides training services as well as the chatty monthly stories. The August 2003page details her teaching visit to schools in Hampshire and Sussex with Peter Wendes.

Tony Atkins

IN THE LIGHT

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TEACHING 200 CHILDREN TO PLAY GO

Francis Roads francis@jfroads.demon.co.ukOn Thursday 20th May I taught 200children to play Go. No, not all at once.Balgowan Primary School in Beckenham,SE London, wanted all their Year 5 andYear 6 pupils to learn Go, in preparation forselecting a team for the UK Go Challenge.That was six classes of 30+ children aged 9-11.

The driving force behind this initiative wasJanet Bell, not a teacher at the school, but agovernor and parent. �“I used to see peopleplaying Go at university, though I didn�’t getinvolved myself at the time,�” she said. Imight have guessed that she was atCambridge. She had persuaded the schoolto buy enough Payday Games 9x9 sets for awhole class to play at once. She had alsostocked up on literature; the cartoonbooklet, the BGA pamphlet, and the �“Asiaand the Game of Go�” leaflet produced bythe EGCC. The latter went down very wellwith the class teachers.

Crossing London in the rush-hour,especially if carrying a demonstrationboard, is a pain. I had to leave at 7.30 to besure of arriving at 9.30, for a 9.45 start.I�’d just about woken up by then, and wasconfronted by my first class of mixed-ability, mixed-attitude, 9 and 10 year olds.As a retired teacher, who has spent a lot ofmy career in primary schools, I know whatyou have to do to keep interest, but it�’s hardgoing. I taught capture Go in about fiveminutes; first to capture a stone wins thegame. Then off they went into their firstgame.

Janet, the class teacher, and I patrolledabout keeping people happy. The mainproblem was coming upon a board with one

or more zero-liberty stones or groups, butthat�’s the idea of capture Go, to teach theconcept of capture. A minor problem withcapture Go, is that the children don�’t alwayssee the need to remove the captured group,even when they do spot it. Since one ofthem has now won the game anyway, theytend to just clear all the stones away andstart again. This led to misunderstandingswhen I later introduced territory Go.

Another thing we had to watch out for waschildren who had turned the board over andwere trying to play 13x13 Go. Even at thislevel, you can suffer from �“strong playersuse larger boards so if I use one I�’ll bestronger�” syndrome.

Whatever the age group that you areteaching, it�’s good practice to keepexplanations to the minimum. I guess that agood three quarters of my six 40 minutesessions were spent actually playing Go.But children don�’t have long attentionspans, so I stopped them a couple of timesfor further talk. During these I gave a briefintroduction to the suicide rule, but withoutmentioning what happens when anapparently suicidal move actually makes acapture; an illustration of why stones nearthe edge tend to be vulnerable; and anexplanation of handicapping. For the latterI simply said that each time a player wonthree games in a row, the opponent wasallowed one extra move at the start of thegame.

This approach seemed to work. Maybe thechildren were left with only the haziest ideaof the game that we play at our clubs, butthey pretty well all seemed to remain ontask and to be enjoying it.

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ENIGMA VARIATION: A GO EVENT AT BLETCHLEY PARK

Peter Wendes education@britgo.org

On the 22nd May, Sheila and I wereprivileged to have the opportunity ofrunning an introduction to Go for theNational Academy for Gifted and TalentedYouth (NAGTY) at Bletchley Park, theWWII code-breaking centre also known as�‘Station X�’.

NAGTY had suggested Bletchley Park(BP) as a venue some months before, butthe link had not been made between AlanTuring, Enigma and Go, since to non-players this would have been ratherobscure. Now that the BP educationdepartment realise the significance of this,they have asked us back to run a familylearning event on Go in November.

Twenty-nine children aged between elevenand fifteen from across the UK took part,and four had attended some of my earlierNAGTY events. Tony Atkins and MikeHarvey joined us. They had very kindlyoffered to come along to provide some real

I returned eight days later for a follow upvisit, to teach territory Go, i.e. the pukkagame. The classes were supposed to havepractised capture Go during my absence.Some had; others had been �“rather busy, I�’mafraid, Dr. Roads�”. (They seemed to enjoyusing my academic title.) One�’s immediatereaction is to think, �“Well, why not call mein at a less busy time, when you can makebetter use of my (voluntary) services?�” Butthe timing was constrained by the UK GoChallenge, and in any case you always haveto keep relations sweet. So you take it onthe chin.

This time I had the support of Jay Rastall,an experienced player who lives locally. Iintroduced territory Go, with the advice thatthose children who preferred to continuewith capture Go were welcome to do so.

The trouble with teaching a mixed-abilitygroup is that you are constantly allowing forthe needs of those at the bottom of theability range, and this constrains what canbe done. But it�’s when you don�’t allow forthem that behaviour problems start.

During the sessions I explained the fullversion of the suicide rule, the ko rule, andending the game by passing. And that wasall. No two eyes, no grab the corner first,etc. They now had all they needed, andthey know where to find more information.Jay has volunteered to remain a localcontact and advisor. The school lookedafter me well; I was given lunch, expensesand a lift to and from the station. I wishthem well, and look forward to hearing howwell their team does at Manchester. But mygoodness, it was hard work!

14

expertise. A highlight was a 9x9demonstration game between them, withtheir reflections on the developmentsbeing received by a rapt audience.

The setting, the old Library, was veryatmospheric, and we felt that we could nothave had a more relevant venue. Thegroup was highly motivated. Most tookGo sets at lunchtime into the old NAAFIto continue their games, carefully carryingthem with stones in situ down the panelledhallway of the old house.

In the afternoon we decided to run some19x19 games, and these were verypopular, with one pair Go game lastingmost of the afternoon. Of the manycomments, perhaps this one speaks forthem all:

�‘This game is scary and confusing, butgood for keeping you entertained!�’

An additional guest was Roberta (shownin photograph above), who is theprototype manifestation of Mike Harvey�’sLego Go-playing robot. In her currentform she picks up and replaces a stonewith great elegance, tipping it forward andholding it in a very authentic way!

In the closing half hour of the session wewere delighted to welcome some visitingAmerican students. None of whom hadever seen Go before, though ourparticipants were happy to explain whatthey had learnt during the day. The eventfinished at 15.30 and then we were invitedto join the last tour of the day, a verymoving and thought-provokingexperience, and highly recommended forany Go player who can make it to MiltonKeynes.

Mike and Tony playing a demonstration game.

Roberta quickly became the centre of attention.

Roberta expertly placing a stone.All photographs supplied by Peter Wendes.

15

GO - A TOOL FOR LEARNING - GEORGE�’S VIEW

Sheila Wendes swendes@yahoo.comGeorge�’s foster parents took a well-earnedholiday during the Spring-time. Theauthorities could not find another fosterhome and so he was sent, at the last minute,hundreds of miles away to a children�’shome. He managed his behaviour well forsix weeks (this is a record) before thingsdeteriorated into violence.

So we have just started back together againrecently. George is pleased to be home. Wesettled down in the sitting room with his Goset and he beat me with four stones! Herealises that using his advantage is moresensible than attacking me.

Here are some of his observations on Go.My comments are in italics.

Basically the good thing about it is that itteaches you strategy. And it�’s like chess �–well, only a bit like chess �– and not toocomplicated to learn. He was thoughtfulwhen comparing Go and chess then shookhis head and added, �‘Well, only a bit �…�’

Most people can learn it from sevenonwards because you don�’t want little titchyones to learn it, do you? He has twoyounger siblings who don�’t have hisproblems with literacy and I think this is inorder for him to keep something special,which he feels good at, his own.

It�’s about taking territory, and takingpeople�’s stones. You could win if you gotone more point than your opponent, or evenhalf a point. When I told him that theEuropean Youth Go Championship had beenwon by one and a half points heimmediately wanted to know all about komi,

which we hadn�’t yet covered.Bob (foster father) didn�’t do so well. Heneeds to learn a bit more. He doesn�’t playmuch now. For the first time he hassucceeded in doing something better thanBob. And he�’s kindly and encouragingdespite his foster father abandoning thechallenge. When George wasn�’t keen onreading, people were not so understandingwith him.

The stones look like Milky Way buttons.You play on the edges of lines. If youplayed on the middle of squares youwouldn�’t get so many stones on. I likeplaying on the big board better, becauseyou�’ve got more space and more choiceabout where to play.

Go is like real life. If you go out with yourmates and get into trouble, that�’s like beingtoo adventurous on the board. But if youstay indoors and let everyone do things foryou, you never get anywhere. That�’splaying too safe. George is not in the habitof making these links. I think this is animportant one for him.

If you want to play well, not too safe andnot too adventurous, make spaces in yourstones. Stones need space like humans needspace to breathe.

The BGA has recently produced a Gointroduction certificate (www.britgo.org/covers/workshopcert.pdf), which Georgewas pleased to receive.

His final observation �– �‘That�’s mostly it.And it�’s FUN!�’

16

PRESIDENT�’S REPORT, 2003Simon Goss president@britgo.orgMember ServicesDuring 2003, we made memberships available to schools in the form of full and basic schoolmemberships. The main differences from personal full and concessionary memberships are: afacility to change the contact details at will (because teachers may change jobs orresponsibilities and some do not want personal BGA membership); and to receive thequarterly Youth Newsletter. Basic schools members do not receive the Journal.

During the year, there have been some handovers of key member services: David Woodnuttstood down as Journal Editor and Andy Brixey has taken over; Allan Crossman notified hisintention to stand down as Webmaster, but generously agreed to continue until the 2004AGM to give us time to get a new one in place (Tim Hunt will take this role after standingdown as secretary); Tim Hunt stepped down as Championships Organiser and Toby Manninghas taken over; Alison Bexfield stepped down as Youth Newsletter Editor and EmmaMarchant has taken over. Thanks to the outgoing officials for the high standards they havemaintained, to the new officials for undertaking to provide these vital services and also to themany others who have done so much throughout the year.

It took us a while to find a successor for the Journal editor, and unfortunately it was notpossible to produce a Winter issue of the Journal. Issue 133 was the Spring 2004 issue.Council actually received a proposal to reduce the number of issues per year to three or eventwo, because the job is so onerous. However, with Andy�’s support, we intend to keep it atfour per year at present but to keep the feasibility of this under review.

During the year, Council devised a new system for awarding BGA dan certificates, based onthe EGF ratings. The new system is now in operation and is documented on the BGA website. Since the new system is simpler and less labour-intensive than the old one, it can beoperated directly by Council. Accordingly, the dan grading committee has been disbanded.Council thanks Jim Clare, and all those who have been members of the grading committeeover the years, for their dedicated work in monitoring individual players�’ tournament resultsand making promotion recommendations to Council.

As noted at the 2002 AGM, the increase in the number of Go books published, theconsequent increase in the amount and variety of stock needing to be stored and managed,and the amount of mail order business were making BGA Books Ltd too large to manage ona voluntary basis. In order to solve this problem, at the end of June, BGA Books Ltd wassold to Payday Games Ltd, and the BGA Bookseller function was reinstated in its previousform. Gerry Mills continues to provide this service. The terms of the sale require the BGAnot to sell go-related products to non-members for three years, but that disadvantage is offsetby the fact that Payday Games Ltd has undertaken to give a discount of at least 25% on allsales to schools.

17

At the end of 2003, the number of recipients of the email version of the BGA Newsletter wasapproximately 160, compared to 57 at the end of 2002. It is still growing.

During the year, we bought twelve new boards and inexpensive sets of stones for tournamentuse, to replace some ageing equipment. The old boards and new stones are for lending toclubs to help them start up or grow.

Player DevelopmentA seminar for dan and high-kyu players was held in Milton Keynes in June and attended by17 players, including presenters Matthew Macfadyen, Matthew Cocke, David Ward andCharles Matthews.

The teaching day that regularly takes place on the day before the West Surrey Handicap wasattended this year by about 20 people plus 4 teachers.

OutreachIn 2003 we announced the UK Go Challenge, a nation-wide event for schools. This has afirst round consisting of an internal tournament at each school that enters, run by the schoolitself, and a national final that will take place in Manchester in July. The UK Go Challengeis an initiative by Paul Smith, who modelled it on the successful UK Chess Challenge andachieved wide publicity (to some 2000 schools) through its newsletter.

One element of the UK Go Challenge is that interested schools may ask us to send avolunteer to give an introduction to the game. A list of such volunteers has been set up andis maintained by Jon Diamond.

The high rate of Go introductions in schools and elsewhere in 2002 has again slightlyincreased in 2003 through the continuing efforts of Peter Wendes, Matthew Holton, PaulSmith, Adam Atkinson, and many clubs. Increasingly often, we talk to local educationauthorities with a view to providing Go introductions for teachers, for example at INSETdays.

The GoZone programme, launched at the beginning of the year, generated some sponsorshipto support outreach, but less than we were seeking in order to sustain a project the size of theHampshire Go Project. This is now less of an issue, because Peter Wendes�’ presentations toschools have achieved such a good reputation that schools are willing to pay for them. TheBGA has sufficient funds to sustain our other outreach activities at their current level andindeed to increase them.

This year a translation and slight adaptation of Andreas Fecke�’s cartoon booklet Go - AnIntroduction was placed on the web site and 5000 copies printed, for use in the UK GoChallenge and for general use in outreach activities. Supplies are available from the BGAsecretary.

18

FinancesThe BGA�’s finances remain very healthy, enabling the association to undertake andunderwrite ambitious projects like the UK Go Challenge and the 2005 European Pair GoChampionship with confidence.

The reserve is higher than necessary, but there are two reasons for caution: almost all of thisyear�’s profit was generated by the sale of BGA Books Ltd; and there were three instead ofthe usual four issues of the Journal. It is not clear that a similar result will be achieved in2004, and a loss this year is quite possible.

The risk of a loss in 2004 is acceptable in view of the state of the reserve, and accordinglyCouncil recommends no change to the subscriptions this year, except to correct an error onmy part in producing a leaflet advertising schools basic membership at £6.50 when theintention was to set it at the same level as concessionary membership, which is in fact £6. Iapologise for this error. Council proposes to change the basic schools rate to £6 this year inorder to rectify it.

Future PlansMajor projects planned by Council for this year and next are:

To complete the 2004 UK Go Challenge and to run it again in 2005.

To host the 2005 European Pair Go Championship.

To organise a suitable event to celebrate the half-centenary of the BGA. (It has provedimpossible to establish the exact date of formation of the BGA, but it was almostcertainly in the 1950s and we would like to celebrate it in some way.)

Council also plans further work on: revising the Organisers�’ Handbook; documentingfinancial policies; reviewing the procedures for appointing youth workers to make the mostappropriate use of facilities now available to voluntary organisations to support childprotection; revising and reprinting the BGA booklet.

Go in the Media www.britgo.org/history/media.htmlIf you cannot remember the date of that magazine article on Go, or which newspapercarried that story on the small Chinese boy, then this is the page for you. Manyreferences to Go from British press, television and radio are recorded here. If youknow any more, then let us know.

Tony Atkins

IN THE LIGHT

19

TEN YEARS AGO

Tony Atkins ajaxgo@yahoo.co.uk

There were two tied tournaments in theearly spring of 1994. Wanstead, held at aQuaker meeting house, was won by NickWebber on tie-break. Oxford at SomervilleCollege was just won by WilliamConnolley, but the Cambridge Trigantius atGreat Shelford was jointly won by T.MarkHall and John Rickard. The new SouthLondon event at Clapham was won byAlistair Wall. The homeless British GoCongress found a good home at WarwickUniversity where Matthew Macfadyen wasthe best of the 114 players winning both theOpen and the Lightning. Trophies alsowent to Wanstead for best team and toFrancis Roads and David King (the Staceyand Youth Grand Prix trophies). The BGAAGM instigated family membership.

In May the Candidates�’ Tournament washeld at Covent Garden over a bustling BankHoliday; Matthew Cocke was best player.The Challenger�’s League at Leamingtonproved an easy win for the host, so MatthewMacfadyen was to challenge Shutai Zhangagain. Edinburgh was the same weekendand was won by Alistair Wall. 80 playersattended Bracknell on Cup Final day andFrancis Roads won. Leicester was won bySimon Shiu and on the same day a women�’sworld selection event was won by AlisonCross. The Welsh Open stretched to twodays, which just gave Matthew Macfadyentwo more easy wins and one of the covetedcuddly sheep.

In team events the Anglos beat the Japanese35-25 in a Chinese restaurant nearFarringdon underground station. TheThames Valley League turned into a one-day event won by Epsom Downs, a team

looking suspiciously like the Wanstead teamthat won the Pink Stone in East Anglia.

A large UK team went to the St Patrick�’sWeekend Irish Open to stop Gerry Millswinning. They need not have bothered asTony Goddard led a party from Belfast,taking the top place himself. In Milan, GuoJuan won the Ing Cup, ahead of Rob VanZeijst and Victor Bogdanov, and she alsowon the late-running tournament in Paris.Amsterdam was won by Shutai Zhang andanother Chinese, Shen Guangji, wonHamburg.

In Japan, the World Amateur was held inKyoto and was won by home player,Hiraoka Satoshi. Next placed were Taiwan,China, USA and Romania (RobertMateescu). UK�’s Des Cann was 21st, justahead of Jim Bates (now Australia) and 14places above John Gibson playing forIreland. Otake held the Judan againstKobayashi Koichi. Cho Chikun won hissixth Honinbo beating Kataoka. An allKorean Fujitsu Cup final saw Cho Hun-Hyun beating Yoo Chang-Hyeok.

20

GET STRONG AT SCORING: CHAPTER 6 CHINESE COUNTING

Tony Atkins ajaxgo@yahoo.co.ukBack on April 1st 2001 we received areview of the book Get Strong at Scoring(See BGJ 123). We were able to publishsummaries of chapter 1 (BGJ 127) andChapter 2 (BGJ 128), but publicationstopped due to legal reasons. Now we areable to continue with the followingsummary of Chapter 6.

If you are the type of player who cannotwait to sweep away the positions on theboard, in order to forget, then Chinesecounting is for you. If you visit China, or acountry with Chinese influence such asSingapore, then you will need to know howthe Chinese system works. However unlessyou are well practiced you may wish toleave the mechanics to the experts. In factif a Chinese player shows up at your Goclub you may get faced with the prospect ofChinese counting even sooner. You willknow it is what the visitor expects whenthey throw captured stones back into yourbowl. In order to save your embarrassmentat not knowing how to count it is advised toplay for the resignation, one way or theother! Other places you may find Chinesecounting are on the Internet or a computerprogram, of course.

Chinese counting includes the stones on theboard as well as the spaces they surround.This sounds so vastly different fromJapanese that it might change the game orits result, but if equal numbers of black andwhite stones have been played then theresult of the game is usually no differentfrom that with Japanese counting. There area few special positions, usually involvingthrow-in moves, that do end in a differentresult, but these are quite rare. In an evengame you simply have to control more thanhalf of the board, effectively the same aim

as Japanese without the number of movesplayed netted off. So to win you need 181points on a full board. In a komi game thenblack must get more; 184 if the komi is 3 orJapanese style 6. As Chinese komi is halfJapanese in size it often involves a quarterpoint. For example 3.25 is the same as 6.5Japanese. In a handicap game Blackpotentially scores a point for each handicapstone he plays and so has to win by scoring181 plus the size of the handicap.

Anyway the game is played as normal untilthe dame filling (neutral points). This isapart from not having to keep control ofprisoners, as these are not needed forcounting. In China, when games are playedin communal locations such as in parks, thestones are all just in one big heap ready forplay and keeping control of prisoners wouldbe impossible; this method of counting bestsuits such surroundings. In fact even in thewest it has been known for adjacent boardsto mix up prisoners during play, forcing aChinese count to resolve each game.

It is important that the dame points areplayed strictly in turn. Every dame point isworth a point so they must be shared. Notealso that once all dame points have beenplayed, playing inside your own area doesnot change the score. However doing sobefore the dame are played does cost a pointas the opponent will be able to claim twopoints in a row elsewhere. After the damepoints are played, the next stage is toremove all dead stones from the board asnormal. If there is a dispute over the statusof stones, they can be surrounded by extramoves and captured at no cost in terms ofthe score, unlike in Japanese counting.These prisoners are again discarded.

21

Now one side is chosen for counting, theone with fewer points is easiest, but there isprobably etiquette for which to count. Thefirst thing to count is the empty areassurrounded by that colour. This is done byrearranging all the areas into multiples often. This can be done by moving, adding toor removing stones from the board. Noneof this changes the score in any way. Notethat empty surrounded points in a seki countas score, but the unplayable points areshared. So count the number of tens andremember it. Next rearrange all the stonesof the counting colour into bunches of ten,which do not even have to be onintersections any more (we just need toknow how many there are). You cannot addor remove stones at this stage so there willbe usually a bunch of less than ten left over.Add the left over stones, the bunched tensand the empty tens together to get the scorefor that colour. Compare with the target tosee who has won and by how much. Doublethe difference from the target to see thewinning margin under Japanese counting.As the position has been destroyed it isalmost impossible to recheck the score,which could lead to dispute, but millions ofChinese seem to cope with it.

So next time the prisoners are mixed upgive it a try, and get ready for when youmeet that visiting Chinese person.

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Jan van der Steen�’s Site gobase.orgJan van der Steen has long been a collector of pages and links on Go. He has recentlyreorganised his pages and launched them as gobase.org. This site contains lots oforiental Go news, a daily problem, articles and game records. To get some of thefeatures you have to register as a user.

Tony Atkins

IN THE LIGHT

22

THRILLING SEMEAI GAMES - PART THREE

Richard Hunter hunter@gol.comThis game was played in the 51stNHK cup in 2003. Black wasKobayashi Satoru 9 dan and Whitewas Morita Michihiro 9 dan. Thecommentary was by KataokaSatoshi 9 dan. I chose this gamebecause the semeai is very practical.A similar position might easilyoccur in one of your own games, soit�’s worth studying.

After Black connects with 1 inFigure 1, White wants to play intwo places: the top left corner andthe top right corner. He chooses tomake life for his group in the topright, which would die fairly easilyif Black gets first move there.Whatever happens, White can�’tafford to lose such a large group soeasily. But there is a danger thatBlack can save his stone in the topleft. While Kobayashi uses one ofhis thinking minutes, Kataokaconsiders the fight. He predicts the moves in Figure 2. Next, White has a choice of A or B.

Diagram 1 shows Kataoka�’s continuation of Figure 2. After Black 6, White can play either Aor B. Instead of 6, Black can simply block at 1 in Diagram 2. This captures the white stonesat the top.

123

4 56 7

Diagram 2

123

456

A

B

Diagram 1

12

3

4

5AB

Figure 21-5 (moves 55-59)

1

2

Figure 11-2 (moves 53-54 in the game)

23

1

2

34

Diagram 4

12

3

Diagram 3

1

2

345 6 78

9A

B

Diagram 5

Back in the game, play reaches 3 in Figure2. Instead of blocking at 4 in Figure 2, canWhite play 1 in Diagram 3? If Blackanswers at 2, then White 3 is a strong movethat captures the three black stones.However, White 1 is not sente against theblack group. Black will answer in thecorner with 2 in Diagram 4. White 3 is thethreatened followup, but Black 4 is a goodmove. White 3 in Diagram 5 doesn�’t workeither. White needs to connect at 9, but thatleaves Black with either A or B, so he lookssafe.

In the game, White hanes at 1 in Figure 3.Kataoka reckons this leads fairlystraightforwardly to White being captured.Would 1 at 3 have been any better?

Kataoka returns to the line in Diagram 1and wonders whether Black 6 ispossible. If White continues withWhite A, then Black B seems tocapture the stones at the top in amanner similar to Diagram 2. Sohow about 7 at B in Diagram 1?

This is shown in Diagram 6. AfterWhite 9, what is the result?Kataoka adds a few more moves toclarify matters. After 12, Blackseems to be a move ahead.

1

2

34

7

9

101112

Diagram 65, 6 and 8 inside

12

3

45 6

7

Figure 31-7 (moves 60-66)

24

1 234

5 6

Diagram 7

In the game, Black simply hanes at 2 inFigure 3 without cutting and White connectsat 3. Black 4 wins the fight. Kataoka nowspots that Black can answer White 5 with 6,which indeed is what happens. He showsDiagram 7 to prove that Black wins. Heremarks that it is unusual for a professionalto lose a group without getting suitablecompensation such as an outside squeeze.White continues with 7 in Figure 3, but thelocal result is a definite loss for White. Thegame continues for another 120 moves orso, but Black holds onto his lead. There is arisky stage later when Black lets somestones get cut off; Kataoka expected Blackto choose a safer line. However, Black livesand White eventually gives up.

Note: Parts 1 and 2 of this series can befound in BGJ issues 131 and 132.

12

3

45 6

7

Figure 31-7 (moves 60-66)

A TESUJI NOT ALL KYU PLAYERS KNOW - PART 1Steve Bailey SGBailey@compuserve.com

In a game against Simon Goss at the MiltonKeynes BGC lightning event, a situationvery similar to dia 1 occurred and I, asBlack, failed to kill the three white stones inthe corner.

This particular pattern is the one used asElementary problem 1 in Liping Huang�’snew book of problems. Having seen theresult from the game against Simon, I wasable to answer this one. But as with allproblems in books, more can be got out of itby extending it. Typical extensions include,�“What is the best move if the other playergoes first?�” and �“If that is the correctanawer, refute all the other answers�”.

If you don�’t know the answer to thisproblem, do try to solve it before turning topage 66 - you will get far more out of thisarticle that way.

Diagram 1

25

THE VALUE OF KOMI

Toby Manning toby.manning@ntlworld.com Komi is the points given to white ascompensation for playing second.

Until 1980 the value of komi was 5 or 5½points. This followed the value usedregularly in Japan at the time. In 1980David Goto made a statistical analysis ofthe results of some 1800 professional gamesand showed that komi should be 6½ or even7 points. His analysis was published inBGJ #47.

As a result, the BGA increased the value ofkomi to 6½ points; in Japan now someevents use 6½, some still use 5½.

In this year�’s Challenger�’s League therewere a total of 29 games (28 in the Leagueproper, and a play-off game). Of these,black won 19 (66 %). Although the resultsare not statistically significant, this suggeststhat komi should be more than 6 ½ points.

Three games were won by ½ point, one byblack and two by white. Hence if komi hadbeen 7 ½ points, then black would havewon 62% of games.

What is more interesting is how the resultswould have changed if komi had beendifferent. The League was very close, andwith komi of 6 ½ points there was a three-way tie break; David Ward won theresulting playoff game to become theChallenger. However, if komi had been 6points or less then the Challenger wouldhave been Alex Rix; if it had been 7 pointsor more then Matthew Cocke would havewon through.

Never neglect the komi: it could beimportant.

European Championships www.european-go.org/executive/topevents.html

If you are not too sure what the Ing Cup is all about, or the European Cup, or the rulesfor the European Pair Go Championship, then this page lists all the top events thatcountries can run on behalf of the European Go Federation. A description is providedof the system of each event, the sponsors, any special rules or conditions and so on.

European Tournaments www.go-tournaments.orgIf you want to know the date of a European tournament then this site is the new self-posting site where organisers of events or the Go organisation in a country can postdetails of forthcoming events. The service is very new so not many events are listedyet. All official EGF events are also listed on the main EGF web site (www.european-go.org).

Tony Atkins

IN THE LIGHT

26

ON SPECULATIVE CONVERSATIONS AND WHERE THEY MAY LEAD

Mike Harvey m8harvey@yahoo.comI�’m not sure how the idea came about, but Irecall snippets of conversations that tookplace at the Purbrook Go Club. It wasaround the time that David Bofinger wasvisiting from Australia and someone,perhaps the Bof himself, had the idea ofpointing a camera at a Go board and using acomputer to record the game. Theconversation went something (but probablynot very much) like this:

Wouldn�’t it be good if you could point awebcam at a go board and it would recordthe game for you?

Do you mean to make a video of the gameor to record just the moves?

You could write an SGF file.Hmm, Computer Vision is not easy.Yes, I think it is non-trivial.Think how useful it would be - It could

automatically record all your games.How would it cope with stones that are

half way between two points?How would a person do it? You accept it

within certain limits, but if a move ishalfway between two points the programwould complain.

Ok, how will it know when someone hasmoved?

Well, you could press a key to record theposition, but I suppose the program couldconstantly monitor the board and record theposition when it changes.

What about when someone�’s hand is overthe board?

Then the program detects an error anddoes not record anything.

You know where this would be useful?

When you play a game on the internet youcould play your moves on a real board.

You would still have to play youropponents moves yourself.

...unless you had a robot to play them foryou.

But robots are very expensive �– I expect ifyou could borrow an industrial robot youcould make it play Go, but how could youmake one that was affordable?

Maybe you could do it with a Legorobotics set.

How would you pick up and put down thestones? I bet you couldn�’t do that usingLego!

Hmmm. Perhaps you could do it withsuction.

Or maybe you would have to make somespecial parts for handling the stones �–fingers for a claw �– and make the rest out ofLego.

And so on�…

Problem: How to pick up and put downstones? Is there a way to do so when thestone is surrounded?

27

And so I acquired my first LegoMindstorms Robotic Invention System�™. Ithought it would be nice to make a roboticarm but, to keep things simple, I decidedthat I would start with a kind of gantrycrane. The difficult part was how to pickup and put down stones. There is not muchspace around a Go stone when it issurrounded. Eventually I made a hand thatwould fit into the spaces between stones,and pick up or put down a stone withoutdisturbing those around it. I attached this toa test bed and it (she?) quickly becameknown as Roberta.

The Go Robot, capable of replaying a wholegame, is still a long way off. The gantryand its track are nearly ready, but the handis not attached to it and I haven�’t evenstarted to look at how to deliver stones toand from the hand. Still, I am having a lotof fun and Roberta is a real crowd pleaser.

The original problem - using a camera and acomputer to automatically record games -has been set aside, but there are Legocameras that can be built into LegoRobots�…

Over the last few months my Legocollection has grown considerably. I havediscovered a whole virtual world of LegoRobotics. Occasional weird contraptionsemerge into the light of day. Some remain.Others are recycled into even more bizarrecontraptions. Parcels arrive from Denmarkor from e-bay. The internet is searched forparts and software. Friends worry that I ambecoming obsessive but the creative juicesare flowing and nothing must stand in theway!

One Solution: R

oberta picking up a Go stone like a professional. A

ll photographs supplied by Mike H

arvey.

28

This article discusses some aspects of themany different Go Servers available on theInternet. It is primarily aimed at those whohave never used a Go server.

Rather than giving details of each server, Idiscuss a number of issues that relate toone�’s choice of server, and use specificservers only as examples. My aim is toexplain what features are available on Goservers, and tell you what issues to considerin choosing a server. If you wantinformation about specific servers, youshould be able to find it on the BGA website, at www.britgo.org/gopcres/play.html.

Speed of PlayAny good Go server allows the players tochoose the time settings for their game.However there is a big difference between�“real-time�” Go Servers and �“turn play�” Goservers. With the former, you connect, findan opponent, and play, as you would at a Goclub, either with no time limits or withlimits that are normally anywhere betweenfive seconds a move and five minutes amove. If you find you have to adjourn thegame you can probably do so, but this is notnormal.

With the latter, however, once the game hasstarted, you connect, make a move, anddisconnect. If you set time limits they willtypically be one move per day, or slower.You might well be playing many games atonce on such a server; so your routine mightbe to connect, find that it is your move innine of the twelve games you are playing,move in eight of them, and leave one forfurther consideration.

INTERNET GO SERVERS

Nick Wedd nick@maproom.co.ukThe only turn play servers I am familiarwith are LittleGolem and DragonGoServer.All other servers mentioned below are real-time.

Method of ConnectionMost servers require a client program,running on your computer, to connect tothem.

Exceptions are LittleGolem andDragonGoServer. These require nothingmore than an Internet browser. This has bigadvantages. You can use them from anInternet cafe without needing to downloadand install anything, and you can use themin a place such as a school, where a firewallmay prevent the use of anything other thanhtml. Unfortunately the slow pace of play,which they almost enforce, makes themunsuitable for most children.

There is no technical reason why there can�’tbe a real-time Go server with a pure htmlinterface. Developing one, or adding a purehtml interface to an existing server, is nottrivial, but should be possible.Unfortunately no one has done so yet.

Some servers use a Java applet as a clientprogram. For this to work you must haveJava installed on your computer. Then, youdon�’t need to go through the business ofdownloading and installing a clientprogram. You just use a browser to visit theserver�’s website, the Java client applet thendownloads itself onto your computerautomatically. The snag with this method isthat the downloading the applet can take asignificant time, which you have to wait forit every time you connect. Servers which

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work like this include Kurnik and Yahoo.KGS can work this way, but also offers theoption of explicitly downloading a client, asdescribed in the next paragraph.

All other servers require you to downloadand install a client program that works withthat server. Once you have done this, theclient program stays on your computer,ready for you to use whenever you connect.In most cases, the client works only withthe server for which it was written.Examples are Dashn (also known asDashBaduk) and the Microsoft Zone.

There is a small group of servers, includingIGS-PandaNet, NNGS, Aurora, and Wing,which can all be used from the same clientprogram. There are over a dozen clientprograms you can choose from to connect tothese servers. Some of the client programswork equally well with any of this group ofservers, while others work best, or only,with a particular server. You can obtainthese clients from www.britgo.org/gopcres/playz.html. My own preference is forIGC2000; however this is shareware, whilemany of the others are free.

Number of UsersThere are Go servers with no users, serverswith ten users, and with 100, 1,000, and10,000 users. If you want to experimentwithout risk of doing somethingembarrassing in public, you may prefer onewith no users. If you want to learn yourway around with a few friendly people thatyou can ask for help, you may prefer onewith a small number of users. If you wantthe best chance of finding an opponent of acertain strength who is willing to play withcertain time limits, then the more users thebetter.

I am sometimes asked, �“which Go server

has most users?�” The answer is probablyone of the big Chinese servers, maybeOurgame (which usually has over 20,000Go-players connected), or Eweiqi, orSinago. However, if you can�’t read Chineseyou will find it very hard to connect tothem. If instead you ask �“which server withan English-language interface and English-speaking users has most users?�” - Theanswer is IGS-PandaNet. It typically hasbetween 1,000 and 2,000 users, though thistends to drop sharply when it is night inEast Asia. Another question is �“whichserver has most English-speaking users?�” -This is KGS, which in the Europeanevening tends to have around 800 users,most of them English-speaking.

LanguageThere are two issues to consider here, thelanguage of the interface, and the languageof the users.

Most of the servers mentioned in this articlehave English as their interface primarylanguage. One, Dashn, has Korean as itsprimary language but offers a good English-language interface.

If you decide to use a server whoselanguage you don�’t understand, it will beeasier if this language is one you can atleast write down (such as Polish), ratherthan one that uses unfamiliar symbols.

Most Go servers in most countries allowanyone to use them. Many Korean Goservers, however, will not let you connectuntil you have provided a Korean citizennumber.

It is pleasant to be able to greet youropponent with a word or two in theirlanguage. Again, if you don�’t know the

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language, this is easier if you at leastunderstand the alphabet. It is easy enoughto say �“Cze�” to a Polish opponent; it may behard to work out what combination ofkeystrokes will have the same effect for aJapanese opponent.

Different nations tend to play usingdifferent styles. Your moyo is much morelikely to develop into territory with anEnglish or Japanese opponent, than with aKorean opponent of the same strength. Youmay wish to use a Korean server toexperience a different style of play.

Sandbaggers and EscapersThese terms describe two forms ofantisocial behaviour that you may encounteron a Go server.

A sandbagger is someone whose rating isdeliberately well below his playing strength.He does this so that he can play people whothink he is the same strength as them, andbeat them easily. I do not understand themotivation for this, but it happens. It ismuch harder to sandbag on a server wherethe server�’s rating system sets people�’sratings, than on one where ratings can beself-assigned; but apparently this is notsufficient to prevent it.

An escaper is someone who disconnectswhen he sees that he is losing. Escapers areusually people whose objective is to climbin the server�’s rating system. Good servershave ways of discouraging escaping.

Other GamesSome Go servers support only Go. Somesupport other games. Those that supportonly Go generally do a better job ofsupporting Go than do the ones whichspread their efforts. However, if you wantto play skat, or dots-and-boxes, for a change

from time to time, you may prefer a serverthat supports it.

Cost of using a ServerAlmost all Go servers can be used for free.LittleGolem invites a contribution to helpcover its costs, but those who don�’t pay thisget the same service as those who do.Dashn has some features which only workfor �“Premier members�” who have paid asubscription. Most Japanese users have topay to use IGS-PandaNet, but it is free forall others. The Microsoft Zone supportsitself by carrying a lot of flashingadvertisements, which are a strongdisincentive to playing there.

Multiple Games of GoSome servers only allow you to be involvedin one game at a time, either as a player oras a spectator. Most only allow you to playone game at a time, but to watch as many asyou like at the same time. Some havesupport for formal simultaneous play, but donot allow you to start a new game when youare already playing one.

If this is an issue for you, and you actuallywant to play several games at the sametime, there is a way round it. You can haveaccounts on half-a-dozen different servers,connect to them all at once, and play a gameon each of them. This may sound asurprising thing to want to do, but ithappens.

TalkingPeople sometimes ask me if it is possible totalk to one�’s opponent while playing on aGo server. There is scope formisunderstanding here. On almost allservers, it is possible and normal to �“chat�”to your opponent by typing. It isconventional to start with �“Hi�”, or perhaps�“onegaishimasu�”; sometimes a conversation

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then develops, more often it does not.

However, if you actually want to be able touse voice to talk, it is more difficult. Eachplayer will need to have a microphone, andI don�’t have one, so I have not looked intothis. But I believe that there is a Koreanserver that supports exchange of audiobetween players.

Account NamesThe custom, on most Go servers, is to use a�“handle�” rather than your own name. I am�“maproom�” on most servers. I am awarethat this is off-putting to many people,particularly those who aren�’t used to it, as itsmacks of freemasonry or the like.However, there is usually no secrecyinvolved.

Most servers allow users to enter theirbiographical details, and to look at thedetails of other users; so if you look atmaproom�’s details you find that maproom isNick Wedd; and if you look at breakfast�’s,you find that he is Alexandre Dinerchtein,and is willing to sell you Go lessons via theserver. A minority of players, however, dochoose to remain anonymous, known onlyby their handle.

It is fairly common for one person to haveseveral accounts on the same server. Onereason for doing this is that you sometimesplay fast games, and sometimes slow, andyou want them to be separately rated. Oryou may play sober with one account andafter a few drinks with another.

A BRIEF TALK ABOUT THE BGA KGS TOURNAMENT

Ian Davis ian.davis29@btinternet.comWhen you have no local Go club, the bestthing you can do is to turn to the Internet.Initially, some people can show greatscepticism toward this medium, perhapsunderstandably, feeling that it is inferior tothe real thing. However once you startonline, you soon realise that all you willmiss is scrunching Go stones. Go serversprovide all the facilities you need to teachand to be taught. The available plethora ofplayers to compete with and observe isimmediately evident. It is my contentionthat the beast called Internet Go is by nomeans inferior at all; but I digress.

It all started when I read through anarchived post from the email lists talkingabout arranging an online inter-universityleague. Of course like so many ideas itnever came to fruition. Then inspirationcame as I looked around my Go Server(Kiseido - KGS). The French Room had its

own teaching ladder, the Polish Room itsown tournaments, The Germans whereplaying the Dutch whilst organising aninternal inter-city competition, while Britainhad nothing. It was then I decided toventure the idea of a tournament - Peoplefelt it was a good idea, and actually hassledme into organising its reality (for which Imust thank them).

What will it achieve? Well, a Tournamentgives excellent opportunity for people tomix, play and then discuss their games ingroups or in private. I hope that it will alsointroduce the BGA to the many Brits whoare currently non-members, and the fewwho left because they felt the BGA didn�’tcare about online players. What I hope willresult, is the creation of a real onlinepresence to develop our Go (Oh, and don�’tforget the holy grail of equating server andEuropean grades).

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THE BGA KGS GO TOURNAMENT - A REPORT

Nick Wedd nick@maproom.co.ukIn June and July this year, a Go Tournamenttook place on the Kiseido Go server (KGS),which was described as the first officialBGA Go Tournament. I would like todiscuss this. This issue of the Journal maycarry another report of the event; mypurpose is not so much to report on thisspecific tournament, but more to discussonline Go tournaments in general.

I have come across the view that online Go,played on servers, is a �“bad thing�”, as itdistracts Go players from playing �“real Go�”,as played over physical boards. I considerthat view absurd. I play Go for pleasure,and feel no obligation to leave my houseand trek to a physical Go club for thebenefit of players who don�’t have aninternet connection, or, or won�’t use it toplay Go. Fortunately, that view is rare now,and is certainly not countenanced by theBGA.

I am also aware of the view, among BGAmembers who play mainly or entirely on-line, that the BGA does not do enough foronline Go, despite collecting subscriptionsfrom them as from over-the-board players.However, it is hard to suggest what theBGA might do for those who play online.

The most obvious thing that the BGA doesfor over-the-board Go players is to assist inorganising �“real�” Go tournaments. I thinkthat this fact led to the idea �“let�’s have aserver Go tournament, and see if the BGAwill help us with it�”. I think there was aninitial expectation that the decision to holdan online Go tournament on KGS wouldcause the BGA to appoint someone to run it,and to write the publicity material. Ofcourse, this is not how the BGA operates:

people run their own tournaments and writetheir own publicity material, while the BGAprovides sets and clocks, and distributes thepublicity material. Eventually Ian Davisrealised, as he puts it, �“that in order to getanything done sometimes you just have todo it yourself�”, and set about organising theBGA KGS online tournament.

He did a good job of this. No one, so far asI know, had organised such a thing forBritish players before. He had quite anumber of decisions to make, which Idiscuss below; and the result has been anenjoyable and successful tournament.

CompromisesFirst, what should the format of an on-linetournament be? The over-the-boardtournaments familiar to many of us startwith registration. Then when registrationhas closed, the organiser does a draw andtells everyone who to play. This is unlikelyto work online. One problem is that youwill tell two people to play each other, butthey will fail to find a time that suits themboth. Another is that after it has started,more people will appear and want to beallowed to join in, saying that they haveonly just learned about it. I think Ian didwell in choosing to make this a self-pairedtournament, and to leave the entry openuntil halfway through.

Once you have decided to have a self-pairedtournament, an important question is how todecide the winner. One extreme andunworkable method is to choose the playerwith the best win-loss ratio. This givesplayers who have not yet lost a game adisincentive to play again, and leads to adull tournament with few games being

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played. The other extreme view (popularwith side-events for over-the boardtournaments) is to disregard the win-lossratio in favour of counting the number ofgames played. This results in the prizegoing to whoever is most persistent inpersuading others to play him; usuallyWilliam Brooks. Ian did well in choosing aformula (wins-sqrt(wins))/(total games)which provides a good compromise,rewarding both wins and persistence. I seeno reason why it should not be used forover-the-board side events too.

Another issue is whether to use handicaps.If all games are played even, the strongestplayer will win, and the tournament will bedull for all those who are not within a gradeor two of him. But if you use normalhandicaps, the likely winner is likely to bethe most under-rated player, an even worseoutcome. Again, Ian chose a sensiblecompromise by using �“handicap minustwo�”, so that when, for instance, a 1-kyuplays a 9-kyu, they use only six handicapstones. Again, this seems to have workedwell. Of course there is a need to decidewhat kind of rating to use. Ian decided touse BGA-recommended ratings for thoseplayers who had them, and to assign, to thebest of his ability, comparable ratings to theothers.

The time limits chosen were 30 minuteseach, plus five 30 second byo-yomi periods.This suited me well; it is slower than Iusually play on-line, but faster thantraditional BGA tournaments.

Why an Online Tournament?I am still unsure what the point is ofholding an online Go tournament. If I wantto play Go online, I never have anydifficulty in finding an opponent. So whatdoes an on-line tournament offer that

normal on-line play does not?

There are obvious differences between theway I play on-line and the way I play inover-the-board tournaments. When I play ina �“real�” tournament, I am always trying towin, am always sober, and never have toresign so as to be able to deal with adomestic emergency. So you might thinkthat I travel to �“real�” tournaments so as toachieve these conditions.

But I am capable of playing on-line likethis. I can create a special on-line accountthat I use only for serious play, and try toearn as high a rating as possible for it. If itbothers me, I can even specify in my gamechallenges that I prefer sober opponentswho will be doing their best to win.

So I am unable to explain the appeal of anonline tournament. But there must be someappeal. This one was successful, with 46registered players who have played at leastone game, and (at the time of writing, withtwo weeks still to go) 223 games played.That�’s more games that at any British over-the-board tournament except for the LondonOpen.

To find out more about the BGA KGS Gotournament go to:www.britgo.org/tournaments/2004/kgs/

What do you think aboutInternet Go?

Why not send a letterinto the journal and say?

You could even win thebest letter prize, see page60 for more information.

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DIARY OF A GO PLONKER ~ FOR HE�’S A JOLLY GOOD CHI

Ian Marsh ian.marsh@services.fujitsu.comBy chi, I don�’t mean the ch�’i in wei ch�’i,nor the letter of the Greek alphabet, nor amI writing about half a well-known,passionless, panda from 1958.

Chi also occurs in my Chambers Dictionary,but you will need to go via �“chai�” and then�“chal�” to find the definition. It is theRomany word for person.

To me CHI also stands for Computer/Human Interface. The standard acronymHCI (Human/Computer Interface) is allabout a user interfacing with a computerand as is well known this can be very user-unfriendly. CHI is all about being on theend of other people�’s computer generatedoutput and can be equally �“receiverunfriendly�”.

You don�’t have to own a computer to beaffected by CHI. I had a colleague whofailed to get money out of an ATM (Hole inthe wall) cash dispenser, only to be told bythe bank clerk that the ATM couldn�’t be atfault as they had only just that minuteinstalled a new computer program.

To be fair, you don�’t need computers to be�‘receiver unfriendly�’. One of my favouritetrue stories is of the foreign student newlyarrived in this country, getting onto analready crowded bus, only to be told by theconductor �“Come on, get off�”.

It is the fact that computers are impersonalmachines that aggravates the problem whenthey get involved. [The fact that computersare impersonal machines aggravates theproblem when they get involved.]

You can (try to) get a computer to dowhatever you like and it won�’t take offence(the story about the computer transmitting1000 volts on the voice activated command�“Execute Debugger�” is not true).Furthermore you are interacting with amachine and your anonymity seems to bepreserved. That is, we treat computers asthe machines they are.

A major reason why computercommunications, such as E-Mails, can bemisinterpreted is because the computerthrows away body language, voiceintonation, and other valuablecommunication clues, that helps avoidmisunderstandings. Any messagetransmitted via computer needs to be writtenand read with that in mind.

Computers are also limited to theirprogramming, and it is not unknown for thatto go wrong. Like the computer Go playingprogram that accidentally made a live two-headed dragon group, and then declaredthose stones dead.

People writing Go or Chess programs willtell you how users expect instant responsetimes, and all sorts of other concessionsfrom a machine that nobody would dreamof asking for if playing against anotherperson. Of course nowadays computers canbe used for many other Go related tasks(visit the Computer Section of the BGA website if you want to know more).

So why is CHI important. It is becausesome of these Go related tasks go beyondthe machine, and end up interfacing with afellow Go Player.

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For instance, a minority of Internet players(in reality a very small number, so don�’t letme put you off Internet Go) do some thingsthat you would not do face to face.Computer communications do breakdownfrom time to time so be tolerant; but besuspicious of the person whose machineconsistently breaks only when they arelosing, so the game is abandoned and theirrating is preserved.

I won�’t go into all the computer Go dos anddon�’ts, but suggest you read the Netiquette(as opposed to Etiquette which is also worthreading) entries as found in the BGA Website index.

If you read Nick Wedd�’s excellent write-upsof Computer Go games in the BGJ, thenyou will realize that resolving end gameissues, when two computer-go programsdisagree, can be troublesome. If they leavea situation unresolved, have they at leastagreed on what is alive and what is dead?

It may not even possible to get them to playthe game out, particularly if their life anddeath assessment is wrong. I wonder how

many computer Go programs do allow theresolution of disputed life and deathsituations by playing them out (as shouldhappen in disputed �‘human�’ games), andwhether they can change their assessment iffor some reason their �‘logic�’ proves wrong?

As Peter Wendes pointed out in a recent Gojournal, Go is not just a game; it is a socialevent with a cultural background. Itrequires players to interact. One reasonwhy Go is such a good training aid fordisadvantaged groups. I am not suggestingeveryone becomes Japanese, but let uspreserve the good things in Go culture aswell as the game itself.

When you are next on the computerremember CHI, and that like looking up theword in Chambers, no matter how complexthe interfaces you go through, you will endup with a person.

THE CATHERINE WHEEL

Simon Goss simon@gosoft.demon.co.uk

9x9 Problem

This charming problem was composed by Bernd Gramlich. Thispresent form on a 9x9 board was suggested by Robert Pauli.

Both sides have passed. No prisoners have been captured andthere is no komi.1. Who wins?2. Was Black right to pass?3. Was White right to pass?

The solution is given on page 67.

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GO IN SINGAPORE

Tony Atkins ajaxgo@yahoo.co.ukSingapore�’s main island is just a bit biggerthan the Isle of Wight. It�’s the same shapetoo; Singapore city is Shanklin and ChangiAirport is at Ryde. Where they differ is thatSingapore has more than twenty times thepopulation (over 3 million) and has its ownGo association. With 75 percent ofSingapore�’s population originating in China,you may expect a large Go community. Infact when the Singapore Weiqi Association(SWA) was founded there were just ahandful of players. There was a Japanesebusinessmen�’s club, a group at the home ofWu Tuo and a group at Nanyang University.An invitation to the 4th World Amateurcaused the formation of the SWA in autumnof 1981 and a 12 player tournament pickedtheir first representative. Finding meetingplaces and equipment were their earlyproblems, so they tended to meet incommunity centres and made their ownstones. Professionals came and classes werestarted, and the numbers of players startedto grow, especially among students.andschool children. Mr Ing from Taiwanvisited for the World Youth GoeChampionship in 1989 and as aconsequence bought them a permanentclubhouse in the city. In 1995, withgovernment backing, an Intellectual GamesCentre was opened in a suburbancommunity centre with clubhouses for Go,Chess, Chinese Chess and Bridge.

The city centre clubhouse (situated at 116Middle Street near to Bugis undergroundstation) is situated on the third floor of amultiuse building. The entrance, when youget out of the lift, is very impressive withlarge wooden doors, a Chinese inscriptionto its donation by Mr Ing and a display casewith boards, books, posters and a fan.Inside are two playing rooms, a classroom,an office and the nice feature of a parent�’swaiting room: a total of 340 square metresof air conditioned space. Unfortunatelynow the clubhouse is only open for classesand tournaments. The evening I visited ayoung teacher was taking three youngwomen though some simple life and deathproblems.

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The other clubroom is at the communitycentre in Bishan, a northern suburb, andconveniently across the road from theunderground and bus stations. Accessed upa flight of steps and a less impressiveentrance, this clubroom is the one to visit toplay Go. There is again an office, aclassroom and a playing room, total size160 square metres. A glass case in theplaying room again showed off trophies andequipment that could be bought. Thestandard playing equipment was Ing sets,but normal Chinese rules were played andof course English spoken.

The first time I visited, late on a Sundayafternoon, there were only half a dozenplayers there. Three other rooms at thecentre were full of a children�’s chess event.I got some games against two boys gradedabout one dan on various sizes of boards. Iwas recommended to visit on a Saturday,which I did. The place was more bustlingwith folk of all ages and a large group ofteenage boys who were very keen to playme, all about 1 dan except for perhaps theeldest who was about 5 dan. A lesson forchildren was on in the classroom, but I wastoo busy playing to see any of it.

So more than 20 years on the SWAcontinues to grow with an estimated 20000Go players. Their regular classes for alllevels and ages seem a good thing, thoughthe cessation of city centre playing seems tobe bad. It seems that the attraction ofplaying on the Internet has discouragedboard play and not everyone can live nearthe clubhouse. It is not known how muchGoe is played outside the clubhouse, buttheir continued work with the young ensuresthe SWA has a bright future.

Further details at: www.weiqi.org.sg

Singapore is also well supplied withChinese art, and the Asian CivilisationsMuseum contains porcelain collectionsfeaturing vases with typical Go playingscenes. The part at Empress Place had, in itsrecent acquisitions section, a double sidedGo and Chinese Chess board and pieces,about 100 years old.

A game in progress at theSWA city clubhouse.Photographs supplied byTony Atkins.

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2004 CHALLENGER�’S TOURNAMENT

Toby Manning toby.manning@ntlworld.comThe Challenger�’s Tournament is an all-play-all 8 player league to decide who shouldchallenge the British Champion in the Titlematch which will take place later in theyear. The 2004 Tournament took place inthe beautiful city Cambridge at the end ofApril, to decide who will take on MatthewMacfadyen.

In the first round Des Cann and David Wardplayed a classical fuseki: each took half theboard, then David invaded Des�’ half andlived, followed by Des invading David�’shalf. However, Des could only live with koand ended up losing the game. In theafternoon David Ward could not follow upthis victory, losing a group against PiersShepperson early in the game.

Alex Selby was seeking the slow playeraward: he played 28 moves in 74 minutesbut lost out to David Ward who played 27moves in 83 minutes (Time limits were 105minutes plus 15 moves in 5 minutesovertime). For some time both Alex andPiers thought they were winning their game,then Piers realised that the group he thoughthe had killed was actually alive in seki, andpromptly resigned.

Andrew Jones lost to Matthew Cocke,despite (or perhaps because of) killing acorner group with ko.

At the start the favourite was probablyMatthew Cocke (who had won theTournament in the two previous years), withDes Cann , Alex Rix, Piers Shepperson andDavid Ward expected to mount a strongchallenge. However, Matthew faltered inthe second game; losing to Des by ½ point.

Alex Rix had an easy first day, killing largegroups early in each game. By evening, heand Alex Selby were the only players on 2/2. Alex�’s opponents though were probablytwo of the weaker players in the tournamentgraded at 3 dan. It was all to play for.

On the second day, Matthew continuedhaving games with narrow margins bybeating Piers by 3 ½ points. Overall,Matthew was to have 3 games with amargin of ½ point, and 2 with margins of 3½.

Des spent his time making weak groupslive, but lost both games: in the morning toAlex Rix, and in the afternoon to AndrewJones. He was probably preoccupied by hisforthcoming marriage.

At the end of day 2 it was still all to playfor; Alex Rix was still in front with 4/4,with David Ward and Matthew Cockeclosely behind on 3/4.

On day 3 Alex Rix started well, beatingAlex Selby, to retain his perfect record.However, his two hardest games were tocome and he lost to both Matthew Cocke(by ½ point) and David Ward to end with 5/7.

David Ward lost his 5th game to MatthewCocke then defeated Alex Rix and AndrewJones to also end on 5/7.

Matthew Cocke beat David and Alex Rix,but lost to Tim Hunt (by 3 ½ points), inwhat was probably the upset of thetournament, to join Alex Rix and David

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Ward on 5/7. A playoff was thereforenecessary between the two players who hadended highest in the previous year�’s BritishChampionship, namely Matthew Cocke andDavid Ward. They played a close game, butMatthew made a small mistake and lost by½ point. He afterwards confessed that he�“fell asleep�”.

David Ward, who confessed himself�“surprised�” at the overall result, willtherefore challenge Matthew Macfadyen forthe British Championship.

7TH EUROPEAN PAIR GO TOURNAMENT

Martin Harvey jm.harvey@ntlworld.comSix British players had a great time at the7th European Pair Go tournament, held thisyear in Drobeta-Turnu Severin, in Romania.This year was the first when extra pairscould attend from the same country, soBritain�’s 3 pairs set the first record, out ofthe 11 countries represented! (Perhaps the�“furthest-travelled�” one, too �– esp. if youadd on our own leg from Manchester).Congratulations to Natasha Regan andMatthew Cocke who came fourth out of 40pairs, with 4 wins out of 5 games. Theylost only to the overall (Czech) winners.Helen and I - honoured to be the officialand sponsored UK pair this year - came11th, with Anna Griffiths and Tony Atkins15th.

The UK team built up good spirits - Annahad helped persuade the 3 pairs to travel,and Natasha booked us all onto the sameflights. We were looked after well by theRomanian go fraternity, who arranged forabout 15 of us to be met at Bucharest, thentaken West to Turnu by mini-bus. This 7-hour journey passed with much Brit-led gobanter. Despite the late arrival at the hotel,there was still free local hospitality to enjoy�– thanks Mihai. Even the cooks and waitersworked late to feed us �– with other friendlylocals (Betty and Christian) acting asinterpreters �– not so much for Anna though,who enjoyed using her phrase book fromHeathrow.

Given the time, and our hunger and thirst,orders needed to be quick. This was madeeasier by the wine list showing the mostexpensive as £3 �– so I ordered a couple ofthose, to be going on with! But asinexpensive as the refreshments and foodwere, they were fine. Few of us had anyRomanian �‘lei�’, so we paid in Euros, whichwere happily accepted everywhere,throughout our stay.Got to bed at about 1:30. All our roomswere very adequate, comprising mixtures ofen-suite, lovely views over the Danube,fridges of varying noise levels, curtains (inmost rooms!) and Sky TV (got to see TimHenman - more than you�’d get in England).

Next day (Saturday) we were up at 7 withthe sun, still quite tired. Breakfast was tea,bread roll, butter, marmalade and choice ofomelette or frankfurters. Servings weremodest, but sufficient - especially as weshared out Helen�’s frankfurters. Inability toask the waitresses questions was fun. Wespent most of the energy gained on theday�’s 3 rounds, but saved some for an earlyevening wander around the locality, downby the Danube, where you could see Serbia/ Montenegro just across the water. Wewalked up to the Tower of Severus andthrough town as far as a very ornate watertower (now a roundabout). We noted theamusing-looking taxis, but also the lack of

40

investment �– buildings were left half-built,the occasional gypsy begged, and in thepleasant park many couples of all ages justsat about, enjoying the fabulous weather. Itwas 24 degrees �– unseasonably high forMarch - and stayed sunny for the whole 4days (even though the forecast wasthreatening showers). We were evenconcerned about possible sunburn at times.

On the Sat. night the hotel provided somefree food and unlimited beer, which manyof us took into the playing room, to avoidthe loud music and dancing. Now, the freebeer prompted the European president�’spair-go partner to remark afterwards thatshe�’d never seen him so drunk. [He waslater to deny this vehemently, assuring methat if she knew him better she�’d have seenhim MUCH, MUCH more drunk �– maybeyou readers have the experience to rule onthis argument!] Anyway, he wasn�’t alone �–we were all highly entertained and in highspirits. We Brits spent a long time playingteam-pits - many of us had not played thisbefore, and took some getting used to it.The boys won the battle of the sexes... ThenTony decamped to the Germans and Polesfor some liar dice while we turned to tensies- another new game. Bed around 1:30 again�– even more tired!

Sunday: noticeably fewer people down forbreakfast; bacon and eggs - yummy. Last 2rounds (4+5), then prize-giving. The MC �–George �– spoke in Romanian, and Tony�’sspeech benefited from the very impressivetranslator. She later interviewed us Brits,on film for local TV. We gave a prettypositive response, and well deserved Ithought - we�’d had a great time. All theforeigners received prizes �– nice ones too �–posh medals in presentation cases. We tookmany photos. It was particularly nice to seeall the top Romanian children receivingtheir Diploma certificates �– duly signed by

the EGF president. The youngsters were socheerful �– and numerous as they constitutedabout half the total pairs.

Then 12 of us (4 Germans, 2 Poles and 6Brits) went for late lunch - pizza and beerseach - the total bill for 12 was a mere £28!!!After packing, the same group reconvenedfor �“for a quick drink�” in the evening, withBetty and Christian as guides - clearly arecipe for an all-nighter if ever there wasone. So, tempted as Tony and Anna were,they opted not to go out, but to be sensibleand get an early night. So the main groupwere taken to eat at a restaurant with a very,very loud local rock band �– but 50p got youpancakes and 2 drinks. From there, wewent to a really nice pub, and chatted anddrank rather a lot. It was late when 2 taxiswhisked us back to the hotel �– or rather 1did �– the other driver saw fit to hop out andhelp his colleagues settle an altercation inanother pub �– en route!

Once safely back at the hotel, Helen and Iwere persuaded (ok �– it didn�’t take toomuch) - but against our better judgement �–to try out the south-easterners�’ theory formaking best use of time. Rather than get acouple or so hours�’ sleep �– oh no �– farbetter, they said, to have the optimal 45minutes�’ sleep! And so it was �– courtesy ofour game Germans, Benjamin and Lisa �–that Matthew, Natasha, Helen and I dulystayed up in their room, playing pits for sixplayers and tensies until 04:45! Then up at05:30 for the bus home. Strangely enough,I slept nearly all the way, oblivious to themany potholes and our driver�’s purportedlyslightly losing his way!

41

Our overall impression of the long weekendwas that we�’d had a brilliant time. Lots offun and friendly people. Very wellorganised (the late draws didn�’t bother us.)A Relatively pleasant location. Hotel wasvery good - having the tournament in thehotel was a good idea. Good to see somany people. A very interesting culturalexperience, although certain aspects ofBlighty were more appreciated on return.We would go back. But, more importantly,we�’ll all be keen to attend future EPGtournaments anywhere �– although nextyear�’s one is in the UK -I believe Anna�’sco-organising it �– see her separatenotification. We would stronglyrecommend all UK pairs, no matter whatyour age or strength, to come along �– it�’sreally good fun.

Photograph taken by the Romanian TV cameraman, showing (left to right):Natasha, TV interviewer (interpreter), Matthew, Tony, Anna, Helen, Martin and George (MCat the tournament prize giving). In the background is the hotel reception, with the banneradvertising the event & the Romanian Go Federation.

Full results:www.european-go.org/pairgo/epgc/epgc2004.htm

Tournament sponsor:www.pairgo.or.jp/

The BGA has agreed to host the EuropeanPair Go Championships in 2005 in the UK.Anna Griffiths is organising this for theweekend 23rd / 24th April. The venue isstill to be confirmed but it is likely to be ineither Brighton or Maidenhead. As well asthe main tournament, there will be sideevents to introduce more people to the joysof Pair Go. We are also planning tocelebrate the BGA�’s 50th birthday duringthe weekend.

42

12

34

56

78

9

10

11

12

13

141516

17

18

19

20

21 222324

2526

27

2829 3031

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40 4142 43

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4950

B

A

Figure 1 (1 - 50)

52

53

54 5556

57

58

5960

Diagram 2a A reasonable fight for both

LI SHEN VS MACFADYEN

Commented by Matthew Macfadyen matthew@jklmn.demon.co.ukBlack: Li ShenWhite: Matthew MacfadyenNo komi

Figure 1 (1 - 50)

5: Makes things a little too easy forWhite.

12: Black�’s 5-4 stone is looking veryslightly misplaced.

21: Definitely the right area to play.Black is being very aggressive.

27: Strange. Black should havesettled the group quickly. Better tohave played at 30, even after WhiteA, Black B, the right side is not yetterritory for white and black ishappily settled.

31: White gets a big corner in senteand the Black stones are still notsettled.

33: Again black chooses the mostaggressive line.

45: Li wants to grab some territoryas well as look after his weak group.

Figure 2: (51 - 100)

52: Not properly read through. SeeDiagram 2a for another way.

43

5859

6061

62

63

64

65

66

Diagram 2b White has an easier game

60 6162

63

Diagram 2c Black is stronger

5152

535455

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58 596061

6263

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6667 68

6970

71

7273

74

75

76 77 7879

80

81

82

8384

85

8687

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8990

9192

93

94

95 9697

9899100

Figure 2 (51 - 100)

58: Wrong order of moves, seediagram 2b.

60: Playing at 66 would be too latenow, see diagram 2c, as black has astronger position at the bottom.

68: Not best. The variation shown indiagram 2d (next page) lives withbetter aji.

75: This is much better than tryingto kill the stones immediately (seediagram 2e on the next page).

79: Missed a trick. This should beone point to the left.

82: The centre group still does notneed to be saved, indeed it has nopurpose in existing unless it canattack Black on one side or other.

83: A clever move which aims tocapture both of the white groups atthe bottom, but the left side isprobably bigger.

88: Enormous, now Black�’s left sidehas become white, and even if hekills both groups at the bottomBlack may be behind.

93: Captures the lower centre group.

98: Trying to create some aji to givethe attack at the top momentum.

44

Figure 3 (101 - 150)114: A bit too laid back. Better tohang on to the cutting stones (seediagram 3a) and see what Blackcomes up with.

117: Captures the cutting stones.

142: This cannot be right. If Whitewants to fill a liberty it should bethe one above 115. I was notreading properly.

148: Challenges Black to find a wayto live.

12

345

67 8

910

11 1213

1415

1617

181920

21

222324 25

2627

2829

30 31

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33343536

3738

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4546 47 4849

50

Figure 3 (101 - 150)

Diagram 2dNow White is alive at the bottomand has chances to cut the 5 centrestones off.

68

6970

71

7273

74

75

76 77 7879

80

Diagram 2d (Variation at move 68)

Diagram 2eThis way Black has to worry:Are the central cutting stones safe?Can White break into the left side?Is the capturing race at the bottomdefinitely good for Black?Even if so, has White moves tostrengthen the lower left corner insente?

7576777879 80

818283 84

Diagram 2e (Variation at move 75)

45

14

1516

1718

19

Diagram 3a (Variation at move 114)

51525354

5556

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636465

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909192 93

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95 96

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DC

AB

Figure 4 (151 - 200)197 ko at 191198 connects at 195200 fills ko at 194

Figure 4 (151 - 200)152: It is very hard to kill the Blackstones (see diagram 4a).

172: White cannot cut, and the lowergroup dies without a move.

173: Very sharp. This threatens to killthe centre group while covering hisweakness. White would like to play abig point such as C, but if he omitseither 174 or 176, black kills the centregroup with D.

180: The left, C, may look bigger, butafter black 80, white A, black B, thewhite group is dead and black wins.

183: His first error for a long time. IfBlack plans to attack the lower group,better omit this move.

Diagram 3aBlack has a lot of work to do tocompensate for the left side, and hestill has weaknesses.

46

52

5354

55

56

5758 59

6061

Diagram 4a Hard to kill

90 9192

93

9495

96

97

98 99100

101

Diagram 4bWhite could have lived

Figure 5 (201 - 250)206 at white tri(angle)209 at black tri, 212 at white tri215 at black tri, 218 at white tri240 at white square, 243 at 203246 at white square, 249 at 203

12

34

5

A7

8

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1314

1617

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190: Allows black to start a ko forthe life of the group, 191 wouldhave been better (see diagram 4b).

192: Better at 193, which makes eyeshape and prevents the ko for life.

195: A Small error, better to play at199 which gains one point and a kothreat.

Figure 5 (201 - 250)

208: White returns the favour. Thisloses 2 points compared withconnecting at A.

232: Game losing. White must playat 237 (see diagram 5a).

47

51

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5354

56 57

59 60

62

6465

66

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6869

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727374

7576

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80 8182

8384

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8687

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89 90

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92 9394

95

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9798

99100

Figure 6 (251 - 300)255 at black triangle, 258 at 252261 at black triangle, 263 at 252

Diagram 5aThis result looks better for white.

Figure 6 (251 - 300)

262: It is important for white to playhere; otherwise black gets 3 good kothreats which also gain points.

32

33

343536

37 38

39404142

43

Diagram 5a (Variation on move 232)

48

34

35363738

3940

41

424344

Diagram 7a (Variation on move 334)

1

2 34

56

7

89

10

1213

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21 22

242527

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39

Figure 7 (301 - 339)311 at 305, 314 at 308317 at 305, 320 at 308323 at 305, 326 at 308329 at 305, 332 at 308335 at 305, 337 at 308

Figure 7 (301 - 339)

306: A small error, but Black iswinning anyway. Better to play at330.

334: Starting at 335 would leavewhite 1 point better off (see diagram7a).

339: Black wins by 3 points.

49

For the first six weeks of 2004, the CardiffGo Club had the privilege to host Mr LiWen Hao. WenHao came to the UK to joinhis wife for the Chinese Spring Festival. Asa Chinese 5 dan, he significantly increasedthe strength of our go club. As well asregularly beating us during simultaneoushandicap games, he also talked us throughhis games from the London Open. Iprompted him to submit one of his gamesfor publication in the British Go Journal, sothat perhaps the rest of the UK could get aglimpse of the lessons Wen Hao gave ourclub during his visit.

I would like to thank the clubs at Bath andBristol that we visited. Paul Atwell in Bathput together an excellent spread and PaulChristie at Bath managed the only winagainst Wen Hao in the South West ofEngland and Wales. Wen Hao lost the game

by a point. He was surprised and theyreplayed the game so that he could doChinese counting but the result stood, muchto his chagrin.

The game chosen by Wen Hao to analyzewas one that he lost with a mistake in theend game. It makes the important point ofnever giving up until the end. If playerslike Wen Hao can make a mistake and losein the end game then it gives hope to all uskyu players. I would like to take thisopportunity to thank Wen Hao for the timehe spent at our club and the lessons hegenerously gave.

CHINESE WHIRLWIND HITS SOUTH WALES

Paul Brennan brennanp@cardiff.ac.uk

From left to the right: Li N

ing, Li Wen H

ao, Emil and

Radek (w

ho were placed 5th, 1st, 2nd and 3rd

respectively in the London Open). Photograph supplied

by Wen H

ao.

50

A GAME FROM THE LONDON OPEN

Commented by Li Wen Hao

1

23

4

56

78

910

11

12

13

14

1516

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18

19 20

2122

23 2425 2627

2829

3031

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3334

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40 41

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45464748

4950

BA

Figure 1 (1 - 50)

White: Emil Nijhuis 6dBlack: Li Wen Hao 5dKomi: 6.5 points

Figure 1 (1 - 50)

5: I am thinking that white willrespond with 16, 40 or 43, then Ican play 6 which combines wellwith the right side.

18 is questionable. As black is verysolid on the left side, white shouldjust jump out to 24. See diagram 1for typical continuation.

22 is not as efficient as A or B atdisconnecting black. Diagram 2shows some variations that arebetter for white.

1819

2021

22

23

24

Diagram 1The more common move goes likethis. White jumps out with 18, thenafter exchanging 20 for 21 and 22 for23, continues out with 24.

22

23 2425 2627

2829

3031

32

A

Diagram 2A better variation for white. 28 at Ais also a good alternative.

51

31: With the exchange 29 for 30,black jumps out. This is a goodsequence, without this exchange,white could live comfortably.

32 is a slight overplay, 35 is a goodanswer to punish it.

Figure 2 (51 - 100)

57: There are some variations, butblack can kill either the 5 stones onleft side or the corner. Both resultsseem favourable to black who nowtakes the lead.

63 is not as simple as 99.Alternatively 73 attacks this group.

74-76 are the way for white tomake two eyes, but he falls evenfurther behind.

85 is solid, but maybe C is better tosurround the territory. If Whitecuts here, sacrifice 73 by playing Dthen E to surround the right side.See diagram 4 for a variationsequence.

ED

C

51 5253

55

56

5758

59

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6364

65

666768

6970 71

72

7374 7576 77

78 7980 81

82 8384

85

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8990

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93 9495

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99 100

Figure 2 (51 - 100)54 at black triangle91 at black square - ko96 at 88 - ko

4445

46

4748

49

50

51

52

53A

Diagram 3

Diagram 3:After 53 white cannotkill all the stones inthe upper-left side,and black, who getsthe whole lower-leftcorner, is in afavourable position(53 could also be atA).

52

85

86 8788 8990 9192

93

Diagram 4

78

91011

1213

14

15

Diagram 5

1 23

45

6

78

910111213

14

15 1617

1819

20

21

22 23

2425

26

27

2829

3031

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3334

353637

38

394041

4243

F

4445 46

4748

49

50

Figure 3 (101 - 150)

Figure 3 (101 - 150)

107 should be at 110 - to have oneextra liberty feels better for the leftside, see Diagram 5.

143 is not as good as F, whichmakes the right corner big. F alsoweakens the white group at thebottom.

128, 132, 136, 150, 154 and 156 areall good moves to try to narrow thedifference on the board. We can seefrom these moves that Emil is avery strong player with a cool mind.

Diagram 4 (left):If white plays softly like 85, if white cuts, thesequence 86 to 93 is to be expected.

Diagram 5 (above):If black play at 107 and follows the sequence to 113,A and B will be miai, it is also good for black andquite simple.

53

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

5253

5455A

Diagram 6

5152 53 5455

56

5758

5960

61

6263

64 65

6667

69

70

71

72 73

74

75

767778 79

80

81 82

8384 85

86

8788

89

9092

9394 959697

9899

100

Figure 4 (151 - 200)168 at 162 - ko191 at 165

Figure 4 (151 - 200)

169: Black plays very solidly nowbecause he is leading. But whitetries every way to complicate thegame.

191 lets white live, however black�’sterritory remains enough.

Moves 194 - 202 are white�’sprivilege. However white does notgain a lot if black plays 207 at thegood point of 208 instead of the badpoint 207.

Diagram 6:If Black plays 143 as in diagram 6,the continuation to 147 follows andwhite has to connect with 148. IfWhite were to answer 149 in theupper right corner, then Blackwould get the big play at 150instead. By 153 (which might alsobe at A) if black can retain thelower right corner then white is farbehind in territory.

54

1

23 4

56

7 8

910

11 1213 141516 17

18

1920

21

22

2324

25

26 2728 29

30

3132

3334

36 37

3940

41 42 4344

46 474849

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555657

58

59

60

6162

6364

6566

67

68

Figure 5 (201 - 268)235 at black triangle238 at 230, 245 at 242251 at black triangle

Figure 5 (201 - 268)

233: Black has a real problemdealing with the ko (at 230) he hascreated.

247: If this move is played at 248black will win easily. 247 is a sillymistake but it really happened in mygame. This is the losing move!

Final comments:

Looking back over the game, Blackplays quite well in the beginning, butwhite wins by his perseverance andeventually black makes some deadlymistakes.

I played 8 games at the LondonOpen, a very well organisedtournament, and managed 6 wins. Iwas very lucky to get thechampionship since I lost two games.The game I won with Shen Li was aterrible game for me; I won justbecause of his mistakes. So Go isalso round like football, every thingwould happen.

I also visited Bath, Cambridge,Cardiff and some other placesbesides London. I found people hereare very nice, modest and gentle. Ifound Cambridge a very ancientuniversity town and Cardiff a verygreen city with lots of amusements.The Go players in Cardiff are veryhelpful, especially Paul, Neil andFrank. Bath amazed me with itslandscape, as I could not find amodern building there.

Recording and studying your own games is one ofthe best ways to improve your Go.To encourage more people to have a try, theJournal will be running a regular competition tofind interesting games for future issues.Although you do not have to comment on thegame yourself, you will stand a better chance ofwinning, if you add some thoughts of your own.Games can be sent to the journal eitherelectronically as .sgf files (preferred) or recordedon paper. Please make sure that the players'names, their grades and the venue are all shownclearly.Next issue there will be two prizes: The BestGame Prize is a special copy of Bruce Willcox'sSector Fights AND Contact Fights; and the secondplace prize a £15 BGA book voucher.

YOUR MOST INTERESTING GAMECOMPETITION

55

THE BGA BOOKSHOP

Gerry Miles rgm@ilovepayday.comBecause of the increasing demands made bythe BGA Bookshop, I no longer sell booksand equipment to non-members. Theservice given to members remains the same(or better), and the range of books andequipment available is steadily increasing.

I attend about 15 BGA tournaments eachyear with the full BGA Bookshop, andseveral tournaments run a BGA bookstall(without equipment) by proxy. If I can beof help to you then please call me on 01600712934.

New Books Available:SL20 �“200 Tesuji Problems�”(Slate and Shell - £12.00)Following up the well-liked �“200 EndgameProblems�”, this book is aimed at the mid-kyu player and includes a wide range ofpositions that commonly occur in everydaygames. However, dan players should befamiliar with most of the material, and so Iwould grade the book as Intermediate.

SL27 �“The Best Play�”(Slate and Shell - £7.00)This booklet analyses two games betweenstrong amateur dan players in some detail,and so it reminds me of another excellentbook from the same publisher -�“Understanding How To Play Go�”. Boththese books will interest upper kyu and danplayers, although again the book isIntermediate grade.

SL35 �“Go Problems For Kyu Level PlayersVol 5: Tesuji Challenges�”(Slate and Shell - £3.50)This pocket-sized booklet is handy to carry

about, and contains some useful material forthe mid-kyu player. My first reaction wasthat the problems seemed quite easy, butafter looking at some of the solutions Ibecame more interested.

Elementary Grade:SL26 �“Let�’s Play Go�”(Slate and Shell - £6.50)This is another attempt to write a book thatwill appeal to younger children, which isdifficult in the computer age. The book tobeat in this category is of course �“Learn ToPlay Go�” which is twice the price and isaimed at rather older children. And there isthe attractive little booklet �“Go - anIntroduction�” available free from the BGA.The layout of �“Let�’s Play Go�” is good butthe pace is slow. As a result the bookdoesn�’t get very far, and so it is notparticularly good value for money. But if itappeals to your child then go for it!

Yutopian BooksSeveral new books are expected shortlyfrom this publisher.

Price ChangesNote that free copies of �“Teach YourselfGo�” are no longer provided with the PGT2and PGT3 sets.

Goods DirectThe BGA bookshop, with a wide range ofbooks, equipment and other items, willcertainly be at the Milton Keynes andWessex tournaments. A limited bookshopmay be at several other venues during thelate summer and early autumn. Note thatthere is no BGA Bookshop at the MSO.

56

REVIEW OF GO DOJO: SECTOR FIGHTS

Nick Wedd nick@maproom.co.ukIn the previous issue of this Journal, Ireviewed Go Dojo: Contact Fights. GoDojo: Sector Fights is another module of thesame training program by Bruce Wilcox.

The structure of the programThe structure of Go Dojo: Sector Fights isidentical to that of Go Dojo: Contact Fights.Like that module, it is easy to install andrun, and uses hypertext links in a non-standard way that takes some getting usedto. If you already have a copy of theContact Fights module, you will find it easyto use. It is larger than the Contact Fightsmodule, with 1905 pages. It only runs onWindows.

Sector lines and Sector fightsThe concept of �“sector lines�” was inventedby Wilcox in the 1970s when he beganworking on computer Go, and described inhis 1993 book �“Instant Go Volume 1�”.

To quote from the program: �“A sector line isan imaginary line running between twostones of the same color, anywhere on theboard. The line must not pass through anystones or links. The sector line is ageneralization of a link, but longer. Theproperty of a link is that it creates aboundary that cannot be crossed by theopponent in a connected manner. Theproperty of a sector line is that itforeshadows a potential link boundary.�”

Sector Fights are fights about whose sectorlines will predominate, containing eitherterritory or weak groups. The early stagesof a Go game can be regarded as asuccession of sector fights, alternating withcontact fights.

The content of the programThe program is divided into four sections,�“elementary�”, �“novice�”, �“intermediate�” and�“advanced�”.

The elementary section defines terms,including �“sector line�” itself, �“moyo�”, and�“grouse�” (a grouse is a GROUp enclosedwithin a SEctor: an appropriate name,because the owner of the sector will huntthe weak group while it will try to flyaway).

The novice section covers simpleapplications of these concepts, and begins toshow how they relate to one another.

The intermediate section takes this further,and assumes some reading ability, three orfour moves.

The advanced section goes still further. It isaimed at stronger players, with the ability toread up to ten moves, and exercisejudgement about other Go concepts. It endsby introducing the �“Great Wall�” concept, inwhich you start the game with a line oflarge knight�’s moves up the middle of theboard. This idea is not Wilcox�’s, he foundit in an article from the 1920s, but he gaveit the name �“Great Wall�”, and did a lot topopularise it in the West.

Each section has tests for the reader, toensure that the material is being understood.I did rather badly on these, though reallythey were easy enough for anyone who hadread the material properly: I blame the needto work through thousands of pages ofmaterial in time to meet this Journal�’s press

57

date. Each section ends with a few gamesthat illustrate the points covered.

I like the way that Wilcox writes. I get theimpression that many Go books nowadaysare like many cookery books: they are notreally intended to instruct, but rather totitillate, providing the reader with chatabout, and pictures of, his or her favouritetopic. This is not Wilcox�’s aim at all. Hewants to convey concepts, ensure that theyare correctly grasped, and show how toapply them. He does this patiently, withplenty of examples and tests.

Here is an example of his writing. �“Whenyou attack you expect him to defend. Thiswill neutralize the attacking value of yourmove. So the value of your move is whatelse it did in sente. You particularly needthat value if he does NOT respond. Rarelyis it the case that you can kill him with yourfollow-up move, so if your move had noother value you just lost a turn.�” What thissays is clear, and even, maybe, obvious.But it certainly wasn�’t obvious to me beforeI read it.

ConclusionLike Go Dojo: Contact Fights, Go Dojo:Sector Fights is good teaching material, andwith over 1900 pages, compares very wellin value with any book. Unlike Go Dojo:Contact Fights, it contains plenty ofmaterial which is original with this author,and available nowhere else. I definitelyrecommend it.

How to buy itGo Dojo is available by email frombrucewilcox@bigfoot.com (pay US $35 or£20 or 30 Euros by paypal); or by post fromBruce Wilcox, 2138 Buhne St, Eureka, CA95501-3110, CA 93401, USA (pay US $35by dollar cheque, dollar IMO or by cash).

How to win a copyThis issue sees the introduction of variouscompetitions to the journal. There is a fullcopy of Go Dojo: Contact Fights and SectorFights up for grabs in the Interesting GameCompetition. Go to page 54 for moreinformation.

American Go Association www.usgo.orgThe AGA web site features a weekly Go problem and a weekly Go picture on its frontpage. Of course it features listings for clubs and events in the USA and much morebeyond. From there is a link to an archive of their popular weekly E-Journals, theMember�’s Edition of which is now available to BGA members free of charge.

Tony Atkins

IN THE LIGHT

58

LETTERS AND SHORT CONTRIBUTIONS

A further �‘optical�’ experimentIn the last journal Nick Wedd discussed theproblem in the diagram below, where ablack stone was incorrectly given at point�‘A�’.

Go is about pattern recognition, and it is awell-known principle (to magicians) thatpeople will usually see what they are told,or want, to see. I am not surprised thatpeople often mistake similar lookingsituations.

Nick proposed that the stone should bewhite.

In a side competition at the Bracknell GoTournament, I experimented by setting afurther variation of the problem where point�‘A�’ is unoccupied. What is the status of thestones now? For the solution go to page 60.

Ian Marsh

Go and the MSOIn the previous issue of the Journal, I wroteabout the relationship between the BGA andthe Mind Sports Olympiad, suggesting thatthe MSO was elitist and that we shouldcease cooperation unless they changed theirapproach.

This led to an extremely vigorous debate atthe BGA AGM. While there was significantsupport for my views, there was also astrong feeling that the MSO was a goodthing and that we should not seek to dictateto them.

Francis Roads and myself (as sponsors ofthe motion) felt that the debate had beenvery positive and had explored all theissues. There was clearly some polarisationamongst the BGA memebrs, and our initialproposal, if passed, would have beendivisive as far as the membership wasconcerned. We did not want this to be theoutcome.

Accordingly, we withdrew our motionwithout putting it to a vote. We areconfident that the new Council, havinglistened carefully to the debate, willnegotiate with the MSO in the best interestsof the Association.

Toby Manning

A

59

Strange game countingWhile playing in the British Open at MiltonKeynes I had a shock towards the end ofone game. After capturing a stone I startedto put it in the lid with my other prisonerswhen I saw, to my great surprise, that the lidwas completely empty. After a fewmoments of amazement I realised that myneighbours, who had finished their gameand left some time ago, must have sweptmy prisoners away while clearing up.Unfortunately neither I, nor my opponent,knew how many stones had been in thelid.

We looked for an organiser and found TimHunt, who soon took control of thesituation. The answer he provided lay inusing a scoring system similar to the Ingscoring used at the European Congress -Chinese or area scoring. As we had notstarted out with an identical number ofstones Ing was not possible but the methodwas to count all the stones and territory onthe board belonging to black and to white.In this scheme all the prisoners are returnedto their bowls so the fact that they weremissing was not a problem. This methodcontrasts with the usual territory plusprisoners count. In area counting, thedifference between the total areas shows thewinner.

No problem!

What happened on the other board? Didblack unwittingly acquire a significant haulof foreign prisoners or were they just tidiedaway into the bowls? Nobody knows andthe question was never asked. I have notheard of this happening before but, thinkingabout it, it is quite surprising that it does notoccur more often.

Pauline Bailey

Congratulations!Recently the number of single male danplayers in the BGA has been reduced bytwo, as two venerable players have gothitched.

On 7 May, Des Cann(4 dan) marriedWendy Adams on aglorious summer�’sday at Goring onThames. The pictureshows the happycouple. Des metWendy through hisother great hobby,acting: it isunderstood thatWendy does not (yet)play Go.

Des has represented Britain twice at theWorld Amateur Go Championships, andonce (playing with Sue Paterson) in theInternational Amateur Pair-GoChampionships.

On 4 June, Matthew Macfadyen (6 dan) andKirsty Healey (1 dan) got married quietly inWarwick; the only guests were daughtersJennifer and Lydia. Matthew and Kirstyhave been an �“item�” for over 15 years, andwill need little introduction to readers.Matthew has been the British representativeat innumerable international Go events;Kirsty has twice represented Britain at theWomen�’s World Amateur GoChampionships, and the two have played inthe International Pair Go Championshipsthree times.

Toby Manning

60

IBM Go programming competitionYou may be interested to know that PeterWendes, the BGA Education Officer, hasbeen invited to give a talk on Go at IBM�’sResearch Centre at Hursley Park nearWinchester.

As part of the same event I invited workersat Hursley to take part in a GoProgramming Challenge, to write a programto play 9x9 Capture Go. A tournament forthe programs will be run during the week ofPete�’s talk.

Here is an extract from the invitation I sentout.

�“The game of Go has superseded Chess asthe ultimate game programming challenge.Go is a simple game, but the number ofpossibilities in Go means that a brute forcesearch approach is unlikely ever to matchhuman play. Despite 30 years of seriouseffort, no computer program can beat even amoderately strong human player, in contrastto other full-information games such asChess and Chequers. IBM has a longhistory of involvement in computer gameplaying, from Arthur Samuel�’s ChequerProgram which ran on (and indeedinfluenced the design of) IBM�’s firstprogrammable computer to Deep Blue.�”

This seems to have provoked a fewresponses. About 3000 people work atHursley, so we hope these events willstimulate a lot of interest in Go.

Mike Harvey

Solution to a further �‘optical�’experimentThe status is Black can kill, but White canlive without resorting to seki.

As expected, several people, rememberingthe Journal article, played white 1 at white 3below which leads to the seki as given inthe last journal.

The correct sequence is given above. White1 at 2 is also a variation.

Ian Marsh

12

3

�“You disagree with so and so because ...�”�“Whatever happened to ...�”

Write to the editor and have your say!

To encourage new contributors, startingnext issue, there will be a regularcompetition for the best letter receivedand featured.

Next issue the prize will be a £10 BGA

LETTER OF THE SEASONCOMPETITION

61

Dan GostelowEddie Smithers has written and asked me topost the following. I�’d like to express myown sadness too. A goban made by Dan isone of my treasures.

Simon Goss

I am sorry to announce the death of DanGostelow. He passed away peacefully aftera long illness on Saturday 8th May 2004.

For many years Dan was an active memberof the Leicester Go Club and was wellknown to many go players for the boardsthat he made. A cabinetmaker by trade, thego boards were a useful sideline for him.Dan and his wife Sylvia used to help runthe Leicester Tournament when it was heldat the 66 Club.

In later years he came to enjoy playingcomputer games and became a handy C++programmer. And especially, he wasdevoted to Sylvia and his grandchildren.

I first met him when I moved to MeltonMowbray in 1974 and started playing go atLeicester. He was a good friend for 30years and I will miss him a lot.

Eddie Smithers

Richard HobsonWith several slices of luck, and I don�’t onlymean the three-way nigiri at the end, alongwith some help from my opponents Imanaged to qualify for this year�’schallengers league. Although I think therewas another reason why I did so well. Theprevious week I had been to visit mybrother in Newcastle who was terminally illwith cancer. This seemed to have the effectof emptying my mind of a lot of rubbishand as a result I was unusually clearthinking and focussed when I got to thecandidate�’s tournament. When I arrived home in Wiltshire on theSunday evening it was to hear that he hadbecome much worse. I drove overnight toNewcastle and was with him the followingday when he died. He even asked me how Ihad done and seemed genuinely pleasedwhen I said very well. Go is only a gameand not too important in the scheme ofthings. Still, qualifying for the challenger�’sleague is quite an achievement, especiallyfor a 2nd dan. So I would like to dedicatethis one to my brother, Richard Hobson. Heis quite a well-known artist in the NorthEast of England, as well as Conservator ofPaintings at the Bowes Museum, check himout if you ever get the chance.

John Hobson

62

A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO EXPLOITATION

Roger J.N. Daniel

At first, you must contemplate thepossibility of Exploitation from a distance.You must either see it coming or you mustcreate/exploit possibilities when they occur.Obviously it helps if you know how to doExploit in advance; and also, when not todo it. Therefore:

i) There must be a reason for it.ii) There must be a method of creationor an idea.iii) There must be a clear perception ofthe feasibility.iv) There must be preparation for youropponent�’s play up to and subsequently.

Therefore, both Opportunity andExploitation do not always go hand in hand.The relationship between Exploitation andImplementation is there. Flexibility andDynamics, interplay and spanning musttherefore take place in the short, mediumand long term.

Your Opponent�’s play is the context andmay change your optimum choice in thecourse of events. You must have a reasonfor Exploitation and an idea of what is tocome subsequently. It is important not losesight of the fact that in your own positionthere may be weaknesses or features thatcan be, in turn, Exploited by yourOpponent.

It is also important to consider this: �“Whatis Exploitation?�” Some people�’s objectivesare; Damage or Destruction and other�’sobjectives are Support and Construction.

There are structures and the resources fromwhich structures are built. There areMaterial resources and Spatial resources.Sometimes it is necessary to attempt to gainin Space or Material.

Space and Material, and Time and Materialare connected in different ways in Go.Therefore, in a more sophisticated view, thisconsists of Efficiency and Balance, in Time.You can consider that deployment of yourmeans is the activity that you are alwaysconcerned with and that the Scale, large orsmall, of interlocking events and structuresis the basis for your evaluation.

The transience of your mind; thefleetingness of your thought�’s, theephemeral nature of one�’s imaginings makeour task seem unreal. What we know withour mind and see with our eyes is thefoundation upon which our plan can takeshape.

For small investment, you hope for a largerreturn. This is the way we are moved toExploit. If this were not the case therewould be no push of conviction. We would,therefore, lose the certainty of conceptionand we would be left to travel along otherpathways in search of other possible plays.

At the base is shape of context; one courseof action leads to inconsequential profit, butthe other course of action leads to greaterprofits. A choice presents itself, or at leastalternatives, by reason of the featuressurrounding your position. Therefore youcan make a decision as to whether to makean immediate or longer term gain.

This is the foundation of Exploitation, butsituations may be present where choosing togain here leads to a loss there. The merefact that you initiate a manoeuvre leading toa gain, in its simplest terms results in youhaving taken advantage: but your objectivesmust include an accomplishment that islasting, otherwise there would be nomeaning of worth to the idea ofExploitation.

63

WORLD NEWS

Tony Atkins ajaxgo@yahoo.co.ukToyota Denso OzaThe second Toyota Denso Oza was againheld at the European Go and CulturalCentre in Amsterdam, from 6th to 8thFebruary. The same two-stage system wasrun as in the first event in 2002 whichallowed 78 top players from 25 Europeancountries to take part. Britain�’s hopes werewith Matthew Cocke and David Ward, whoboth creditably won two games in the 4-round qualifying stage, as MatthewMacfadyen had flight problems and did notarrive. The 20 players on 3 and the 5 on 4wins progressed to the knockout, the top 7being seeded to the second round. Despitelosing a qualifying game to Bajenaru, thewinner of the throne (Oza) title was the2001 European Champion, Andre Kulkovfrom Russia. He beat fellow RussianAlexandre Dinerchtein in the final. FrankJanssen of the Netherlands beat Romania�’sIon Florescu in the play-off for third place.The top three qualified for the World Oza inJapan later in the year. 206 players took partin various side events at the weekend, 36more than in at the first Oza.

BarcelonaThis year the Barcelona Tournament waspart of the Toyota-Pandanet European GoTour Tournament on the 14th and 15thFebruary. As usual several Japaneseprofessionals took part. Nakano Yasuhiro (8dan) was the winner on with a perfect 5.Second was Setoo (5 dan) equal withKurahashi (9 dan) on 4/5. Then Yanagida (4dan), Guo Juan (Netherlands) and JeffSeailles (France) topped the group on 3/5.96 players took part.

Irish OpenThe 16th Irish Open was held from 5th to7th March at the familiar venue of theTeachers�’ Club in Dublin. It was attendedby 26 players from 13 countries and for thefirst time included players from all 4 Irishprovinces. Different this year was thedropping of the Handicap Tournament,recently played on the Monday. Winner ofthe 13-player Irish Rapid on the Fridaynight was Dan Gilder (3 dan Manchester)with 5 wins. Second was Colin Adams (1kyu Lancaster) with 4 wins and top localplayer was Stephen Flinter (1 dan) in thirdwith 3 wins. In the Irish Open, ToshioNishimura a visitor from Japan won with 5/5. Second on 3/5 was Stephen Flinter (1 danIreland) on tie-break from David Ward (4dan Cambridge), Noel Mitchell (2 danDublin) and Dan Gilder (3 kyuManchester), all on 3/5. Claas Roever (4kyu Dublin) won 5/5. Most players wentaway with some sort of prize, and muchenjoyment from the games, meals out andfriendly atmosphere. Retiring fromtournament organising, John Gibson mustbe thanked for running all the Irish eventsso far held.

Ing Memorial24 of Europe�’s top players travelled topicturesque Czech spa town Karlovy Vary(Karlsbad) for the Ing Chang-Ki MemorialCup, held from 4th March to 7th March inthe Hotel Imperial. The top four players (allprofessionals) ended on 5 wins and weresorted by tie-break. First was Catalin Taranu(5 dan pro), second was AlexandreDinerchtein (1 dan pro), third Guo Juan andfourth Svetlana Shikshina. The group on 4wins was Andre Kulkov, Geert Groenen,Cristian Pop and Csaba Mero. Representing

64

the UK, 12 year old Li Shen (5 dan) won 2games to place 16th; he beat Csaba Mero (6dan) and Ruslan Saifullin (5 dan), but lostto Svetlana Shikshina (1 dan pro), EmilNijhuis (6 dan), Bernard Helmstetter (5 dan)and Felix von Arnim (5 dan). A 56 playerside event was won by Pei Zhao (6 danGermany) on 5/5, with Jan Hora (5 danCzechia) in second with 4/5.

European Pair Go ChampionshipsThe European Pair Go Championships inDrobeta - Turnu Severin, in south-westRomania, was held on 20th and 21st March.A total of 40 pairs took part from 11countries and including about 20 pairs ofRomanian children in a handicap group.Four teams ended up on 4 wins, so thechampionship was decided by tie-break.Winners were Czechia�’s Klara Zaloudkovaand Zbynek Dach (average 2 dan). Equalsecond were Rita and Tibor Pocsai fromHungary (average 5 dan) and Lisa Ente andBenjamin Teuber from Germany (average 4dan). Not helped by beating the French whohad a very low score, but only losing to thewinners, Britain�’s Natasha Regan andMatthew Cocke (average 3 dan) camecoming 4th, having the lowest SOS. Theyequalled their previous highest place but ina larger event. The other UK players were11th (Helen and Martin Harvey) and 15th(Anna Griffiths and Tony Atkins). Anoteworthy result was Croatia�’s pair of TeaRobotic and Mladen Smud who won theirfirst four games at average of 4 kyu.

ParisThe finals of the Toyota-Pandanet EuropeanGo Tour are held every year held in Paris atthe traditional Easter weekend tournament.This year it was run from 10th to 12th Aprilat the now normal venue of the town hall atthe Place D�’Italie. No less than 323 playerstook part, but only 19 players of 5 dan andabove. There were 7 players from the UK;

Cambridge CB1 club were there in forcewith their new team shirts. Matthew Cocke,David Ward and Frank Visser all won 3/6.Tournament winner yet again was Fan Hui(8 dan China) with a perfect 6. Next placedon 4/6 were Jeff Seailles, Motoki Noguchi,Csaba Mero, Diana Koszegi and David Wu.In 7th was Marco Firnhaber; the otherspicking up Tour points were Silt, Burzo,Nechanicky, Colmez and Gerlach. Morepoints are awarded to the final than normaltour events. Tour winner for the second yearrunning was Radek Nechanicky, scoringover 100 points. Second was DragosBajenaru who was some 30 points behindthe winner. Emil Nijhuis, Du Yingyo andDiana Koszegi were all about 30 pointsbehind that, Diana�’s high place ensured byher good result at Paris. Before the startYuki Shigeno was on hand to give a lecture,there was a lightning on Saturday night anda party on Sunday, so it was a fun-packedweekend.

BledThe new TOYOTA - IGS-PANDANETEuropean Go Tour started in Slovenia on23rd and 24th. 53 players attended the 16thLado Omejc Memorial in Bled. Scoring 6/6and so taking an early lead in the Tourpoints table was Tibor Pocsai (6 danHungary). Ondrej Silt (5 dan Czechia) won5/6 and on 4/6 were Radek Nechanicky andVladimir Danek (both 6 dan Czechia) andDiana Koszegi (6 dan Hungary).

European Youth Go ChampionshipsThe European Youth Championships wereheld in Cologne, German, from 30th Aprilto 2nd May. A whole youth hostel was takenover with overflow accommodation inanother, but in the end a large number ofcancellations led to unused rooms. 93under-12 players and 184 under-18 playerstook part and more would have been there ifthe large Ukrainian party had got their visa.

65

UK�’s William Brooks (1 kyu) was 29th with3/6 and Paul Blockley (13 kyu) also scored3/6, both in the Under 18. Under 12 winnerwas Rafael Samakaev (6 kyu Russia) on 6/6, second was Thomas Debarre (3 kyuFrance) on 5/6 and Amir Fragman (3 kyuIsrael) was third with 4/6. The top two willgo to the WYGC in Vancouver, Canada.Under 18 winner was Ondrej Silt (5 danCzechia) on tie-break from Ilia Chikchine (5dan Russia) both with 5/6. Top of the groupon 4/6 was Igor Nemliy (3 dan Russia). Thetop 2 and Thomas Hubert (3 dan France)and Floris Barthel (1 dan Netherlands) willgo to the WYGC. Special guest representingguest representing the Ing Fund was MrYang, a Taiwanese Pro, and from Japancame Mr Abe (9 dan), with Yuki Shigeno (2dan) from Italy. Those who were there say itwas the best run EYGC so far, with greatactivities arranged for the kids and the adultcoaches and helpers alike.

Zagreb Tournament33 players took part in the Tour event inCroatia on the weekend of 15th May. TiborPocsai (6 dan Hungary), a former EuropeanChampion, was the winner. Next placedwere the Czechs Radek Nechanicky (6 dan)and Ondrej Silt (5 dan), and Diana Koszegi(6 dan Hungary). Best local was ZoranMutabzija who was fifth.

Amsterdam TournamentAlways a major in the TOYOTA - IGS-PANDANET European Go Tour,Amsterdam always attracts visitors to theGo Centre. 119 players took part this yearfrom 20th to 23rd May, including one fromLatvia and UK�’s Piers Shepperson (5 dan)who was 13th with 3 out of 6. The winnerwas the professional player Catalin Taranu,who is currently back living in Romania.Local lady Guo Juan was second with 5/6.The European Youth Champion, Ondrej Silt(5 dan Czechia), was third topping thegroup on 4 wins.

William

Brooks receiving tuition from

Yuki Shigeno.Photograph supplied by C

hristian Gaw

ron.

66

Diagram 4

GFEDC

BA

Diagram 3

12

3

Diagram 2

A TESUJI NOT ALL KYU PLAYERS KNOW - PART 2Steve Bailey SGBailey@compuserve.com

The problem book gives the answer as move1 (a tesuji that not all kyu players know)and continues with the followup of 2 and 3in dia 2. I leave the reader to mull over,later, what Black should do in response toother White 2s, some seem quite tricky -this is another extension to the originalproblem.

Instead I want to pose two extendedquestions for this problem.

One - refute the black 1s that are not theanswer (A thru G in dia 3).Two - answer the original question in therevised situation of dia 4 where an extrablack stone has been added on the right.

Again do think about this before turning topage 69, if you take this seriously it wouldnot surprise me if it takes you several hours.It took me about a fortnight to work all thisout at around ten minutes a day - with helpfrom other players when I got stuck downblind alleys.

Following on from the Go inspired artwork from Venezuela featured in Journal #133, thiscompetition aims to make the Journal look more interesting. There are two categories inthis competition, cover art and section art.

Cover Art - Submissions should be A4 sized and suitable for scanning. The winner�’sdesign will be printed on the cover of the winter issue (#135) and will receive a £15 BGAshop voucher. The runners-ups�’ designs will be printed inside the journal, in black andwhite.

Section Art - These submissions can be any shape or size but should not be larger than A4and should relate to regular Journal content. Upon submission they will be scanned andreduced in size. They will be printed in black and white, so you may want to take thisinto account when designing them. The artists responsible for the best two designs willeach receive a £10 BGA shop voucher.

The closing date for enties is 1st November 2004. Entries should be sent to the JournalEditor at 91 Kilnhouse Lane, Lytham St. Annes, Lancashire FY8 3AB.

CALLING ALL ARTISTS

67

ANSWER TO THE CATHERINE WHEEL

Simon Goss simon@gosoft.demon.co.uk3

1

57

DC

BA

Diagram 12 at A, 4 at B,6 at C, 8 at D

12 10 1113

9

Diagram 2

The four black groups and the centralwhite one each have just one eye, sothis is a semeai. Let�’s begin by seeingwhat either side could have done byplaying on instead of passing.

Diagram 1: Black would like tocapture the central white group. To doso he must occupy all of its fouroutside liberties before he can occupythe eye. Playing on any of theseimmediately is self-atari, so he cannotdo it until he captures on the inside to makeliberties. He does this four times, and eachtime White plays back inside to prevent theblack groups from gaining two eyes.

Diagram 2: Now Black starts taking White�’sliberties, but when White plays move 14 onthe triangled point, it�’s clear that White hasthree liberties and Black has only two. Thecentral white group lives and all the blackstones die. You might like to check diagram1 to make it clear that Black had no betterway of playing. As soon as Black playedhis first move in diagram 1, White couldcapture everything. This means that thecentral white group is alive, but it doesn�’tmean that the four black groups are dead.They are dead only if White can capturethem. Let�’s see ...

Diagram 3: White takes a black liberty andthen plays inside to keep black down to oneeye. Next, Black goes around capturingeach block of four white stones, and eachtime before the last, White plays insideagain. After Black 8 ...

9x9 Problem

42

1

68 C

BA

Diagram 33 at A, 5 at B, 7 at C

68

10

9

Diagram 4

A 9

10B

Diagram 5

Diagram 4: White would like to playlike this, but if he does, Black plays at10. Now each black group has at leastfour effective liberties while White hasonly three. Now it is White who dies.

Diagram 5: Instead, White must take aliberty of one of the other blackgroups, allowing Black to live byplaying at 10. The truth is that Whitecan capture three of the black groups,but not all four.

Now comes the difficult part: what is thestatus of the black groups? You may betempted to think that they are all dead,because White can point to each in turn andtruthfully say, �“I can capture this one�”. Oryou may be tempted to say that three aredead and one is alive, but we don�’t knowwhich is which.

Both are wrong. Once both sides havepassed, the Japanese rule says, �“Stones aresaid to be alive if they cannot be capturedby the opponent, or if capturing them wouldenable a new stone to be played that theopponent could not capture. Stones whichare not alive are said to be dead.�”

So, if White points to the black group in theupper left, for example, and claims it to bedead because he can capture it, Black can

reply, �“Yes, you can, but by doing so youenable me to play a new stone that youcan�’t capture on either B10 or on one of thetriangled points.�” That is enough to provethe upper left black group alive, and theother three black groups are alive in thesame way.

Now we can answer the three questions:1. Nobody wins; it�’s jigo. This is a whole-board seki.2. Black was right to pass. Any move hehad played would have resulted in thecapture of all his stones.3. White was wrong to pass. He shouldhave played on as in diagram 5 and thenplayed at A before filling the dame at B. Hecan�’t kill everything, but it�’s still a big winfor him.

Beginner�’s Cartoon Go Booklet www.britgo.org/cartoons/cartoonc1.html

The BGA has recently published a small booklet for beginners featuring the cartoonsof Andreas Fecke. Originally published in German, this cartoon features the GoStones teaching the Chess Queen how to play Go. If you cannot get hold of the freebooklet, then you can print the pages from the website.

Tony Atkins

IN THE LIGHT

69

123

4

Diagram 6

5 67 8

9

101213

14

Diagram 911 at 6

123

4

Diagram 8

1

2

3

45

6

Diagram 7

GFEDC

BA

Diagram 3(revisited)

A TESUJI NOT ALL KYU PLAYERS KNOW - PART 3Steve Bailey SGBailey@compuserve.com

In refuting moves A thru G, one fact thatmust be constantly borne in mind is that,should white manage to play both 2-1points, he can almost certainly get a twoeyed corner group. If that occurs then thetwo Black stones on the left will die - yetanother extension to the problem is toconfirm that Black cannot escape up the leftside. For example if Black gets to play A,show that a backwards monkey jump failsto get his stones to safety. Dia 5 shows onesuch possibility. Thus Black�’s reponse to aWhite 2-1 play is very limited which easesthe analysis of the situations greatly.

So, to refute the moves - B first since it iseasiest. After 4 in dia 6 white has 3liberties to only 2 for the left pair of blackstones.

D, E and G are refuted in the same way(only E is shown here, dia 7). None removea liberty from the white group, so it remains3 all with White to move.By the way, in the correct answer in dia 2,black 1 also fails to remove a white liberty,but in that case it doesn�’t help white - why?

F is much more involved and relies on aweakness in the black stones on the right toallow White to worm out from the corneralong the bottom edge. See Dias 8 and 9.

Should Black choose to play 5 on the right,White still captures the two left black stoneswith a sequence more akin to dias 13 and14. A bit more for the reader...

12

345

6 7 8

Diagram 5

70

Then there is A and things get harder, thisturns out to rely on the same escape route asF.

Firstly Black might try to contain white inthe corner. White 4 leads to a simplecapture in dia 10 or a more complex one india 11, but White is happy in bothvariations.

Secondly Black can try to capture whitefrom the left. He fails with white escapingto the right.

C turned out to be surprisingly hard. Thereason is that white has to be satisfied withliving with his corner stones by capturingthe two black stones on the left. In theprocess of doing this white must sacrificetwo other stones and allow black an eye inthe corner. Trying to prevent that capture

Diagram 107 at 2

1

2 34

5

6

8

1

2 345

678

9

10

11

12 14

1516

Diagram 1113 at 3

and eye reduces the liberties on White�’sgroup by one and his entire corner dies.

And finally the variation where there is anextra stone at black triangle. This has theeffect of stopping the sequence of dia 11working - as shown in dia 15. Therefore inthis situation, as distinct from that of Dia 1,the descent to the edge is correct and betterthan the 1-2 point tesuji answer. Black�’sterritory is now slightly bigger and is better�‘edged�’.

1

2

3

45

67 8

9

1012

Diagram 1211 at 6

1

2

3 45

Diagram 15

12

34

5

6

78

Diagram 13

9

10

11

12

Diagram 1413 at triangle

71

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NEWSLETTER EDITOR: Jil SegermanDepartment of Nuclear Medicine, RoyalSussex County Hospital, Eastern Road,Brighton, BN2 5BE, 01273 664534,newsletter@britgo.org

YOUTH DEVELOPMENT: Paul Smith2 Townsend Close, Milton, Cambridge, CB46DN, 01223 563932, youth-devel@britgo.org

MEMBERSHIP SECRETARY: Kathleen TimminsThe Hollies, Drayton Road, Wollerton,Market Drayton, TF9 3LY, 01630 685292,membership@britgo.org ANALYSIS SERVICE: David Ward

17 Moore Close, Cambridge, CB4 1ZP,01223 523 683, analyst@britgo.org

AGA E-JOURNAL DISTRIBUTOR: Nick Wedd37 North Hinksey Village, Oxford, OX2 0NA,

01865 247403, aga-ejournal@britgo.orgEDUCATION OFFICER: Peter Wendes

13 Stakes Road, Waterlooville, PO7 5LU,02392 267648, education@britgo.org

72

BGA CLUB LISTABERDEEN: Nir Oren, noren@csd.abdn.ac.uk.

Meets: Monday 18:00, Room 245, theMeston Building, University of Aberdeen,Aberdeen, AB24 3UE.

BARMOUTH: (Also called West Wales) JoHampton, 01341 281336. Meets: Meetsregularly.

BATH: Paul Christie, ccsphc@bath.ac.uk,01225 428995. Meets: Tuesday 19:30, TheRummer, Grand Parade, Bath, BA2 4DF. Inthe centre of Bath, near Pultney Bridge.http://www.bath.ac.uk/~ccsphc/go.html

BILLERICAY: (Also called Essex) GuyFootring, Guy@Footring.demon.co.uk,01277 623305. Meets: Monday evening.http://www.footring.demon.co.uk/BillericayGo/

BIRMINGHAM: Zac Tsai, 07899 795000. Meets:Monday 19:30, Muirhead Tower, floor 4,lecture room 6. Birmingham University.

BOURNEMOUTH: Marcus Bennett, 01202512655. Meets: Tuesday 20:00, 24 CowperRoad, Moordown, Bournemouth, BH9 2UJ.

BRACKNELL: Clive Hendrie,Clive.Hendrie@freenet.co.uk, 01344422502. Meets: Tuesday 20:30, The Duke�’sHead, Wokingham. http://www.britgo.org/clubs/bracknell.html

BRADFORD: David Keeble,D.R.T.Keeble@bradford.ac.uk, 01274581577. Meets: Wednesday 19:30, TheVictoria, Saltaire Road, Shipley. http://www.britgo.org/clubs/bradford.html

BRIGHTON: Granville Wright,granville.wright2@btopenworld.com, 01444443599. Meets: Tuesday 20:00, GrandCentral Pub, Surrey Street. OppositeBrighton Station.

BRISTOL: Paul Atwell,Paul5Bristolgo@aol.com, 0117 949 0924(home), 0117 908 9622 (fax), 0781 195364(mobile); Bob Hitchens,bob@hitchens10.freeserve.co.uk. Meets:Wednesday 19:30, Ex-servicemen�’s Club, 50St Paul�’s Road, Clifton, Bristol.

CAMBRIDGE CHESS AND GO CLUB: Paul Smith,andreapaul@ntlworld.com, 01223 563932.Meets: Fridays from 19:30, term-time only.http://www.chessgo.org.uk/

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY AND CITY: JonathanMedlock, j.medlock@ntlworld.com, 01223519431. Meets: Monday during Universityterms, from 19:30, Latimer Room, EStaircase, Old Court, Clare College; Tuesdayfrom 19:30, The Castle Inn, 38 Castle Street,CB2 3AR; Thursday 19:00�–21:00, ReadingRoom adjacent to Coffee Lounge, 3rd floor,the University Centre, Mill Lane; Friday19:00�–21:00, CB1, 32 Mill Road; Sunday16:00 onwards, Informal meetings possibleat CB1, 32 Mill Road. http://www.cam.ac.uk/societies/cugos/

CARDIFF: (Also called South-East Wales) NeilMoffatt, neil.moffatt@ntlworld.com, 0292041 2539. Meets: Tuesday 19:30, ChapterArts Centre, Market Street, Canton, Cardiff.http://www.cardiffgo.net/

CHELTENHAM: David Killen, 01242 576524.Meets: Tuesday 19:30, Meets various places.http://www.geocities.com/davidkillen/goclub

CHESTER: Dave Kelly,dave@davesamiga.fsnet.co.uk, 01244544770. Meets: Wednesday 20:00, OldeCustom House, Watergate Street.

CHESTER STUDY GROUP: Tristan Jones,xenafan@btinternet.com, 01244 344829.Meets: Meetings by arrangement, TristanJones�’s home.

DEVON: (Also called Exeter) TomWiddicombe, tomwid@btopenworld.com,01364 661470. Meets: Meetings byarrangement.

DUBLIN COLLEGIANS: Noel Mitchell,noel@ovation.ie. Meets: Monday andWednesday 21:00�–24:00, Pembroke Pub, 31Lower Pembroke Street, Dublin 2. OffBaggot Street. http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Pressbox/9586/

DURHAM UNIVERSITY: Jenny Radcliffe,jenny@durge.org. Meets: Monday 20:00,The Victoria Hotel, Hallgarth Street;Thursday 20:00, Parson�’s Field House Bar.http://www.dur.ac.uk/gradsoc.go-club/

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EDINBURGH: Donald Macleod,donald.macleod284@virgin.net; PhilBlamire, 0131 663 0678. Meets: Thursday19:30, Union of Communications Workers(UCW) Club, 15 Brunswick Street, EH75JB. Off London Road. http://www.dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Go/Edinburgh.html

EPSOM: Paul Margetts,Paul@yuhong.demon.co.uk, 01372 723 268.Meets: Monday 19:00�–22:30, 7 Ripley Way,Epsom, Surrey KT19 7DB. Check with Paulfirst. http://www.yuhong.demon.co.uk/egc.html

FIFE: (Also called West Fife) Donald Macleod,donald.macleod284@virgin.net, 01383410405. Meets: Alternate Mondays, as far aspossible.

GLASGOW: John O�’Donnell,jtod@dcs.gla.ac.uk, 0141 339 0458 (home),0141 330 5458 (work). Meets: Wednesday20:00 except during holidays, The ResearchClub, Hetherington House, 13 UniversityGardens, University of Glasgow. http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~jtod/go/#Club

HASTINGS: (Also called Eastbourne) PatrickDonovan, bootlepop67@yahoo.co.uk, 01323640552. Meets: Meetings by arrangement.

HEWLETT-PACKARD BRISTOL: Andy Seaborne,andy_seaborne@hp.com, 0117 950 7390(home), 0117 312 8181 (work). Meets:Wednesday and Friday 12:00, HewlettPackard. Please contact in advance to ensurethere are players available.

HUDDERSFIELD: Alan Starkey, 01484 852420.Meets: Tuesday 19:00, Huddersfield SportsCentre.

HULL: Mark Collinson,councillor.collinson@hullcc.gov.uk, 01482341179. Meets: Irregular Wednesdays, 12Fitzroy St, Beverley Rd, Hull HU5 1LL.Phone for details.

ISLE OF MAN: David Phillips,leophillips@manx.net, 01624 612294.Meets: Sunday and Wednesday 19:30, Ringfor details of venue.

LANCASTER: (Also called Gregson) AdrianAbrahams,adrian_abrahams@btopenworld.com, 0152434656. Meets: Wednesday 19:30, GregsonCommunity Centre, 33 Moorgate, Lancaster.

LEAMINGTON: Matthew Macfadyen,matthew@jklmn.demon.co.uk, 01926624445. Meets: Thursday 19:30, 22 KeytesLane, Barford, Warwickshire CV35 8EP.http://homepage.ntlworld.com/toby.manning/leamingtongoclub/

LEICESTER: Richard Thompson,richard@leicestergoclub.org.uk; TobyManning, 01530 245298. Meets: Thursday19:45, Ring for details of location. http://www.leicestergoclub.org.uk/

LIVERPOOL: George Leach,Leachg.kd@merseymail.com, 07739897172; Jason Leather,guitarsolo@blueyonder.co.uk, 07900308996. Meets: Sunday 19:00�–23:00, TheShip and Mitre, 133 Dale Street, LiverpoolL2 2JH. http://www.liverpoolgoclub.tk/

LONDON EAST: (Also called Wanstead) AlistairWall, alistair@ajwall.demon.co.uk, 020 85564232. Meets: Thursday 19:15, WansteadHouse, 21 The Green, Wanstead E11. http://www.ajwall.demon.co.uk/Wanstead.htm

LONDON NORTH: Martin Smith,nlgc@talk21.com, 020 8991 5039. Meets:Tuesday 19:30, Gregory Room, ParishChurch, Church Row, Hampstead. http://www.britgo.org/clubs/lonn.html

LONDON NORTH WEST: David Artus,artusd@uk.ibm.com, 0208 841 4595. Meets:Thursday 19:00�–22:00, GreenfordCommunity Centre, Oldfield Lane. South ofA40. http://www.britgo.org/clubs/lonnw/

LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS: Azan AzizMarwah, a.a.marwah@lse.ac.uk, 07931 332025. Meets: Wednesday 14:00 (during term),St Phillips Building, Room Y215. http://societies.lse.ac.uk/lsego/index.htm

74

LONDON, CENTRAL: Keith Rapley,rapleykeith@hotmail.com, 01494 675066.Meets: Saturday 14:00�–22:00, InternationalStudent House, 229 Great Portland Street,Regent�’s Park, London, W1W 5PN. http://www.bexfield.com/clgc/clgc.htm

LONDON, SOUTH WOODFORD: (Also calledWoodford) Francis Roads,francis@jfroads.demon.co.uk, 020 85054381. Meets: Most Tuesdays from 10:30,Waitrose coffee bar.

LONDON, TWICKENHAM: (Also calledTwickenham) Colin Maclennan,colin.maclennan@btopenworld.com, 0208941 1607. Meets: Wednesday 20:00, Pope�’sGrotto hotel, Twickenham.

MAIDENHEAD: Iain Attwell, 01628 676792.Meets: Friday 20:00, Meets various places.

MANCHESTER: Chris Kirkham, 0161 903 9023.Meets: Thursday 19:45, The Town HallTavern, 20, Tib Lane, MANCHESTER, M24JA. http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/arch/chris/mango.html

MID-CORNWALL: Paul Massey,go@smartsw.co.uk, 01209 891093, 07966474 686 (mobile). Meets: Monday 20:00, 5Trekye Cove, Sandy Road, Porthtowan,Truro, TR4 8UL.

MIDDLESBROUGH: (Also called Teesside) GaryQuinn, g.quinn@tees.ac.uk, 01642 384303(work). Meets: Friday 12:00, University ofTeesside.

MILTON KEYNES: (Also called OpenUniversity) Fred Holroyd,f.c.holroyd@open.ac.uk, 01908 315342.Meets: Monday 19:00, The Wetherspoonspub, 201 Midsummer Boulevard, CentralMilton Keynes, MK9 1EA. http://www.britgo.org/clubs/mk/

MONMOUTH: Gerry Mills,bgabooks@btinternet.com, 01600 712934.Meets: Meetings by arrangement. http://www.kitts.freeserve.co.uk/monmouth.htm

NEWCASTLE: John Hall,jfhall@avondale.demon.co.uk, 0191 2856786. Meets: Wednesday, Meets variousplaces.

NORWICH AND NORFOLK: Tony Lyall,TONY@ccn.ac.uk, 01603 613698. Meets:Thursday 19:30, The Cafe Rouge, ExchangeStreet, Norwich NR2 1DP.

NOTTINGHAM: Jo Kling, go-club@printk.net.Meets: Meetings by arrangement.

OXFORD CITY: Richard Helyer,tickanddick@macunlimited.net, 01608737594. Meets: Tuesday and Thursday18:00, Freud�’s Cafe, Walton Street. http://www.britgo.org/clubs/oxford_c.html

OXFORD UNIVERSITY: Niall Cardin,niall.cardin@ccc.ox.ac.uk. Meets:Wednesday 19:30�–23:00 in termtime only,The Seminar Room, Corpus Christi College.All are welcome. http://users.ox.ac.uk/~corp0527/

PENZANCE: (Also called West Cornwall) JohnCulmer, john_culmer@talk21.com, 01326573167. Meets: Thursday 20:00, Flat 3, 1Causewayhead, Penzance, TR18 2SN. http://www.johnculmer.f9.co.uk/go/wcgc.html

PURBROOK (NEAR PORTSMOUTH): PeterWendes, pwendes@hotmail.com, 02392267648. Meets: Most Thusday evenings,Peter�’s house. Phone to confirm.

READING: Jim Clare,jim@jaclare.demon.co.uk, 0118 9507319.Meets: Monday 18:30, Brewery Tap, 27Castle Street.

SHEFFIELD: Eleanor Thomas,small_blue_and_furry@hotmail.com, 07736307522; Will Segerman,willseg@email.com, 07773 706305. Meets:Sunday 19:30, Devonshire Arms, 118Ecclesall Road, Sheffield, S11 8JB.

SHERBORNE AND YEOVIL: Julian Davies,Julian.davies@screwfix.com, 01935 423046.Meets: Wednesday 19:30, Brewers Arms, 18St James Street, South Petherton, Somerset.Just off the A303 near Yeovil.

75

NOTICESJournal ContributionsPlease send contributions for the AutumnJournal as soon as possible and in any caseno later than 10th September 2004.Copy sent via e-mail is especially welcome.Please supply plain text as all formattinginformation will be discarded.Diagrams can be supplied as mgt or sgf filesfrom any reliable Go editing program.Please e-mail your contribution to:

journal@britgo.orgor post to: Andy Brixey

91 Kilnhouse LaneLytham St. AnnesLancashireFY8 3AB

Advertisements£100 per page and pro rata (b/w). Contactthe Editor for colour cover rate. Privatelyplaced small ads, not for profit, are free.Discounts available for a series.BGA Tournament Phone 07951 140433The BGA has a mobile phone so that peoplecan contact tournament organisers on theday of the event (for example, in case ofbreak down or other problems). Please notethat not all tournaments make use of thisphone.Web addressesWhen quoted in the journal, these aregenerally given without the leading http://,which can be assumed.

© 2004 BGA. Items may be reproducedfor the purpose of promoting Go and notfor profit provided that all such copies areattributed to the British Go Journal and theconsent of the author has been sought andobtained. All other rights reserved. Viewsexpressed are not necessarily those of theBGA or of the Editor.

Up to date information on UK Go clubsis maintained on the BGA Web Site at:www.britgo.org/clublist/clubsmap.html

Please send corrections and all new oramended information to Tim Hunt, theBGA Webmaster at:webmaster@britgo.org

ST. ALBANS: Mike Cockburn,cockburnm@yahoo.co.uk, 01727 834035;Alan Thornton, 01442 261945; RichardMullens, 01707 323629 (home), 07816372001 (mobile). Meets: Wednesday 20:00,The White Lion, 91 Sopwell Lane, St.Albans. Non-regular visitors should ring toconfirm a meeting. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mullens/go/St_Albans.html

SWANSEA: Bjoern Boettcher,goswansea@gmx.net. Meets: Sunday 15:30,The JC�’s bar. On the University campus.http://www.geocities.com/goswanseaweb/

SWINDON: David King,info@swindongoclub.org.uk, 01793 521625.Meets: Wednesday 19:30, Prince of Wales,Coped Hall Roundabout, Wootton Bassett.http://www.swindongoclub.org.uk/

TAUNTON: David Wickham, 01984 623519.Meets: Irregular times, Meets various places.

WEST SURREY: (Also called Guildford) PaulineBailey, pab27@compuserve.com, 01483561027. Meets: Monday 19:30�–22:00 exceptbank holidays. http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/SGBailey/go.htm

WINCHESTER: (Also called Hursley) AlanCameron, alan.cameron@iname.com, 01794524430 (home), 07768 422082 (work).Meets: Wednesday 19:00, The Black BoyPublic House, 1 Wharf Hill, Bar End,Winchester. Just off the M3. http://www.britgo.org/clubs/winch.html

WORCESTER AND MALVERN: Edward Blockley,01905 420908. Meets: Wednesday 19:30.

76

AJI: latent possibilities left in a positionAJI KESHI: a move which destroys one�’s own

aji (and is therefore bad)ATARI: having only one liberty left; stones are

said to be �‘in atari�’ when liable to capture onthe next move

BYO YOMI: shortage of time; having to makea move in a given time. Overtime is nowmore widely used in tournament play

DAME: a neutral point; a point of no valueto either player

DAME ZUMARI: shortage of libertiesDANGO: a solid, inefficient mass of stonesFURIKAWARI: a trade of territory or groupsFUSEKI: the opening phase of the gameGETA: a technique that captures one or more

stones in a �‘net�’, leaving them with two ormore liberties but unable to escape

GOTE: losing the initiativeHANE: a move that �‘bends round�’ an enemy

stone, leaving a cutting point behindHamete: a move that complicates the

situation but is basically unsoundHASAMI: pincer attackHOSHI: one of the nine marked points on

the Go boardIKKEN TOBI: a one-space jumpISHI NO SHITA: playing in the space left

after some stones have been capturedJIGO: a drawn gameJOSEKI: a standardised sequence of moves,

usually in a cornerKAKARI: a move made against a single enemy

stone in a cornerKATTE YOMI: self-centred play; expecting

uninspired answers to �‘good�’ movesKEIMA: a knight�’s move jumpKIKASHI: a move which creates aji

while forcing a submissive replyKOMI: a points allowance given to

compensate White for playing second

KOSUMI: a diagonal playMIAI: two points related such that if one

player takes one of them, the opponent willtake the other one

MOYO: a potential territory, a frameworkNAKADE: a move played inside an enemy

group at the vital point of the principal eye-space to prevent it from making two eyes

OVERTIME: in tournament play, having to playa number of stones in a certain time e.g. 20stones in five minutes

OIOTOSHI: �‘connect and die�’, capturing by acascade of ataris, often involving throw-ins.If the stones connect up to escape, they allget caught.

PONNUKI: the diamond shape left behind aftera single stone has been captured

SABAKI: a sequence that produces a light,resilient shape

SAGARI: a descent �– extending towards theedge of the board

SAN REN SEI: an opening which consists ofplaying on the three hoshi points along oneside of the board

SEKI: a local stalemate between two or moregroups dependent on the same liberties forsurvival

SEMEAI: a race to capture between twoadjacent groups that cannot both live

SENTE: gaining the initiative; a move thatrequires a reply

SHICHO: a capturing sequence shapedlike a ladder

SHIMARI: a corner enclosure of two stonesSHODAN: one dan levelTENGEN: centre point of the boardTENUKI: to abandon the local position and play

elsewhereTESUJI: a skillful and efficient move in a local

fightTSUKE: a contact playYOSE: the end game

GLOSSARY OF GO TERMS