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Takao Shinji had a good start in the defense of his Honinbo title: he won the first game against Hane Naoki by 3.5 points.

Here is the game record.

Next game will be played on May 27th and 28th.

Hane Naoki is challenging the Honinbo title holder, Takao Shinji.

The game will conclude tomorrow (May 15 in Japan).

Round 3 of Ing Cup 2008 was played on May 4th.

After defeating Chang Hao in the previous round, Cho Chikun lost to Lee Changho by 3 points.

Lee Sedol of Korea defeated Kong Jie of China by 11 points.

Choi Cheolhan of Korea defeated Piao Wenyao of China by resignation.

And Liu Xing of China, who seems to be the surprise of the tournament so far, defeated Park Yeonghun by resignation thus becoming the only Chinese player to play in the semifinals.

The semifinals will take place sometime in September and will consist of best-of-three matches. Lee Changho will play against Lee Sedol, and Choi Cheolhan will play against Liu Xing.

Cho Chikun eliminated Chang Hao of China (previous Ing Cup winner) in round 2.

Looks like Cho Sensei is back in shape after his loses in Kisei and Judan earlier this year. He will play against Lee Changho in round 3.

The only other Japanese player, O Meien, was eliminated by Liu Xing of China.

Next round will be played in 2 days. There are 4 players from Korea, 3 from China, and 1 from Japan.

First round of the Ing 2008 international tournament was played yesterday in Shanghai, China.

Only Cho Chikun survived from the Japanese team: he defeated Cho U who played for Taiwan in this tournament.

Takao Shinji Honinbo lost to Wang Lei of China, Yamashita Keigo Kisei lost to Gu Li of China.

The only other Japanese player to play in round 2 is O Meien, who is seeded into the second round. You can see O Meien in the following photo, analyzing games from the first round (together with Otake Hideo of Japan and Cho Hunhyun of Korea, both standing).

Lee Sedol of Korea won against Hu Yaoyu of China by 5 points, but only after winning 6 points through the special Ing rule (one loses points by using extra time in the Ing Cup).

Chang Hao of China and Lee Changho of Korea will be also seeded into the second round (to be played tomorrow).

The most interesting game for me though was the one played by Catalin Taranu 5p of Romania (the European representative at this Ing Cup) against Piao Wenyao 5p of China. After the dust settled from a violent fight in the center of the board, Catalin (Black) ended up capturing a group of Piao’s and I thought he is ahead, but lost a large area himself in the upper left (Black 39 in the diagram eliminates the possibility of White starting a ko fight for his dead stones on the lower side, while White 40 makes sure Black cannot live in the upper left).

Catalin lost in the end, unfortunately (by 11 points). You can replay the game below.

The American representative, Jiang Mingjiu 7p, lost as well (against Liu Xing 7p of China).

Can you recognize the 9p photographer from the following tournament photo?

Tournament schedule and results at Go Topics.

In a repeat of her last year’s performance, Lee Minjin 5p of Korea eliminated the last players of Japan (Kato Keiko) and China (Rui Naiwei) and won Jeongganjang Cup for her country.

Here is the final game, against Rui Naiwei (link to game record).

The match generated a lot of excitement also among other professional players following the game:

Takao Shinji won the Judan title match 3-0 against veteran Cho Chikun. Takao is also holding the Honinbo title.

Cho must have been exhausted after his attempt to capture the Kisei title from Yamashita Keigo (where he was barely defeated with a 4-3 score) - which ended on March 20th. With this defeat Cho lost his last major title this year.

(Link to the game record)

Lee Minjin of Korea (right in the photo below) eliminated Tang Yi of China from the 6th Jeongganjang Cup on April 1st. (Link to the game)

Here is the after game discussion with Rui Naiwei.

Then she eliminated Kato Keiko of Japan as well on April 2nd. (Link to the game)

Japan is eliminated from the competition.
China is down to the last player, Rui Naiwei. Korea has, besides Lee Minjin, Park Jieun as well.

Rui Naiwei is in an interesting position because during the past many years she has been playing in Korea. In particular, Lee Minjin eliminated Rui Naiwei from the Women Kuksu (but lost the final to Park Jieun 1-2) less than 2 weeks ago, so in today’s game Rui must be particularly motivated against Lee.

Takao Shinji is one win away from capturing the Judan title from Cho Chikun after winning the second game as well, since Judan follows a “best-of-five” system.

After his unsuccessful attempt to capture the Kisei title from Yamashita, Cho’s last chance to hold a major title during 2008 is to defend his Judan title. (Cho defended the Judan title against Yamashita in 2007 - you can read last year’s title report on 361points.com).

Next game will be played on April 3rd.

(Links to the games: game 1 game 2)

There are a couple of vintage Go sets on ebay: an Australian made set from 1950:

(interestingly, the stones are Black and… Green - presumably for camouflage purposes )

… and an US made set from 1951:

None of the above are quite as old as the British Museum Go set, but may be interesting to collectors.

By the way of Go sets: for those of you interested in purchasing a Go set, 361points.com has a page with links to the main vendors and buying sources