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Here is Kim Hyung Woo 2p of Korea during a trip to Vietnam (they visited some old hideouts used in the past by the Vietnamese army).

Here is the page with some more trip photos: http://www.cyberoro.com/news/news.htm?div_no=15&num=510729

(There used to be here some bad taste joke/hoax of mine regarding the photos, which when taken out of context can be misinterpreted in many ways. I removed that, and I apologize to all those who were involved or offended.)

Park Jieun (8d) defeated Rui Naiwei (9d) in the 1st Yuanyang Cup (the link on the Go Topics page also contains links to the games).

Rui won the first game by half a point, then Park won the next two by resignation.

Here is a photo of Park commenting the final game.

Five years ago today Hans Pietsch was murdered by robbers in Guatemala, while on an official Nihon Ki-in tour to spread Go in South America.

Hans was my sempai while we were both insei in Japan. He was both a great person and Go player.

Hans became 1-dan professional in 1997, then advanced to 4-dan. He was posthumously promoted to 6-dan.

More details about his Go career at Sensei’s Library.

Yamashita started his defense of the Kisei title well, by winning the first game (by resignation).

It may look like an upset win since Yamashita made a large dent in Cho’s territory while they seemed to start yose, but by following the Cyberoro pro comments (just the variations, since I cannot read the actual comments) I think Yamashita was ahead anyway and Cho tried to over-stretch in the yose stage by not defending properly against White 118, which led to the more spectacular ending.

Yamashita looks happy during the post-mortem game analysis with the main referee, Kobayashi Koichi, who was himself Kisei in the late 80’s - early 90’s for a record of 8 consecutive years (of which, interestingly, he both captured the title from Cho, then lost the title to Cho as well).

What to do of an empty triangle when Takemiya Sensei’s watching?

Here is a nice suggestion from the lovely emptytriangle.com Go comics website.

The first day of the 2008 Kisei Title match is over. I started a webpage dedicated to this event.

The first game of the Kisei title, as always, was played abroad. This time in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Here are some videos from the opening ceremony, from where we learn that the 2 contestants are also skilled in Brazilian dances:

This year’s Kisei, the most important Japanese title, will start tomorrow. The first game is usually held abroad. This time the title holder, Yamashita Keigo, and the challenger, Cho Chikun, are playing the first game in Sao Paulo, in Brazil.

(I covered last year’s Kisei title here.)

In the Jan, 11th round of the 6th Jeongganjang Cup, Aoki Kikuyo 8-dan of Japan met Song Ronghui 1-dan of China.

Again, guess who won?

Game record here.

By popular demand, the possibility to replay a random Go game record (aka “kifu”) is back!

I had removed it at a point when I decided to keep the entry page simple, with the plan of putting it into a dedicated page later. It is how on its own page, at: 361points.com/kifu/random/

It now also has the possibility to switch between the new EidoGo javascript interface and the more traditional ZGo java applet interface.

By the way, which of the two SGF viewers works better for you? Please add a comment and let me know.

In the 3rd game of 6th Jeongganjang Cup, Lee Sula 1-dan of Korea played against Aoki Kikuyo 8-dan of Japan.

I don’t know for sure who won since Go Topics hasn’t published the game record yet and I cannot read Korean… but I have my own theory about the result, given the following photos:

(By the way, behind Aoki Kikuyo one can see Jujo).