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Just found this mentioning of the famous Jimmy Cha in some poker related news.

Jimmy Cha certainly seemed to enjoy his banana. For the second year in-a-row, Korea’s most famous poker export has returned to play in his ‘home’ event.
A consummate professional across his many interests (from poker to martial arts, classical music, or Baduk), Jimmy Cha made his name in Las Vegas during the late 1980s and early 1990s as one of the world’s premier cash players (in a period dominated by Doyle Brunson and Chip Reese). He even provided the inspiration for the lead character in the locally produced TV series All-in.
Cha has survived the first four levels of the day [...]

Link to full article here.

Just found an article about Cho Hye Yeon’s blog in the English section of the Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo: “Student’s Blog Takes Baduk to a Global Audience”.
According to wikipedia, Chosun Ilbo is one of the major newspapers in South Korea.

I wrote about Hye Yeon and her wonderful blog in the past as well.

Very recently (yesterday, actually), she defended the honor of the female team in the GG Auction Cup, stopping Kim Jongsoo. (This is a Korean tournament between female players and senior male players. The first in the senior team was the famous Jimmy Cha (Cha Minsoo is his Korean name) who eliminated 5 female players before being finally defeated by Lee Minjin. She defeated 4 more seniors before losing to Kim Jongsoo).

Here’s Hye Yeon playing agains Kim Jongsoo:

Photo after the game:

The lids of stone bowls signed by the two players. Guess which one is signed by Hye Yeon:

Very luckily for the American Go players, Hye Yeon will visit the US Go Congress this year!

First round of the international Chunlan Cup 2008 was played on March 15th in Hangzhou, China. This is a Chinese sponsored tournament, with a prize fund of 1 milion USD (of which 150000 USD for the first prize).

Besides several players from each of China, Korea and Japan, there were also one representative from Europe (Cristian Pop) and one from America (Jimmy Cha 4p, who is Korean-American).

The first round wasn’t very good for Japan, which saw almost all her team eliminated: Yoda Norimoto lost to Ding Wei of China, Kono Rin lost to Wang Yao of China, Kobayashi Satoru lost to Chen Yaoye of China and Imamura Toshiya lost to Jimmy Cha of US.

Takao Shinji was the only Japanese player to play in round 2 (which will be tomorrow, March 17th) after his win against Zhang Li 4p of China.

As for the two representatives from Europe and US: Cristian Pop of Romania lost against Won Sungjin 9p of Korea after a fighting game, but Jimmy Cha 4p of US won against Imamura Toshiya 9p of Japan - he had already proven himself in international tournaments in the past, he even defeated Cho Chikun once!

The following photo shows the beginning of the game between Won Jungjin and Cristian Pop.

And the next photo shows Lee Sedol (who is seeded directly into the 2nd round, against Ding Wei) studying the game between Mok Jinseok of Korea and Zhou Junxun of Taiwan (Mok won by 5.5 points). There is also another professional player next to him (can anybody recognize him?) studying tsume-go.