Japan was eliminated from World Oza (Toyota-Denso Cup) in the semifinals when Cho U 9p lost by resignation to Gu Li 9p of China.
In the other semifinal game, Piao Wenyao 5p defeated his countryman Xie He 7p.
So the final will be played between the two Chinese players.
Gu Li and Piao Wenyao will clash in a best-of-three match to be played on September 6th, 8th and 9th, also in Tokyo.
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In a very unexpected turn of events, only China and Japan are left in the World Oza (Toyota-Denso) Cup semifinals!
In the quarterfinals that just ended three Chinese players eliminated the three Koreans, while Cho U of Japan won against Liu Xing of China.
Cho U defeated Liu Xing
Xie He defeated Lee Sedol
Link to game record
Gu Li defeated Cho Hanseung
Link to game record
Piao Wenyao defeated Mok Jinseok
Link to game record
In the semifinals (to be played in 2 days, on August 29th in Tokyo) Cho U will meet Gu Li, and Xie He will meet Piao Wenyao.
Takao Shinji defended the Honinbo title.
The challenger, Yoda Norimoto, only managed to win one out of 5 games.
Again, just like earlier this year in the Kisei title, the younger player defeated the more senior player.
All game records are on the Honinbo title page.
Bad news for the non-Asian Go world: the only players with 4 wins out of 4 games are: China, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan.
There were several interesting pairings this round:
Also, Andy Liu of US, as the top placed player after 3 rounds (considering SOS and SOSOS) was matched against the bottom player with 2 wins - which happened to be Victor “Roseduke” Chow of South Africa - only to lose by half a point after 379 (!) moves. Andy Liu’s games so far can be found in the news section of the AGA website.
The games of Romania vs. Korea and Czech Republic vs. Japan (where the European representatives are both ex-insei in Japan) can be found on the tournament article page.
In the next round we’ll see the first big matches: Japan vs. Korea, and China vs. Taiwan.
I played yesterday in the Seattle Cherry Blossom Tournament - which was held at the Seattle Center, together with the Cherry Blossom Festival,the annual Japanese event here in Seattle.
I managed to win the tournament with 3-0 (normally there are 4 rounds, but the 3rd one ran late and it wasn’t time for the 4th one for some players) after a lucky win against Steve Stringfellow (6 dan AGA).
The highlight of the day though was the visit by Cho Seokbin (also spelled Cho Seok Bin in some other sources) - the famous ex-insei from Korea (just to avoid confusion: many insei from Korea are as strong as professional players) who is now living in Europe (Germany) and winning a lot of tournaments there.
Seokbin is on a Go tour in the US - he is in Seattle for the next week or so, and will visit Tacoma and Portland next.
He is not only a very strong player, but also a great Go teacher: he commented my final game with Steve, and today he gave a very nice lecture on joseki - I’ll post both the game commentary and some highlights form the lecture on my website in the next few days.
Just in case you are in the Seattle area (or nearby): Cho Seokbin will present another lecture on Tuesday, April 24th at the Seattle Go Center (from 7 pm), and will play simultaneous games on Wednesday, April 25th, also at the Seattle Go Center, from 6 pm to 9 pm.
Also, if you are interested in one-on-one lessons with Cho Seokbin while he is in the US, please send an email to Jon Boley (”jon at airsltd.com”).
My name is Sorin Gherman. I studied Go as an insei in Japan, and I built 361points.com to share my Go experience with you.
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