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There was a recent quadruple ko between Kono Rin Tengen and Akiyama Jiro 8 dan. Here is the final position (image source here):

As always in such positions when no side can afford to give up the ko fight, the game resulted in a draw.

A new elimination round was played in Fujitsu Cup 2008.

China is doing great, with 3 players in the quarterfinals; Korea has only 1 player left, while Japan was eliminated.

Chang Hao of China defeated Park Yeonghun of Korea by resignation:

Lee Changho of Korea defeated Yoda Norimoto of Japan by 3.5 points:

Liu Xing of China defeated Cho Hanseung of Korea by 1.5 points:

Gu Li of China defeated Lee Sedol of Korea by resignation:

Jujo and Rui Naiwei analyze together with Lee Sedol his loss against Gu Li:

According the China Post, a group of visiting French students in Taiwan are learning, among other cultural activities, about the game of Go as well:

“During their travel-study program, organized in collaboration with Taiwan’s Mandarin Daily News, the children attend Chinese language lessons in the morning and take cultural activities in the afternoon, such as puppetry, calligraphy, the game of go and kung fu.”

Sung　Bong Ha of South Korea won the 29th WAGC with a perfect score, 8-0, after defeating Hong Kong in the last round.

The rest of the top places aren’t settled yet, but it looks like Fernando Aguilar of Argentina is assured of 2nd place if he wins against Israel in the last round (due to his high SOS), while China and Japan fight for the 3rd place.

The 29th WAGC (World Amateur Go Championship) reached its halfpoint after 4 rounds out of 8.

The results so far are very surprising: out of the 5 players with perfect score, only 2 are from Asia (the representatives of China and S. Korea) while the other three are from Luxembourg (the WAGC veteran Laurent Heiser), Argentina (the famous Fernando Aguilar), and Czech Republic (Jan Hora).

Japan has only 3 points after the loss to Korea, and same for Hong Kong after losing to China.
Taiwan lost to both Thailand and Hungary so it’s out of the game this year.

Is this going to be a “Revolution WAGC”? We’ll see in the next few rounds.

Here’s another version of the “No goban? No problem!” series (previous ones are here and here).

Link to original photo page.

I’ve played Go like this myself a couple of times, it is an interesting experience (and it needs some cooperation from the opponent, too, when deciding where the “virtual lines” are).

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.