August 15: Two professional Go players who came for last week’s U.S. Go Congress have been visiting us this week, treating us to 3 sessions of simultaneous games, and 3 evening lectures. Chihiro Chujo 1p from the Kansai Ki-in, based in Osaka, Japan is a young pro who loves teaching and who has been enthusiastically learning English during our stay. The famous Masaki Takemiya 9p from the Nihon Ki-in in Tokyo was our second visitor. He was friendly and patient, and was very generous about signing books, fans and membership cards, and about posing for photos. He also gave two excellent lectures that explained his style of play to a non-expert audience.
On Tuesday evening, Aug 13, Mr. Takemiya played simultaneous games with four players who had been in the Go Center’s “Seattle Strong Player’s Tournament”. The games were recorded by Dennis Wheeler and Oren Laskin, and broadcast on the KGS Go Server (gokgs.com). A computer in our kitchen picked up the games, and we projected the games on the wall, so that we could talk about the games as they were going on. It was great fun.
These should be considered teaching games, and not compared to a tournament game between two professionals. All our players were given handicap stones, and Mr. Taklemiya was playing four individuals at once. At the same time, we are proud that Sonny (Sung-Chul) Cho won his game, and that Ho Son had an even score, with only a two stone handicap, creating a tie by Japanese rules. The game records are below, for your enjoyment and study. (Correction on Aug 18, 8:00 pm: moves adjusted in Sonny’s game.)
Games from Wednesday Lecture
Here are two games by Masaki Takemiya that he analyzed for the Wednesday, Aug. 28 lecture. The first game is from early in his career in 1969, the second from 1988.