Anyone concerned about whether Bill Lin would have enough gas left in his tank for the 2024 ProQual finals after three marathon knife-edge semifinals against Guangyu Song needn’t have worried. Less than two hours after besting Song in yet another dramatic game Thursday morning, Lin showed up early for the 2:30P start of the first game against Sen Zhan in the best-of-three final. After choosing colors, the match was off and the two players deployed their stones fairly quickly but as noted in our game highlights report, after just over 100 moves Lin had edged ahead and though Zhan mounted an exciting attack on a large black dragon, Lin – perhaps sharpened by the three incredibly long and complicated semis against Song – was imperturbable, playing calmly as Zhan’s attack failed, his territories evaporated and he eventually resigned. Bill Lin is now just one game away from being the next North American professional Go player; expect Zhan to do everything he can on Friday morning to at least delay, if not deny, that result.
Game 2 begins at 9:30a Friday; the round starts at 9:30a ET on OGS; live game commentaries start at 10:30a ET on the AGA’s YouTube channel. Full event overview, including standings and game records here. Check out photos of the tournament on the AGA’s Facebook and X (@theaga) feeds.
- report/photos by Chris Garlock, EJ Team Leader; Thursday’s game recorders: Zhongwei Zheng (morning) & Garlock (afternoon). TD: Jean-Sébastien Lechasseur. EJ team online producer: Jae Donley. Game commentators: Alan Huang/Jerry Jaffe (morning); Xingke Sun/Yixian “Michael” Zhou (afternoon). Photos: Lin (left) and Zhan.