A record 57 Go players skipped the crowds at the Tidal Basin to celebrate peak season at the
National Go Center’s annual Cherry Blossom tournament. Jeremy Chiu 7D went 4-0 to win the Open section – including a nail-biting half-point win against Justin Teng 6D -- followed by Joel Kenny 5D at 3-1 (his only loss a half-pointer against Yuan Zhou 7D). Fresh from their honeymoon in Mexico, Joel and Laura Wu 4K joined a crowd of locals and out-of-towners filling the NGC to capacity.
The E-Journal team of Chris Garlock and Todd Heidenreich for the first time deployed all seven of the AGA's new IZIS AI boards to record and stream the top games on YouTube and Twitch. "The EJ team is getting great experience broadcasting with these boards,” said Garlock. “We will be using them this week to broadcast all the games from the North American Pro Tournament followed by a nightly recap with commentary from Michael Redmond and others."
Match results are available on Leago; game records will be appended as they become available.
The tournament also featured a silent auction of photographs from Gurujeet Khalsa’s photo show Walking Dunes of the Hamptons which have been on exhibit at the NGC. The auction raised $1250 for the NGC which allowed the announced prize fund of $500 to double to $1000. Winners in every division received cash prizes:
RESULTS
5D-7D: Jeremy Chiu (7d) 4-0 1st, Joel Kenny (5d) 3-1 2nd
2D-4D: Toby Chen (3D) 3-1 1st, Taewon Jonathon Kim 3-1 2nd
2K-1K: Bo He (2K) 4-0
5K-3K: Anderson Barreal (3K) 4-0
7K-6K: Joonha Lee (6K) 4-0
10K-8K: Hoang Minh Quan Le (10K) 4-0
30K-11K: Joshua Bistany-Riebman (15K) 3-1
Photos: (top left) Jeremy Chiu (left); (bottom left) main playing area; (bottom right) Joel Kenny (right); (top right) overflow playing room. Photos by Chris Garlock/American Go E-Journal