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Baoxiang Bai of China Wins World Amateur Go Championship; U.S. Places Third

On June 1 2011, China’s Baoxiang Bai (in photo at right) won the 32nd World Amateur Go Championship (WAGC) with a triumphant clean sweep of 8 wins. South Korea’s Woo Soo Choi finished in second place with an impressive 7 wins – losing only to Bai in round 5.  Arguably, Bai’s match with Choi in round 5 determined the winner of the tournament. Eric Lui of the U.S. claimed third place with 6 wins, the best-ever result for the U.S. Interestingly enough, in last year’s 31st WAGC, China and Korea also met in round 5 to battle it out for the championship. Korea won last year’s championship (the 31st WAGC). Other than Choi, Bai also defeated Hirata of Japan (see below for a just-posted game commentary by An Younggil 8P of Go Game Guru on the game between Baoxiang Bai and Hironori Hirata), Wu of Chinese Taipei, Lui of the US, Rattanasetyut of Thailand, Burzo of Romania, Suponeu of Belarus, and Mezhov of Russia. The rest of the top 10 are as follows: Thomas Debarre of France, Hironori Hirata of Japan, Jun Fan of Canada, Franz-Josef Dickhut of Germany, Tsung-Han Wu of Chinese Taipei, Gheorghe Cornel Burzo of Romania, and Merlijn Kuin of Netherlands.  The full results are available at EuroGoTV. - Based on the report from Jingning at Go Game Guru; edited by Jake Edge[Update: An Younggil 8P of Go Game Guru has commented the game between Baoxiang Bai (China) and Hironori Hirata (Japan) for E-Journal readers. The game record is below.] [sgf sgfUrl="http://www.usgo.org/news/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Baoxiang-Bai-vs-Hironori-Hirata-32nd-WAGC-commentary-An-Younggil-8p.sgf" href="http://www.usgo.org/news/2011/06/baoxiang-bai-of-china-wins-world-amateur-go-championship/baoxiang-bai-vs-hironori-hirata-32nd-wagc-commentary-an-younggil-8p/" class="alignleft"][/sgf]