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Eric Lui 1P wins first National Go Center tournament

Eric Lui 1P swept the first tournament held at the brand-new National Go Center in Washington, DC. The Cherry Blossom Festival Go Tournament was held on Saturday, April 29, with a field of 48 comfortably breaking in the new Center, which just opened Friday. "Everyone played well," Lui said, "especially Jiang Xinying in the second round, who I had a lot of trouble with; she played very tough." The final round against Zhaonian Chen was also an exciting match, with a rapid flurry of complicated moves at the end as Lui's overtime periods steadily slipped away but in the end Chen came up short on points and had to resign, leaving Lui with a perfect 4-0 record. The Board 1 games were all broadcast live on KGS and the last two games were streamed on the AGA's Facebook page. photo: Mr Dan from the Nihon Kiin watches final at National Go Center between Eric Lui (right) and Zhaonian (Michael) Chen; photo by Chris Garlock
Winner's Report First place: Eric Lui, 1P, 4-0; Qingbo Zhang, 5D, 3-1; Yanqing Sun, 3D, 3-1; Quinn Baranowski, 1D, 4-0; Isaac Weiner, 2K, 3-1; Anderson Barreal, 7K, 4-0; Brandon Sloan, 8K, 4-0; Lewis Reining, 13K, 2-2 Second place: Zhaonian Chen, 7D*, 3-1; James Pinkerton, 5D, 3-1; Benjamin Armitage, 2D, 2-2; Nathan Epstein, 1D, 2-2; Jiayang Su, 1K, 2-2; Zhao Zhao, 5K and Patrick Sun, 5K, 2-2 (tie); Joon Lee, 10K, 2-2; Dennis Ting, 16K, 2-2 * (AGA policy is that top amateur rank is 7D, consistent with international practice, even if the AGA rating is 8D). Note that NOT present at the award presentation were: Zhaonian Chen, Jiayang Su, Lewis Reining, and Dennis Ting.   2017 Cherry Blossom Round 1: Chou-Chen 2017 Cherry Blossom Round 2: Chen-Huang 2017 Cherry Blossom Round 3: Huang-Lui 2017 Cherry Blossom Round 4: Lui-Chen