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San Diego club promotes go at Cherry Blossom Festival

For the seventh year in a row, the San Diego Go Club had several tables for demonstrating and teaching go during the annual Cherry Blossom Festival this weekend at the Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park. This year the festival stretched over three days: Friday - Sunday. The club was given a choice spot, just inside the entrance, right next to a crowd favorite: the large well-stocked koi pond. Thousands of people streamed through the garden, even coming through a light rain on Saturday (Note: plastic go stones do not float on wet vinyl go boards.) Club members played demonstration games against go playing visitors as well as taught go to people who had heard of the game but never played. Dozens of copies of "A Way to Go," the go pamphlet given to AGA chapters every year by the AGF, were distributed. The club added several new potential players to its email list. - photo: Long-time AGA member (AGA #439)  Les Lanphear III (right) playing a serious game with a visitor from Minnesota; report/photos by Ted Terpstra, President, San Diego Go Club