Twenty-eight players, coming from as far away as Ithaca, Rochester, New York City, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, convened at the Syracuse Center for Peace and Social Justice on April 15 to compete in the first Salt City Tournament in three years.
The A-division winner, Cornell University doctoral student Jiuheng He 5d (top photo), split the 1st and 2nd place A-Division prize money of $150 and $100 with 8th-grade Syracuse student Daniel Luo 1k, both finishing with 4-0 records. Jino Choung 1d of New Jersey finished with a 3-1 record to win the 3rd-place prize money of $50. The remaining 25 players were each able to select a new go book to take home at the end of the day (9-year-old Matthew Wang selected a fan instead of a book). The top three finishers in the B Division were Laura Wu 4-0, Eric Hookway 3-0, and Joe Fratianni 3-1, and the top three in the C Division were Ross Cristman 3-1, Chris Cirillo 2-1, and Addison Buff 2-1.
Seventeen players submitted solutions to the tournament's traditional cake problem, which was consumed at the end of lunch. Seven of the players submitted the correct first move, and three of them, selected at random, received $30 certificates that can be used at GoMagic.org. "Interestingly," reports organizer Richard Moseson, "while five of the dan-level players submitted answers to the cake problem, only one of them (Joel Kenny 5d) answered it correctly -- what can be inferred from that?"
photos by Richard Moseson