Club updates

14 Jul 2010 13 Comments

Young Go Academy opens in Sydney

Local professional An Younggil has just opened the Young Go Academy in Strathfield, Sydney. He sends through this report:

“Last Sunday was the opening day for of the new club. There was a friendship match between Korean and Chinese go players in Sydney as the opening event. Participants are 3d to 7d and each dan has three or four players each team. The team members are 17 each, and there were two rounds in the afternoon.

On the first round, Chinese team won by 10 to 7, and after the round, there was a review between Rain Jang and Miao Zhao. Rain beat Miao, and he came to Australia three weeks ago, and he seems to be the strongest amateur player in Australia I think. Kyung-Min Yu reviewed the game in fluent Chinese; he’s a 6p Korean player and has lived in Taiwan about 5 years before coming here. After the short review, the second round had begun and the Chinese team won by 11 to 6. Finally, the friendship match ended with the result Chinese won by 21:13. There were three foreigners in the Korean team (Norman Wildburger 5d, Ciaran Pearson 5d and Barry Jay 3d) although actually, we count as foreigners too. They won 5 games and one lost, and they also seemed to enjoy the time so much. There were many other go players who came to watch the games and the new venue.

After the event, the players and watchers were all coming for dinner together and people enjoyed the Korean style of buffet. There was also raffle time for some concert tickets, and the Chinese took all five. The event was so successful and I really thank the visitors including players. :-) As the Australian government is letting me stay here longer for Go, I hope to contribute something with Go and this is the first step to do it properly. By the way, the new club will be opened every single day from 2pm to 10pm.”

The YGA has An Younggil 8p, Kyung-Min Yu 6p (come here from five years in Taiwan teaching go), and Rain Jang 7d (fresh from a year in Seattle) as teachers, and seems to be exciting a lot of interest. Here are some photos of the open day tournament:

by aguido in Club updates, Events, Other, Tournaments, Visiting Tags: , , ,

21 Feb 2010 No Comments

MU-SPGO Beginners Night I/2010

March 5, 2010
4:00 pmto7:00 pm

The Melbourne University Students Playing Go collective are kicking off first semester with their traditional Beginners’ Night from 4pm on Friday the fifth of March. If you’re around Melbourne Uni then, RSVP via Facebook or just turn up. Here are some pictures of last year’s beginners night.

by aguido in Announcements, Club updates Tags: , ,

14 Oct 2009 1 Comment

Weekly Go at UQ

About 6 people turned up for the UQ meeting this week including two stalwart QUGS members.
James the younger vs Jonathan and Horatio vs Claire were the going matches when I arrived.
james and jonathon at UQ

Horatio and James and I looked at the joseki of the week variations.
Horatio at UQ

by matjet in Club updates, Life, Meetings Tags: ,

26 Jul 2009 No Comments

MU-SPGO beginners’ night

July 29, 2009
4:00 pmto7:00 pm

The Melbourne University Students Playing Go club are holding their biannual beginners night on 29th July in the Graham Cornish Room at Union House. If you’re on campus, or even if you’re not, come down from 4pm-7pm, be sociable, learn some go. See the entry on their blog for more details, or contact shamim@go.org.au.

by aguido in Announcements, Club updates, Events Tags: , ,

26 Apr 2009 No Comments

Perth Go mailing list online

An interesting fact: the Perth go mailing list (perth@go.org.au) has more than twenty players on it, which is more than some cities that have go clubs. The denizens use the list to announce where they will meet to play go. If you are in Perth and like to play go and are not on the list, perhaps you should email Peiran Guo and get yourself subscribed.

by aguido in Club updates, Meta

13 Apr 2009 No Comments

SPGO announces Annual Tournament for 2009

April 15, 2009

With Easter comes chocolate eggs and the eagerly awaited mini break for Melbourne University Students (good luck to those diligently completing their assignments) and for Students Playing Go it’s prime time for the annual tournament. As per previous years there’s a madcap dash to book rooms, sort out equipment, hijacking students for promotional purposes and of course poring over potential prizes. There will be two divisions in anticipation of the many new players, round robin style and a mini 9×9 competition, and this year a promise of a rocking fantastic first place prize (so practice now!). It’s a good chance for players to test your skills and have some fun, especially right before the NEC Cup.

Date- Wednesday 15th April, 10a.m-4p.m

Place- Alice Hoy, room 109, Melbourne University Parkville Campus

Directions- The room is tucked away under the building, please take the tram up Swanston to Melbourne University (last stop) and walk down Monash Road, look to your left for stairs going down to classrooms, there’ll be a sign saying 108-109.

Tournament opened to all players, free entry to members (and lots of free food!)

And for those going to the NEC Cup at the end of the week, whether as entrants or to support your fellow players, please say hello to the SPGO committee members who are there to cover the event and strike your best smile and challenge pose ;)

by Shamim in Announcements, Club updates, Events, Tournaments Tags: , , ,

12 Mar 2009 No Comments

SPGO’s Beginners’ Night 2009

March 24, 2009
4:00 pmto7:00 pm

With students settling down and finding their classes, and deciding (finally) to join the go club, it’s time again for Beginners’ Night, a casual evening event organised by Students Playing Go at the University of Melbourne. It’s aimed at introducing new players to go and to other members and has been widely successful the past two years. There will be various activities, including life+death demonstrations, opening strategy tips and one-on-one teaching games. Beginners’ Night is completely free and opened to everyone (even non-members) so if you’re in Melbourne, bring yourself and friends! It’ll also be fully-catered, and seriously, who can resist free food and go games? =)

Details:

When: 24th March (Tuesday), 4-7pm

Where: Union House (centre of University of Melbourne Parkville Campus), lvl 2, Cornish Graham A+B (Opposite Rowden White library)

Please note the SPGO website at http://www.spgo.org.au is currently down. Write to mu.spgo@gmail.com (temporary address) for more information or to join the mailing list. We’re working to bringing the site back up.

by Shamim in Announcements, Club updates, Events

07 Mar 2009 No Comments

Kicking off first semester at the University of Melbourne

This just in from Shamim at the Melbourne University Students Playing Go collective:

“The end of summer saw intense flurries of activity from the committee members of SPGO (notwithstanding its political sounding name, Students Playing Go is the happy friendly resident go club of the University of Melbourne), who are preparing to lure welcome new students and introduce them to this wonderful game. We begin by braving 38 degrees heat for Orientation week and was met with resounding success with a high markup of new members. Some have seen passing reference to go especially in movies and TV shows, but many became interested by the sight and sounds of stones hitting the board and also (we hope) by our smiling faces as we demonstrated games. Good news this year, there were fewer mentions of reversi and no one mistook stones for candy nor attempted to eat any!

Turnout for first week meetings have been quite pleasing, with even a couple of dan-level players coming in and beginners who dived into games with much enthusiasm. The first event for the semester – Beginners’ Night certainly looks to be promising at this rate! Meanwhile, the hiccup of players getting lost while attempting to locate us in the Alice Hoy building, will hopefully sort itself out soon.

Stay tuned for more updates and activities from Students Playing Go =)”

Yes, more posts than average this week from me; I hope to persuade someone at MU-SPGO that they want posting rights on this blog as well as theirs, so you don’t just see the same names all the time here. And it would be nice to hear from the UNSW Go Club as well as the crowd at UWA. If anyone in Sydney or Perth is reading this and is in a position to, could you give them a poke?

by aguido in Club updates, Events Tags: , ,

04 Mar 2009 1 Comment

University of Queensland Go starts for the semester

For the past few semesters, the Queensland University Gaming Society has met every academic week or so and played go. They also meet at a frenetic pace to play other board, card, and strategy games, but that’s another blog post. The go meetings are usually led by one or two students who hold dual membership with the Brisbane Go Club, which also loans some decent boards and stones to QUGS for the purpose, and usually makes itself visible at UQ’s O Week clubs-and-societies day.

First semester started this week, and so did the go playing for 2009. For a change the group convened in the Science Learning Centre in the Priestley Building, rather than haunting one of the refectories. It was lunchtime, so I dropped in at half past eleven to see whether they’d get five or maybe push the envelope and have six regular players this year.

Well.

First they ran out of boards. Then they ran out of players to teach the newcomers. Then they ran out of tables. I lost count at half-a-dozen games (two of ‘em on the floor), but I’m told by witnesses who stuck out the entire five hours (!) that on the order of twenty people came through and played. Strengths ranged from three dan to (sorry, dude) thirty kyu. I couldn’t persuade any of them to turn up to the Queensland Championships, but you can’t have everything.

A dozen students playing go is small change to one of the large inner-city clubs. But it will be interesting to see where the numbers are next week.

by aguido in Club updates, Events, Opinion Tags: , ,

25 Dec 2008 No Comments

Adelaide Go Clubs acquire a new web page

The Adelaide, Adelaide University, and North Adelaide go clubs have a new web page up at http://adelaide.go.org.au/. Between them they meet Tuesday afternoons, Wednesday evenings and Thursday evenings most weeks, and there is a growing movement towards holding their first tournament in 2010. If you’d like to know about all this in more detail, follow the link and sign up for the adelaide@go.org.au mailing list.

If you’re in another city and have decided that, for example, http://hobart.go.org.au/ would be a nice place for your club to put up a page about itself, feel free to contact horatio@go.org.au and enquire. :)

by aguido in Club updates, Meta, Other Tags: , ,