Happy New Year Dear Go Players!

Nice to meet you guys again in 2022!

NZ Digital Open

The NZ Digital Open will be coming up in around a month's time on Monday, the 7th of March. This tournament will be purely played online in OGS or any other Go Servers if both sides can come to a mutual agreement.

• 3 divisions. Upper (Recommended for 2 dan & higher. even games),  Intermediate (up to 2dan. even games), and Handicap (open to all. Handicap games).
• Sponsored by Hanping's shop CoolAccessoriesOnline - lots of mobile device accessories as prizes
• Entry fee $10 ... cash prizes too :-)
• After two rounds 'virtual plate divisions' are created - Main for the people who won their first two games, Plate 1 for those who won then lost, Plate 2 for lose, win and Plate 3 for Lose, lose. New prizes will be given to the winner and runner up of each of the plate divisions. (The virtual plate divisions will not affect the tournament scheduling) The idea is for almost everyone to have a real chance of winning a prize. 

 You can register by filling in the following form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc3z4qbmHUgu8xOGaktAMeH1tzj4plOSYKJpfJP-l5XLgOTqg/viewform

Schedule

Here is our current schedule of events for the year. We have decided the dates earlier this time so you can plan around these dates.

1. NZ Digital Open - Monday, 7th March

As mentioned above, This is the event that is coming up first this year, we are excited to see everyone there!

2. NZ Open - Saturday, 8th October

This will be held later in the year and will most likely be a mixture of in person and online players like last year. The location is still to be decided.

3. Auckland Open - Saturday, 19th November

The Auckland Open will happen on the 19th of November, one week after the NZ Open. Hopefully if you are a student the exams are already over by now. So come join us at the Auckland Open before flying home if you are from other parts of NZ!

Purchase Go Equipment

Playing online is convenient but I'm sure as Go players we all get that urge to play on a real board from time to time. Remember the NZGS has a shop selling go equipment  - you can find it on our web page: https://go.org.nz/index.php/the-shop.  Currently we have only basic sets, and some books in stock - but that will change when our next shipment arrives and we will have a range of Go equipment to choose from. Hanping, who is also sponsoring our NZ Digital Open as mentioned above, is also listing NZGS Go/Weiqi Equipment in his online shop. His shop is mainly focused on mobile device accessories. Check it out here!

Opito Bay Go

Unfortunately this year's Opital Bay event which is normally held by Mike Taler is cancelled due to the current COVID situation. Hopefully next year things will settle down and we will be able to attend this wonderful event again!

NZGS Player Number and Rankings

Sylvain, has done all the hard work and have published all the players that are in our database onto the website in a clean and easy to read table. Here you can find your current rank in our system and your NZGS Membership ID!

Player Rankings Page.

If you have questions or suggestions please let us know as the system is still being finalised and we want it to work well for everyone. Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

That's all for now Best wishes for 2022

Chris Ding

Newsletter Archive 1990-95

The last of the printed newsletters of the NZGS (1990-95) have been added to the Newsletter Archive.  To see these select News/Newsletter Archive and use the arrow keys to scroll through the archived newsletters.

The newsletters show a healthy go scene in 1990, with tournaments in the four main centres and regular vigorous challenges for the go kichi trophy.  A win by Kyle Jones over the Hong Kong representative at the 1989 WAGC (Kiwi Go 50 - May 1990) was added to the list of scalps claimed by NZ'ers against strong players from overseas.

The 14^th NZ Go Championship in 1989 had only 12 participants, with bigger fields (16 players) at the Wellington and Christchurch tournaments (Kiwi Go 50, May 1990).  The need to grow the number of go players in New Zealand was well recognized and there were plans for a major go promotion around the country.  This was to involve a tour by a group of Japanese pro and amateur players from the Kansai Kiin led by the irrepressible Hyodo Syunichi.   

Background to this tour is detailed in Kiwi Go 51 (August 1990).  It was an ambitious attempt to promote the game, with corporate sponsorship involving events in the four main centres and a weekend go workshop in Queenstown.  The players who travelled from Japan are listed in the details of the Fletcher Challenge Go Festival (Newsletter 52b 1991).  A full report is provided in Kiwi Go 53 (April 1991).

Hyodo Syunichi (L)  and Ray Tomes share amusement at a move in a team game during the Queenstown leg of the 1991 Fletcher Challenge Go Festival.

The friendships formed between the Kansai players who were part of the tour and the NZ players who hosted them led to a very warm relationship over several years with visits in both directions.

The cover of the January 1991 issue, celebrated Yu Cong Phease who has had the best result by any NZ player at an international tournament.  She finished 5^th at the 3^rd womens’ world amateur champs!

However, all the hard work involved in organizing NZ go was beginning to take its toll and the editor of Kiwi Go 56 (July 1992) was moved to ask “Does the NZGS have a future?”.  This was prompted by the disintegration of a new NZGS committee in its first year in office citing “insufficient enthusiasm” to continue as the cause. 

The editors of Kiwi Go soon began to suffer the same malaise.  But the retiring editor, in Newsletter 59 (August 1993) expressed reason for optimism in the increasing number of Asian immigrants coming to New Zealand, an opinion reflected in the participants of the 1993 Auckland Champs where half of the huge field of 29 players bore Asian surnames (Kiwi Go 59 – August 1993).

Another influence on the NZ go scene was becoming apparent as early as 1991?   In Kiwi Go 55 (Oct1991/Jan1992) Barry Pease in a piece called Network Go described how go players could now use the internet to connect with each other, by email, and most excitingly via the “Go Server” based on a computer in New Mexico.  In a later report (Kiwi Go 57, October 1992) Barry describes the Internet Go Server in more detail and reports on the IGS World Championship tournament. 

This kind of development began to render unnecessary the perennial quest of the NZGS to devise a ranking system (see KiwiGo 61 October 1994 for a brief history) that would allow it to issue dan ranks to its members.  We now take our ranks from the Go servers on which we play and qualify our rank with the server e.g.  I’m 6D on Tygem and 4d on OGS.

The cover of the last printed NZ Go Newsletter

The internet also put an end to the need for printed newsletters.   NZ go news after 1995 was distributed to its members in the form of emailed newsletters, and later as a Wiki.   One effect of the move from paper to silicon is that a lot of the NZ go news after 1995 has tended to vanish into the aether.   Paradoxically, this collection of scanned newsletters remains to remind us of the more permanent nature of the printed word!