Washington Go Festival

The Virginia Open
& VA State Go Championship

Video Recap

2022 Virginia State Champions

Samuel Lee（2nd: Edward Zhang; 3rd: James Park)

Youth Champion: Richard Duan

Women's Champion: Mei Cai

VA Open Tournament Winner: Hongkui Zheng

Registration Open for the 11th Virginia Open

Six rounds starting on 04/02/2022. Register https://forms.gle/zaim9gkbXCcNn3gJ7

New! 11th VA Open Set in April 2022 (AGA EJ Announcement)

Award certificates, participation certificates and cash prizes are offered to six divisions: Open Elite, Open, Expert, Proficient, Intermediate and Novice.

Youth and female top performers in various divisions will also be recognized.
Non-Virginia players can also play.

Third Time’s a Charm: Jeff Zhang Crowns 2021 Virginia Champion After Consecutive Runner-ups

The 3rd Virginia State Go Championship final features best-of-three series, with game 1 in the National Go Center, and games 2 and 3 in Vienna VA.
Qingbo ‘Jeff’ Zhang took comeback wins in games 1 and 3 vs Yaming Wang, who used to be a key go organizer in Richmond VA. Both good at fighting, Zhang and Wang had plenty of ko fights and exchanges. Yet Zhang was sharp to seize opportunities in the endgame.
Growing up in Luoyang China, Zhang went to the same go school of Shi Yue 9P's. He loves reading books of a variety of subjects, including over 200 WeiQi TianDi magazines. He graduated from George Washington University with a masters degree. Prior to the pandemic, Zhang was on the top of AGA’s list for both tournaments played and rated games played. Zhang is a passionate go lover who even took multiple trips by bus and train to west coast and midwest tournaments.
Despite losses, Wang always remains calm and reviews every move for extra time, demonstrating sportsmanship: friendship trumps competition.
The VA State Championship utilizes 5 periods of 1 minute byo yomi to ensure game quality, and the three games total over 10 hours of deliberation.The CAFA-DC company, a financial safety and technology company, sponsored the recent three Virginia Open and three VA State Championship tournaments. Both prizes are $200 / $70.
The semifinal was held at Korean American Baduk Association in Annandale, VA on Nov. 6, 2021. Yaming Wang defeated Edward Zhang and Qingbo Zhang defeated Ruoshi Sun ( defeated Irvin Pajarillo earlier to earn the spot). James Lee was the director.
Previous VA State Championship winners: 1st (2019): Joshua Lee, Qingbo Zhang (runner-up), 2nd (2020): Edward Zhang, Qingbo Zhang (runner-up).

2020 Virginia State Championship Final

News/Result: Edward Zhang Wins 2020 Virginia Championship (Game SGF)

Saturday, Dec. 26 ，AGA Story，at OGS (online-go.com), 1.5-hour Basic Time

Tournament Director: Gary Smith，NOVA Club

9am ET Semi-Final：(4) Edward Zhang def. (1) Ruoshi Sun；(2) Qingbo Zhang def. (3) Yaming Wang

2:30 pm Final：Edward Zhang def. Qingbo Zhang

Game Records：https://beta.baduk.club/mac/vachamp

9th Virginia Open（Results & AGA Report）

Who's Coming (4D+ 20 players; 1D-3D: 11; 1K-9K: 34; 10K-30K: 19)

BadukClub (TD & Admin, Easily Find Your Game）

8th Virginia Open, 9/28/2019（Vienna VA） Winner: Eric Lui 1P

2019 VA State Championship Final: 11/16

Joshua Lee 6D def. Qingbo Zhang （Annandale VA）

8th VA Open 2019 Photos (Album Link, Press Release)

Credits: CAFA Inc, Liang Yu, Justin Teng, Gary Smith, James Lee, Gurujeet Khalsa, Weiping Chen, Xinyu Zhang, Anna Liu, Qingbo Zhang, Grace Shan, Yuchen Zhu, Mark Keam, Ge Li, Dinny Li, Xinran Zuo, Huiming Zeng, Jing Zhang, Sihao Li, Jingfei Chen, Yufei Jiang, Shuo Wang, Jingyi Zhang, Kevin Wu, Xi Chen, Zhenying Gu, Kejun Kang.

Go game, originated in China over 3000 years ago.

Go is a 3000-year-old game with rich history, and well-known for its culture value as one of the "four art" in ancient Asia, among zithern, calligraphy and painting, and yet Go found its technology value in modern IT era as computer artificial intelligence (A.I.) deems it one of the most difficult game to master.

2009 US Open, Fairfax VA

Winners Report (page 11) , Crosstab

2009 North American Ing Masters Crosstab

The AGA chapters, Capital Go, NOVA Go and Korean American Baduk Association, with the support from the National Go Center, have served the community in various means: Go classes, tournaments, clubs, sharing events, video broadcasting, social media and etc.

Students Discover Go at an elementary school in Rockville MD in 2011

Tens of Go event organizers and volunteers, have taught classes in schools, hosted tournaments for players, promoted Asian culture and enhanced culture exchanges among all nationalities via playing Go.