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BACKGROUND:
Go is an ancient, beautiful and intellectually stimulating
board game played around the world. Its popularity in
Japan, China and Korea rivals that of chess in Russia
or golf in the United States, said Joe Buhler, deputy
director of MSRI.
Naiwei
Rui is one of Go's celebrities. "She is by far the best
woman player in history, and may well become the world's
consensus best player in the future," Buhler said. Her
ranking has skyrocketed since she won the year 2000 Kuksu
tournament in Korea, beating two of the three men formerly
regarded as the world's strongest Go players. That was
the first time ever that a woman had won a major open
tournament, and her achievement is even more remarkable
because of the legalistic hurdles that she faces when
she tries to play in the major Japanese tournaments.
Naiwei
Rui will be playing the demonstration game against her
husband, Jujo Jiang, who is still remembered in China
for routing Japanese professionals in the original Sino-Japanese
matches in the mid-1980s. In 1999, he barely defeated
his wife for the North American Masters championship.
The couple currently live in Mountain View.
MSRI
is a non-profit research institute at UC Berkeley dedicated
to providing opportunities to mathematicians from all
over the world to collaborate with each other, furthering
both pure and applied mathematical research. For more
information on the tournament and the workshop schedule,
link to MSRI's Web site at http://www.msri.org/.
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