The Ranka team caught up with Ricky Zhao after the sixth round of the preliminary pair competition.

Ranka: How old are you and when did you start playing go?
Ricky: I’m fourteen. I started playing when I was eight. My parents saw an ad in the newspaper for a go school operated by Feng Yun in Livingston, New Jersey, and sent me to it. I studied for three or four years at that school and another shool in Rutgers, also operated by Feng Yun. We’d study problems, play games among ourselves, and sometimes have Feng Yun or the other teachers review our games.

Ranka: Please tell us about the game that you just completed against the Czech pair.
Ricky: We lost. This was the decisive game—the winner would qualify for the knockout. Now we have no chance.

Ranka: We hope that’s not true, but please tell us what happened in the game.
Ricky: The game had a chaotic beginning. We invaded their territory and luckily we just barely managed to live. At that point we were winning, but time was running out, especially for our opponents but for us too, and there was no byo-yomi. If we ran out of time we would lose. My partner now starting thinking about her moves for a long time. In the end we made a mistake under time pressure and lost.

Ranka: Thank you.

Ricky Zhao and Jasmine Yan

After the seventh round, Ranka interviewed Ricky’s partner Jasmine Yan.

Ranka: How was your final game against the Serbian pair?
Jasmine: We won by resignation.

Ranka: Have you played much pair go together before?
Jasmine: We played in one event, but before that I had another partner.

Ranka: How old are you and when did you start playing go?
Jasmine: I’m fourteen and I started playing six years ago, when I was eight.

Ranka: How did you get started?
Jasmine: It’s a long story. Mom found a go board when we visited my grandparents in China. At first we didn’t know what it was. For a while we just played on it for fun, but then Mom read about the Feng Yun go school in the newspaper, and I started going. Feng Yun has been my teacher ever since. At the school she gives lectures on life and death problems and opening problems, and we students play games against each other.

Ranka: Are you playing much these days.
Jasmine: No, I just started high school. I don’t think anyone else in my high school has even heard about the game of go.

Ranka: We hope you can teach some of them. Thanks for the interview.