Alejo's Tenuki

EuroGoTv is broadcasting some European go championships live. You can watch the game through a camera (where you won't see much of the game itself) and the commentaries on his site, usually spoken in native language, or join KGS at the appropiate schedule to enjoy the game and the traditional KGS Kibitzers.

The game commentaries are only available at EuroGoTv's site. Indeed, there are up to 10 available channels for us to watch though there is usually only one "on air".

Today, saturday 20th, champion Merlijn Kuin 6d will play Frank Janssen 6d(former Dutch Champion) for the Dutch Topsport competition in the Kunwa (Japanese) room at the European Go Culture Center in Amstelveen.

If you have a PDA you may have already noticed that if you leave the handheld without batteries long enough, the data on the main memory disappears.

This is what happened to me yesterday. Fortunatelly, most things were rescued thanks to a backup I had on my computer which dates back from.... I don't have a clue... but long time ago. I could rescue Zlauncher and some medical tools but I couldn't restore my Go program.

I had been using PilotGone for viewing Go games on my palm for a few months, I had even registeedr some of my games on this handheld in order to review them afterwards. On my way to rescue PilotGone, TaiGo crossed the screen right in front of my eyes. I had been looking for a good palm tool, so I know most of SL posts on this topic and I hadn't heard of it...

TaiGo is a Go recording applet for Palm Os devices which gives the impression to have just landed on the market. Indeed, although you can find the third version available on the net, you'll find that this one is a pre-alpha version, with all the bugs and lack of stability of such a state of development. When I installed it I expected my Palm to reset itself every few minutes, or to crash, or to stop working... none of these happened, so I went on testing this new applet.

From what I've just seen... It's very promising. It has quite a lot of nice features, let's comment on some of them:
-Reads and writes SGF files directly: We've been ages waiting for this!!! Till now we needed to turn games into memo files, handling with their size and lack of filtering... You can see a picture of the file's explorer on the left (extracted from TaiGo's site)
-Calculates EGF rating of players. Still haven't tried it. Check that picture too.
-According to the site and the video, it is capable of reading the Kogo's Joseki Dictionary, which is another major feature.
-Good button customization and good navigation buttons too.
-English and Spanish available: which is logical since it's a Spanish applet, but it can be changed at the Options Menu.

TaiGo still has some major weaknesses: it is not possible to pass, it's not possible to reedit one game after having finished it... I already mentioned it was a pre-alpha version, right? But it is an important project that we keep an eye on.

Here you have a video created by the developers on a Palm Tungsten T3 emulation. The version recorded in this video is in Spanish, but it can be switched into English at the Options Menu.

This situation came up during a game, where I was playing Black against Mr. Mk a few days ago, after a 3-3 invasion. Due to the presence of the B and C stones, his invasion wasn't too big, but the correct timing made of it the biggest move on board.

You have this simple tsumego loaded on Zgo on the "continue reading section".

Frank A. de Groot just announced that he will continue the development of Moyo Go Studio at Godiscussions.com. These are wonderful news for the Go community.

In fact, I've just realised that, there has been a whole "revolution" during the lasts months when we talk about Go study programs.

Till a few months ago, there were only a few "serious" programs for studying Go. Many Faces of Go could be discarded as a proper studying tool due to his lack of database handling and pattern search, though it is very famous because most users started playing computer-go with Igowin. Moyo Go Studio and SmartGo were the main programs for serious students.

Then, Stonebase appeared on the scene: an asian program with very good database handling but some weak points. The developer of Drago got into serious programming sessions and started publishing new versions, including Kombilo's engine in it; now Drago is another serious competitor for the previous programs.

Since the lack of spare time prevents me from making proper reviews, you'll have to try them by yourself. Go, get them and compare!

The 5th Rioplatense Tournament, which took place on KGS between iberoamerican go players, finished last wednesday. There were 35 players, whose levels ranged from 7d (Fernando Aguilar) to players near 20k.

To make the tournament a little bit more interesting, the games were played with proper handicap according to KGS rating. Fernando Aguilar couldn't play the first game for personal reasons, so the result was quite unpredictable right from the beginning.

In the end, Kireta (11k) went undefeated the whole tournament and, obviously, would have won the price if there was one . My performance wasn't bad either on this tournament: I ended up being the 6th with 4 victories and two defeats.

At the "continue reading section" there is a large recopilation of the games, some hints in case you want to watch them and I comment on the feelings I had while playing. Just in case you want to know "how a 8k manages to win a 2d", or "how is it possible that such an 8k makes THAT mistake".