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On the 20th of June I started a new poll in order to know the level of the players who usually visits this blog.

Back from holidays I checked the results and the highest mark had already gone over 100 results, so it is time to extract some conclusions from the poll. The ones who already answered the question already know it, but for the ones who didn't, the categories where separated in the following way:

As you can see the lower categories have been truncated into more parts as the website is intended to be focused for these users while it may be of limited interest for dan players.

The results are shown in the next two graphics:

As you can see, most of the audience is ranked over 15k, being the most common level between 10k and 15k, closely followed by the weak single-digit kyu players (like me). Generally speaking, over 50% of the visitors have a level among 15k and 1k, which is not very surprising as it is the most common population. However, there are quite a few dan players who visit this blog, even more than complete beginners.

It would be nice to know the statistics for every single entry, as I think differences would be much more relevant, while videoreviews would be interesting for certain levels, my own reviews would be for others.

This week I got into a new job where everything I knew is futile and the daily routine is based on pouring information into my brain from 8:00 to 18:00 (with a lunch break). Unfortunatelly, in order to understand the slightest amount of this knowledge, my brain needs to process it at a lower pace at home during the following hours.

The result is that my free time is reduced to it's smallest representation and I'm too tired to place stones in a goban in any sort of logical order. Just to give you a quick sample, I haven't checked my computer in 3 days, something which I used to do at least twice a day, and I didin't go to the usual weekly club meeting. So, in the end, the spare time for Go has been reduced to weekends where I have to combine it with my girlfriend... so I guess I won't be playing as much Go or reviewing software on the forecoming months as I had been doing lately.

A couple things more before finishing the post:

-The pro games database has been deleted from the databases' site in order to avoid some copyright conflicts. It seems that there are different points of view in this field, so if I don't want to get into trouble with anyone, deleting it seems the most reasonable behaviour.

-I've added the possibility to announce yourself on this site, you'll see the link at the upper left.

-The videoreviews of MoyoGoStudio and Stonebase are partially done, but as they require quite a lot of dedication to finish them in order to get a decent result, and some video post-processing, so these two projects will be delayed until said otherwise.

Yesterday I was reading the usual feeds on my google reader till I realised that there were only 5 major writers... out of a total list over 30 sources. Then, I decided to take a look at the Go Blogs list on Sensei's Library, just to realise that the Active/Inactive list of bloggers was quite outdated.

The result: (in pink the new inactive ones)

All in all, 15 blogs had to be removed from the Active Blogs list due to the lack of activity during the last 6 months or the impossibility to reach their addresses. Some of them already announced their desire to stop blogging, but others were just left to their own luck by their owners.

Even there is still a nice list of active blogs, if you check your feeds reader, you'll realise that there are only a few of them which are regularly posting on their blogs. In fact, most of the feeds you received last month came from only 5 authors. Now I hope you get what I mean by Go Blogs Crisis.

If you keep track of the Full of Surprises blog, you'll have already realised the decline in Korea's Go scene.

The first post related to this topic which amused me was the one called my two teachers, where she talks about how she learnt go and some possible reasons on why children don't learn it nowadays.

Yesterday she wrote a new post: Only a matter of TIME, talking about the differences on time settings among the main go playing countries. It is a like a punch in my stomach to see how time settings are arranged to suit TV broadcasting. Amazing. Obviously, decreasing the time given for each move has dramatic consequences, but you'd better read them by yourself. I really recommend reading this post as I can't really transmit all the fustration and pity you can read between her lines.