Recommended

According to the American Go Association, and confirmed by some Senior KGS admins, today Tartrate will play against Gentlerain. Here you have the published text just in case you don't know them:

THIS JUST IN (3/4/2008): “LEGENDARY” TARTRATE TO PLAY JANG BI ON KGS WEDNESDAY: Tartrate will return to online go this Wednesday when he plays Jang Bi on KGS. The legendary – but mysterious – online player known as Tartrate blazed a virtually unbeaten path across KGS in 2003, defeating Alexandre Dinerchtein 1P, Svetlana Shikshina 1P and Kim Myung Wan 6P before vanishing without a trace. Tartrate’s fabled invincibility was only broken once, when he took White with no komi against Charm, and the ease with which he dismissed tough opponents led many to people believe he was a strong professional. Amicable and somewhat chatty, Tartrate insisted on anonymity, however, refusing to answer personal questions. His impressive performance in 2003 was followed by a long silence; during a short comeback in January 2004, his winning streak continued and his game against Weems 9d attracted over 400 observers. “Tartrate has a message for the online go world,” a reliable source tells the E-Journal, “he strongly suggests that while he is playing games, all the dans -- especially higher dans -- comment on his game for the community, and is disappointed when they don't.” Jang Bi is the Korean insei who’s been living and playing in the United States since last year. The tartrate-gentlerain game will be played Wednesday, March 5 at 6:30pm EST (3:30pm PST) in the English Game Room.

In fact, news have risen a lot of expectancy in the GoDiscussions forum, so we expect there to be some hundreds of observers, and lots of dans comments. I'll see you tonight at 23.30 GMT!!!

Talking about the professional Go world, we have a new incorporation to the Go Blogsphere: Cho Hye-yeon (Korean 7p) writes her own blog at Full of surprises, where she talks about her last games, how she faced 132 mirrored moves (except for a move) during a pro game and other experiences related with Go.

If we refer to computer go, we have a couple of good posts made lately. The first one of them, made by the creator of Deep Blue, Feng - Hsiung Hsu: Craking Go at IEEE spectrum, where he talks about the future of computer go while making a correlation with the development of chess software. As resources should always be mentioned, this was refered to by through computer-go mailing system.

The second one involving computers can be useful for most of us. Xed-over, at GoDiscussions.com, mentions a command-line based way to use Gnugo in debug mode... Personally, I think the best thing you can do is to try it and you'll have a nice surprise, it is very easy to use and the weaker you are, the more it'll help you. There has been a lot of computer activity at GoDiscussions since there are even two posts going on at the same time talking about ranking and club managements softwares: 1 & 2.

Another interesting post at GoDiscussions.com, not focused in Go but in intelligence, there is "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments". It's a scientific research on this field which awesome results.

On more Go related, we have the The Gokyo Shumyo a day Calendar: "The Gokyo Shumyo is a classic tsumego text considered "required learning." The tsumego range from very easy to very hard."

First of all, the most important: European Go Congress 2008 open for subscription. If you want to join the next EGC, you'll have to register there as soon as possible for the cheapest fees. This year it'll take place in Leksand, Sweden, from the 26th July to the 9th August.

If you are interested in professional news, you should know that the second game of the Meijin title has been already played and players are now on a draw. You can see the games and some uncommented variations at "Meijin 2007 - 361points.com". And based on the first game of this Meijin, Shorin created a very interesting entry on this blog: "Learning from professional games (1)".

On another level, far away from final games of the Meijin title, but equally interesting for its familiarity with our games, there is a nice post called "Don't Panic - at Because it's there".

On the last pack of recommended articles, I must say that there has been quite a lot of activity at GoDiscussions with some good topics going on.

1. "How's your intuition?": A user posts one situation from a professional game and asks player from different categories about their next move. One day is given for each category, so DDK answer first, then SDK and finally dan players. There are three posts of this "collection": One, Two and Three.
2. "Favorite Pro?": Some users discuss about their prefered pro player and their abilities.
3. "Studying amateur games": Discussions about the value of studying amateur games instead of professional ones. Here you'll find the "pros" and the "cons".
4. "Ladder breaker: How to respond it?": Rable shows us a real situation from a recent game and different users discuss about possible responses for a ladder breaker move. This discussion is held at a quite high level.

It's nice to see how people have comeback from their holidays and started talking on Go forums. Here you have a list of the last topics which I thought could be interesting for the whole community:

There hasn't been much activity on the last weeks on the Go Blogsphere, but it seems like people have returned from their vacations and started posting, on GoDiscussions too. I've collected a few interesting posts which have appeared on the internet during the whole month, that is the reason for not calling this post "recommended articles of the week".

At GoDiscussions there are a couple of topics which are quite interesting (the first two links) and some other interesting news

• How to play a stronger player with 9 stones handicap


• Video Lectures
  


• How to enjoy your game - at 361points.com which links us to the Korean Times online journal.


• 32nd Gosei title decided - From Go Aggregator
  It's all decided: Cho U defends his Gosei title against challenger Yokota Shigeaki, 9p with a convincing performance. Most observers on PandaNet long thought Yokota would pick up his first win but Cho played the endgame meticulously. The Gosei title was covered live on PandaNet.


• Yu Changhyeok vs. Kim Jiseok, 2007 Korean Baduk League at Contemplations on Go.
  This is one position from a new blog I discovered a few days ago; it has very good studying material from real games and a few tsumego. Well done Grandyan!


• EGC 2007: Villach 14-28 July - at Go Around.
  Another incomer in the Go Blogsphere. Though the blog is in italian, it has some nice pictures of the European Go Congress 2007 and it comes which a surprise at the bottom of the article. Something which reminds me of this nice post at Yehuda.