Written by alejo on February 23rd, 2010
This post is based on a real game I was watching on KGS. The game was actually a blitz game, so players didn’t have much time to think about deep strategies, nor did the audience. And that is referring to myself, I wasn’t able to follow some of the moves in real time, I needed some extra time in order to understand some moves, but the one that stroke me the most was played in the next position.
As you can see, black is surrounding the white group around K6, a big dragon indeed, whose death would mean the end of the match.
Market by A,B and C is the sequence I thought of to make the white group live. I couldn’t be more wrong. Ideas and moves like the next one make me realise the huge level difference between myself and a 5 dan player.The sequence I marked, though it grants life, ends up in gote for myself and is just passive defense. On the real game, the movement was exactly the opposite: sente and attack. In an attempt to kill the black group placed around R14, white played T15.
Due to this attack, black was, as well, forced to find a path to life, where was his path? Killing the white group around Q18. This time, I wasn’t even able to think of a passive defense that black had already placed his offensive defense.
I’ll leave you the game below so that you can enjoy it too
Written by alejo on February 22nd, 2010
This weekend was held the 2010 Barcelona Go Tournament, organised by “La Pedra” club. Finally, a total amount of 146 players showed up for the competition; with over 40 EGF dan players and around 30 double digit kyus, it seems like the tournament level was, on average, quite high.
Taking into account the absence of a few good Spanish players, the amount of local players listed among the top 20 is limited to Oscar Anguila (15th, 3 dan) being Pau Carles the next Spanish player, who appears in the list as 21rst.
Since the amount of players summed up to 146 and it would be a mess to post it here, check the original list for further details HERE.
Written by alejo on February 22nd, 2010
Finally, after three years struggling to get the job done with Serendipity , I decided to follow the mainstream and join the wordpress community, but on my own server. Though I managed to get a similar theme and style, the code behind the page is completely different and much, much better. WordPress has lots of features which Serendipity lacked and the list could go on and on for a few pages.
Luckily for you, I’m not going to state every single detail but there are a couple which should be mentioned: eidogo directly plugged in posts, RSS feeds improvement and a mobile version of the site with an improved browsing experience (now it won’t be a pain in the back to surf through this site with your mobile phone).
Currently, I’m still restoring some dozens of posts written back in year 2007.
Written by alejo on February 18th, 2010
A few weeks ago we already announced the Android fever (what is android?) which was going on among the Go community. We made a small review on gobandroid, acego and koalago, leaving two more applications for a second review: KGS and Hubango.
Instead of reviewing these pieces of software, I’d like to comment on an uncommon application I found recently, its name: GOdroid.
GOdroid is the first published attempt to have an artificial intelligence on our mobile phones, it features GnuGo 3.8 with board sizes from 9×9 to 19×19 and handicap. According to the developer’s announcement the strength of this program ranges from 8k to 12k, which may pose a nice challenge when given handicap.Customizing the time limits would be a good feature for the next update, since increasing its thinking time limits would improve its strength. Personally, playing this engine on a desktop computer with longer time settings proves a nice challenge, while I can regularly beat this software on my Android.
What happens when this application is played on a more powerful device? Most mainstream android phones around have a core running at around 300-500 Mhz, but there are more powerful ones coming out such as Nexus one with 1 Ghz. Will the bot’s thinking time be reduced or the strength increased? If anyone wants to send me a Nexus One so that I can try it, contact me by email 
When it comes to the interface, there aren’t any big innovations but the fact that it allows to play stones through 2 systems:
a) First tap on the screen to place, second to confirm.
b) Move the stone with the track ball and press it to confirm.
Personally, the best results are obtained by placing the stone with the finger and making small corrections or confirming with the track ball.
The applications is released as freeware and you can download it directly from your android market.
Update: as kaliya pointed out at the commentaries, GOdroid isn’t correctly displayed on phones with QVGA (320×240, such as HTC tattoo) or lower resolutions. Please, check your screen resolution if you find any problems with the board display. Other mainstream devices, such as HTC Dream or Magic, have a slightly higher resolution.
Written by alejo on January 29th, 2010
Android phones have already been around for a couple of years, but it wasn’t till a couple of months ago that it really got into the Go community. Android Go fever started with Wms announcing a KGS client for these mobile phones, which would be available in short term through the market. In November 2009 there were only two go applications available in the market; within 3 months the number of applications is, at least, three times. There is quite a wide range of features among these apps: IGS clients, KGS clients, just boards, just sgf viewers, clocks, freeware, shareware…
In order to let you know a few of them without making it too long, I decided to limit the reviewed software to freeware:
You may think that it’s a little bit confusing to record videos this way, but it’s incredible hard to actually record the android screen with software. In fact, by using this method, I let you see how does the touch screen work with go games, which is relevant when it comes to placing stones in a tiny board through a touch screen.
After a couple of games, the zooming-in method seems to work faster and is more useful for blitz games, but I’ve already made a few misplacing errors; so KGS’ method, while it seems less intuitive and slower, turns up to be more precise. Personally, I would stick to the KGS method till the other clients implement some sort of “undo” once the stone is played or “confirmatin button”. Unwillingly misplacing a stone is highly frustrating.
Further details:
- This review was made on January 25th, but some programs have already been updated, so you may find certain improvements in the applications.
- I may review KGS and Hubango software on a different video. Though you may try them for yourself: All market applications have a 24hours money-back guarantee.
- Eidogo software is perfectly viewable through the standard browser. So you can scroll most games in blogs.
- Since Android phones lack of Flash plugins, GoDiscussions’ games won’t show up. This may be solved with the new Nexus One (the newest Google phone).
| Gobandroid |
Acego |
KoalaGo (free version) |
Goigo |
Go clock |
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Written by alejo on January 18th, 2010
Over 110 people will be playing go during the 20th and 21rst of February while taking part in this year’s Barcelona Tournament. It seems like we’re going to beat the previous attendance record, stated at 118 players, and be placed among the most popular Go tournaments in Europe.
Here you have a list of the players sorted by EGD rank:
029. 14201286 DE 7d (2772) In-seong Hwang
031. 10349537 FR 7d (2750) Junfu Dai
003. 10333389 RO 7d (2686) Cristian Pop
035. 10998416 FR 6d (2601) Yanqi Zhang
011. 14898345 ES 6d (2593) Lluis Oh
110. 10325249 RO 6d (2591) Cornel Burzo
046. 10749860 CZ 5d (2574) Jan Simara
065. 10401083 CZ 6d (2556) Jan Hora
014. 10337239 FR 6d (2536) Paul Drouot
107. 10349350 FR 5d (2501) Antoine Fenech
013. 10733712 FR 5d (2494) Benjamin Papazoglou
007. 10801923 RS 5d (2473) Nikola Mitic
104. 14349467 UK 5d (2418) Vanessa Wong
019. 10337085 RS 5d (2404) Milos Bojanic
033. 10450561 ES 4d (2369) Cesar Sanchez
052. 10598720 ES 4d (2355) Ignacio Cernuda
034. 10462408 FR 4d (2347) Simon Billouet
015. 10313083 RS 5d (2343) Mijodrag Stankovic
044. 10549407 FR 4d (2340) Toru Imamura
009. 13562450 ES 3d (2309) Oscar Anguila
048. 13050752 ES 3d (2293) Javier Fernandez-Villares
049. 13437974 ES 3d (2289) Joan Alemany
022. 13701094 ES 3d (2288) Antonio Egea
010. 10386013 ES 3d (2275) Joan Pons
032. 10398036 ES 3d (2270) Pau Carles
018. 10313127 RS 4d (2219) Dejan Krstic
050. 10325018 ES 2d (2179) Francesc Fernandez
017. 10750245 RO 3d (2141) Bogdan Campianu
103. 14633652 NL 1d (2130) Kim Ouweleen
108. 14586693 FR 1d (2077) Ngoc-Trang Cao
004. 13001890 ES 1d (2067) Albert Sanchez
045. 10913210 FR 1d (2055) Dominique Cornuejols
058. 13749087 ES 1k (2050) Andres Tallos
002. 14262820 ES 1k (2046) Angel Pina
037. 10425349 FR 1d (2023) Stephane Poisson
063. 13425049 CZ 1k (2022) Vladimir Binovec
051. 12613260 ES 1k (1993) Junko Matsuura
064. 14362304 CZ 2k (1986) Simon Zeckarias
042. 13933546 ES 1k (1975) Hugo Valls
057. 13950497 ES 2k (1945) Nil Garcia
060. 13849748 CZ 2k (1917) Jitka Bartova
041. 13637239 ES 2k (1915) Julio Martinez
084. 14950705 FR 2k (1914) Pierre Averous
040. 14662076 FR 2k (1878) Xavier Richard
100. 14025748 FR 2k (1878) Julien Sagit
109. 10774687 ES 2k (1877) Fernando Avanzini
016. 14913096 RO 2k (1853) Arpad Balazs
105. 10337261 RO 2k (1844) Irina Suciu
087. 13062643 DE 2k (1836) Pascal Hitziger
001. 14501487 ES 2k (1832) Jordi Urmeneta
093. 14586605 FR 5k (1814) Jonathan Marcos
099. 14362018 FR 2k (1770) Milena Bocle
021. 10333037 ES 4k (1758) Marc Gonzalez
101. 15350720 FR 4k (1712) Gabriel Aussibal
006. 14286734 ES 5k (1645) Juan-Jesus Ligero
094. 15398328 FR 5k (1641) Paul-clement Sanchez
085. 14933710 FR 5k (1635) Christophe Averous
096. 14998863 RO 5k (1614) Andrei Cherestes
075. 13549437 ES 5k (1603) Alberto Parolari
079. 14274623 ES 5k (1540) Jose-Manuel Tena
080. 14874882 FR 5k (1535) Christophe Rodo
091. 10350439 RO 6k (1469) Vasile Bunea
090. 14233714 RO 6k (1451) Dorin Chis
102. 13433354 BE 5k (1442) Laurent Pottier
020. 13986368 FR 8k (1397) Claire Rioualen
092. 10386453 RO 7k (1389) Gabriel-Andrei Ormos
038. 10413051 FR 8k (1379) Guy Puigsegur
059. 15286667 FR 7k (1377) Robert Prentice
098. 13713238 RO 7k (1373) Valeria Costea
039. 10537175 FR 7k (1367) Philippe Richard
086. 14701192 ES 8k (1365) Daniel Pellicer
043. 14850704 ES 7k (1359) Ricardo Martin
027. 12474264 ES 7k (1344) Isabel Barros
028. 14801556 UK 8k (1328) Robin Dews
047. 12450691 ES 8k (1328) Jordi Jane-Cardo
008. 14649338 ES 9k (1311) Eloy Martin
095. 14925856 RO 8k (1310) Codrut Cherestes
005. 14950859 RO 7k (1300) Lucian Bobu
023. 14650702 ES 8k (1294) Antonio Mesones-Ruiz
081. 15225518 ES 8k (1266) Fernando Holgado
088. 13713986 RO 8k (1261) Allen Coliban
053. 13713095 ES 9k (1235) Miguel Murat
062. 00000000 CZ 9k (1200) Lucie Holeckova
025. 00000000 RO 9k (1200) Andrei Razvan
024. 12801162 ES 10k (1081) Alex Matencio
026. 13798092 ES 11k (1041) Araceli Checa
012. 10301049 ES 12k (1030) Marc-Ignasi Corral
030. 14837779 CZ 11k (1029) Zdenek Kouba
061. 14537017 CZ 13k (0876) Marie Simkova
054. 15062487 ES 13k (0805) Sergio Tomas
106. 14686914 FR 13k (0787) Pierre Boudailliez
078. 15298613 ES 13k (0756) Felipe-Pedro Rama
056. 15398603 ES 14k (0724) Alonso Torres
082. 14925823 ES 14k (0718) Sonia Pulido
036. 00000000 ES 14k (0700) Michel Cornu
072. 00000000 ES 14k (0700) Carles Hoyo
077. 14813568 ES 17k (0691) Jordi Gaset
097. 15274875 RO 14k (0687) Ioan Cherestes
083. 14998819 ES 16k (0536) Manuel Gutierrez
070. 00000000 ES 18k (0300) Ignasi Faura
076. 00000000 ES 18k (0300) Carmen Blasi
089. 15225881 RO 19k (0238) Crina Novac
055. 15086489 ES 19k (0216) Isabel Santana
074. 00000000 ES 19k (0200) Olivier Sfez
068. 00000000 ES 20k (0100) Xavier Lleonart
066. 00000000 ES 20k (0100) Teresa Sanjuan
069. 00000000 ES 20k (0100) Ricard Mas
073. 00000000 ES 20k (0100) Nadia Carbo
067. 00000000 ES 20k (0100) Miquel Massot
071. 00000000 ES 18k (0100) Jordi Mercade
As you can see from the list above, there are over 30 dan players already registered and a few double-digit kyus, so that everyone can enjoy and have fun.
Cheap registration price is still available, till the end of January. For further information on accommodation, flights, timetables, prices and such, check the tournament’s site: http://bcn2010go.blogspot.com/
When it comes to me, it’s very possible that I participate in the tournament among other DDK players, as well as some friends of mine. However, if under weird circumstances I can’t finally play, I’m very interested in watching some games and meeting some friends who I haven’t seen for a long time…
