Planet Go

Last January, during the last Techvista (Microsoft annual research symposium), we could see a preview of the Path of Go. But we had to wait a little bit longer till someone got it hands-on: it was the Joystiq Team that managed to get a premature copy of the game and made a short review.

Though I lack certainty, it seems like the reviewer of the game didn’t knew how to play Go before, since he doesn’t mention something which would be relevant for usual go players: AI strength, rankings and such. When it comes to the game, on-line play is enabled and graphics are quite nice. From my point of view, it may be worth checking the game screen shots as they may look familiar for Second life users: each people has its own avatar, the view can be modified…

Since the original site is copyrighted, I can paste the full content, but the just first sentence of the review makes it worth it to open the link. For further “information”, I’d recommend checking Microsoft’s description on the project: It only takes minutes to learn, but it takes a lifetime to master. (WTF?)

Thanks to uglyboxer from Godiscussions.

A month ago I happened to review most of the free go software available for the android mobile phones. One of the reviewed pieces of software was gobandroid: a simple tool which allowed us to play over a board. During this month there have been some major improvements in this application, which make it feel completely different from the one I reviewed.

The list of improvements starts with the possibility to add skins to the program, with two different skins available in the market. Below these lines there is a comparison so that you can check the difference. As you can see, there are both board and stone textures.

Another major improvement has been imported from Godroid: GnuGo on your mobile phone. As Godroid has been released as GPL, the developer of Gobandroid was able to import the Gnugo function into his software. However, this time gnugo has been implemented as an android service, so it’s running in the background as a standalone service. Fortunately, it’s only called when gobandroid starts and it’s killed when gobandroid is closed (at least theoretically).

Taking into account that gnugo uses around 25-30 Mb of your system’s memory, I’d strongly recommend having any application/task killer so as to stop the process manually when you exit the application. According to gobandroid developer, the addition of gnugo as a service allows for extra additions of other artificial intelligences.

Finally, another recently added feature of gobandroid is the capability to load and save SGF files from your sd card.

Just a few days after Cho U captured number one Japanese title, Kisei, from Yamashita Keigo the same two met again in the first game of the Judan title. This time Cho U is the title holder and Yamashita Keigo is the challenger.

Cho U captured Judan from Takao Shinji last year. Takao then put up a good fight in the qualification tournament to become challenger, but was defeated by Yamashita in the final of the knock-out tournament that decided the challenger.

Cho U started his defense of the Judan title well and won the first game. The next game will be played on March 25th.

Here is the game record: Cho U played black and won by resignation.

You can see also the complete tournament table here.

A few months ago we already talked about qgo2: a multiserver client for Linux which included IGS, WING, LGS, CyberOro, eWeiQi, Tygem and Tom servers. If you don’t know about this nice piece of software, I’d recommend checking it out. It’s is worth it. In fact, even left as it is, it may still be my main go tool for my Ubuntu. Though there are some bugs, it allows linux users to join the main Asian servers and, if not play in all servers, watch their games.

During these months, Peter -the developer- has been improving qgo2, adding new features and enabling servers. Unfortunately, there seems to be some code issues when it comes to the Qt suite and support isn’t as responsive as expected. Taking into account the amount of free time invested into this project and the results, the developer has finally decided to give up the project.

For further information, I’d recommend checking the qgo-announce2 archives, help about the new Qt 4.6 version and the management of list sorts will be welcomed.

I played at the New Jersey Open again this year, and had a great time.

Many of my old friends were present. One old friend who had been conspicuously absent for years made an appearance. Don DeCourcelle, who hosted the New Jersey Yang Workshop for two years, made the NJ Open his first tournament in his return to the go scene after an absence of at least five years.

I played at the rank I "earned" at the Hoboken tournament last year, which is 9k. I was very close to 8k and would like to have played at that level, but I know that the AGA has a policy against one stone self promotions, so I didn't try to push it at registration.

I came to find that, as last year, they were lax in enforcing the policy against one stone self promotions. I found this annoying. I guess it doesn't pay to know and follow the rules.

I went 2-3 and solidified my rating of 9k achieving a revised rating of 9.11 with a sigma of 0.48.

I took my Macbook with me to the tournament and used it to record my games, which drew some attention from the younger set. During the fist game I carelessly misplaced a stone, and recorded only up to the point where it mattered. With the remaining four games I was much more careful and recorded up to the last move of these games. I actually think that recording hurt my games rather than helped them, but at least I have the game records for analysis.

I have already had Yilun Yang review Round 2 and Round 3. I will have him review Round 4 and Round 5 during our next lesson.

Round 1:

I played white against a Chinese Opening. I won that game by 13.5, and did not find myself feeling under pressure during the game at all.

Round 2:

I played white again. This time it was a very close game which I lost by 0.5. I was able to pinpoint a totally unnecessary move on my part which cost me the game. I was so ashamed by the offending move that I was tempted not to show it to Mr. Yang because I knew what he would say about it. I showed it anyway, and he said exactly what I expected, "This is a 25 kyu move." I definitely didn't deserve to win that game. I did take comfort though in knowing that I was playing at the right level by coming in so close in spite of such a terrible mistake.

Round 3:

This game was with a young girl who I had played at the Oza two years before. She had won all her games when she played me, and I think she may have gone on to win the rest of them. I lost this game by 14.5. I was surprised, however, when Mr. Yang reviewed it I was told that I should have won the game. I made some bad errors that prevented me from doing so, but apparently I started out well. This game was the third game of the day, and I don't really like to play more than one serious game per day, so by the time this game was under way I was exhausted. I actually stood for this game to remain focused. It probably worked against me though by making me even more tired.

Round 4

I was refreshed the next morning, and this game I had high hopes of winning. Early in the game I captured quite a large group. Unfortunately my opponent fought back valiantly, cutting off a couple key stones which added significantly to his territory. I lost that game by 3.5.

Round 5

This game was against a young woman who had won all four of her previous games. At the end of the game she told me that I had offered her the biggest challenge of the tournament. During the game she actually said at one point that she would really like to get sente. I know the feeling well. I won that game by 18.5.

I'm not disappointed with my results since two of my losses were so close.

It’s been a couple of years since I first started looking for ways to monetizing this blog. The main ad system on the internet, as you may already have noticed, is Google Adsense. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t realise what this site is about, so you may find strange ads: a post about sacrificing stones happened to bring up ads related with psychology and mental health.

Private banners from Go business either pay too low or just don’t want to be announced around here. In fact, a couple of bloggers have already asked me about this issue, the lack of support from Go business is somewhat surprising compared with other games/sports.

Selling links is somewhat controversial, though the benefits are by far the highest, it is against the Google crawling system, so your site may be punished for doing so. How? The list of results in Google’s search engine is based on the relevance of your site, which they call PageRank. When you sell links by this method, you’re actually selling the influence of your PageRank. If Google finds your selling links, your Pagerank will be decreased and, therefore, the amount of visits from their search engine will decrease.

Recently a new age for blogs has started: social monetizing. Well, there are already a couple of sites running these sort of systems.

Game five of the 34th Kisei title resulted in Cho U’s win, which ensured his capturing of the title from Yamashita Keigo by a 4-1 score. Yamashita captured the Kisei title in 2006 from Hane Naoki, then defended it for 3 consecutive years.

It looks like Cho U’s bad form from 2009 has not followed him in 2010.

Here is the game record from the last game: Cho U played white and won by 1.5 points.

More photos here. You can also see a couple of videos from the previous game here.

Kong Jie of China has all the reasons to be happy: he has defeated Lee Changho of S. Korea in the final of the international LG Cup.

Kong Jie won the best-of-three final with two straight wins. Since he has already won Samsung Cup and Asian TV Cup, this win puts Kong Jie in the number one position in the world judging by the number of international competitions won in the last year.

Here is the record of the first game. Kong Jie, playing white, won by 2.5 points.

Here is the record of the second (and last) game. Kong Jie, playing black, won by 1.5 points.

You can find the complete tournament table here.

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

[Embedded SGF File]

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.

Yamashita Keigo won for the first time in this year’s Kisei title match, trying to defend the title against Cho U. The score is now 3-1 for Cho U, who has 3 more chances to capture the title from Yamashita.

Here is the record of the forth game. Yamashita Keigo, playing white, won by 7.5 points.

Next game will be played on February 25th and 26th. You can find the complete tournament table here.

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.

Vermont: From the Word Go Tournament February 13 2010

• Game 1: even against a shodan, I killed myself in byo yomi, oops.
  
  
• Game 2: even against a shodan, I ate a lot of his stones, including a basic corner shape when he ignored the sente descent. Study paying off ^^
  
  
• Game 3: giving 2 stones to a 2k, and he grew much bigger than I did, oh well.
  
  
• Game 4: giving 4 stones to a 4k, feeling way behind, but finagling one of his corners into a carpenter's square which sadly passed away, so I won that game.
  
  

The strongest female professional player in the world, Rui Naiwei 9 dan, has defended Women Myeongin (the Korean equivalent of the Japanese Meijin) title by defeating Cho Hyeyeon 2:1.

Interestingly, this is the third year in a row when Cho Hyeyeon became challenger against Rui Naiwei.

Cho Hyeyeon started this title match well, winning by resignation in the first game, but Rui Naiwei won the following two games. Here is the record of the third game. Rui Naiwei, playing black, won by resignation.

You can find the complete tournament table at this link.

Cho U seems to be back in good shape after a bad year: he is just one win away from capturing the Kisei title from Yamashita Keigo.

Here is the record of the third game. Cho U, white, won by 8.5 points after a very confusing multi-step ko fight involving a large black group.

Next game will be played on February 18th and 19th.

The complete tournament table is here.

Park Jieun 9 dan won the 8th Jeongganjang Cup for South Korea. Since all other Korean team members have been eliminated in the first 2 stages of this competition, Park Jieun had to defeat the last member of the Japanese team (Suzuki Ayumi) as well as the three remaining members of the Chinese team (Song Ronghui, Ye Gui and Li He, who won this competition last year for China).

China had a very strong start this year, just like last year, after Wang Chenxing won three games in a row, and it looked for a while as if it will have an easy win.

You can see below a photo and the record of the decisive game between Park Jieun and Li He.

Park Jieun played white and won by resignation..

You can find the complete tournament table here.

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:

Gobandroid	Acego	KoalaGo (free version)	Goigo	Go clock

From: “magpie” alaskamagpie@me.com

Hello Folks,

For our iGo/Baduk demonstration at UAA on January 23rd at

11:30am to 2:30pm we will meet at the Edward & Catyryn Rasmuson Hall of UAA.

A map of UAA is here:

http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/map/upload/uaa_main_campus.pdf

Enlarge and find building #5 … that’s the place.

Hope to see you there … and remember, Thursday at 5:00pm

at Title Wave books off Northern Lights and Spenard Rd.

Magpie Jon

I wrote about Fenghuan City match from China in an older entry which contains some pictures and videos of the commented game. Just found today a very nice video from the event itself showing tourists, people dressed as Go stones moving/dancing on the board, etc.

Many thanks to kennabee for the video.

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…

Amazingly, Lee Changho lost to an amateur player (Han Taehee) in the 2nd BC Card Cup, in less than 100 moves!

Here is the game record.

BC Card Cup is a mixed tournament as amaterus can also participate. There were five Korean amateurs who each managed to defeat three professional players in a row to make it through the preliminaries, but of the five ones only Han Taehee won in the main tournament.

Yu Bin, a famous Chinese player who used to be in the top a few years ago, also lost to an amateur (Na Hyun).

Here is the game record between Yu Bin 9p and Na Hyun 6 dan amateur: Yu Bin, playing black, lost by half a point.

Iyama Yuta of Japan then restored things to “the natural order” and eliminated Na Hyun. Here is the game record: Iyama Yuta, playing white, won by resignation.

You can find the tournament table at this link; make sure to look at both top-most (main tournament) and second from the top (preliminary) tables.

Cho U, challenger in this year’s Kisei title match, won game one against title holder Yamashita Keigo.

In their most recent encounter, Yamashita captured the Tengen title from Cho U last month.

The record of game one is here. Cho U, playing white, won by resignation.

The tournament table is here. Game two will be played on January 27 and 28.

A while back, I divided up the work on PromoteGo.org into three distinct phases:

1. Build a better club list for usgo.org.
2. Provide tools for helping new clubs to form.
3. Provide a service to schedule games in public.

It's now time to start work on Phase 2, building new clubs. There are a few different angles I want to tackle on this: 1. Encouraging people to put club entries into the system for clubs they want to form, 2. Creating a new kind of "club interest" listing to help connect people looking for clubs, and 3. Messaging people via email and through the site when there is information about new clubs.

Getting new club entries into the system

To get new club entries into the system, we'll have a flag indicating that a club entry is in its formative phase. This will enable us to highlight new clubs that are likely to need support from the community, and new clubs that might be in need of more interest before they can meet regularly. The club owner can remove the flag from his/her entry when the club has matured and has a regular meeting time.

Club interest listings

I think this should really be about individuals, not about clubs. When people don't find a club nearby, they should be able to enter private addresses that indicate work or home addresses, places where they spend time and might be able to attend a club nearby. Then, the system will search for clusters of people who are interested in forming clubs, and help them get in contact with each other through the site.

Messaging about clubs

This would be a Facebook-style status page. If you've indicated that you're interested in new clubs, or in forming new clubs, then the system would add a message to your status page to that effect, and send an email to the user to let them know that they have a new message. These messages could also be used to communicate between members who don't yet know each other, as a safe alternative to email.

Summary

This is just a rough sketch of what I'm planning on building in phase 2. If you have feedback, I'd love to hear it. Just leave a comment here, or contact me at the following email address: contact at promotego dot org.

Despite the lack of time to make proper reviews and comments, I ‘d like to let you know about a couple of projects which look quite promising for 2010:

-Kgs client for android phones.

-Go in google wave

Though these two projects started recently, they are improving at a fast pace, so I’d recommend tracking these posts.

Thanks to BadukChannelAmerica, all videos of the Fenghuang City huge board demo match between Lee Sedol and Gu Li are now available.

See the updated blog post.

I just found this nice article about the game of Go and the Chinese culture: Weiqi: A symbol of the Chinese experience

A quote from the article:

By considering the board game weiqi (known as go in Japanese and familiar in the West under that name), one of the most significant symbols in the Chinese mental geography, one can develop a better understanding of Chinese dynamics in politics, in business, and even in more trivial social interactions. The Tao of weiqi envelops an esthetic and an intellectual experience that take us closer to Chinese psychology and give us insights on Chinese strategic thinking, but are also, to a certain extent, a way to approach the fundamental patterns of China’s collective success.

Full article here.