The Enclave Blitz Division

The Blitz Division is getting ready to start up

Rules

The games must be public, unranked 19×19 games handicaps optional, maximum of nine stones.

The tournament is single-elimination, first loss prevents you from getting a prize.

The games will be scheduled by the players so that times are flexible and convenient for both of them. After being given an opponent, the player should contact him/her and schedule a game to be played within 24 hours. If there is a problem scheduling a game or contacting your opponent, or if you need more time, just email us and we will try to devise a solution.

Default settings will be 1 minute of main time with 3 10 sec byo-yomi periods, Japanese scoring, 6.5 komi for even games, and normal handicaps in the form of extra stones.

None of the defaults can be changed with or without the discretion of the players, even if both players consent. A reduction in handicap stones can occur with 10 points of reverse komi per stone (given at the consent of both players).

The use of an undo is left up to the opponent’s discretion. Anybody suspected of abuse may be disqualified from this and future Enclave tournaments.

When the game is finished, immediately send the results to blitz@kgsenclave.com

In the event that a player is unresponsive after a reasonable period of time, we may have to issue a loss by default.

If any problems arise, please contact the administration either in person (Ricky1) or by e-mail at:

blitz@kgsenclave.com

Registration

Registration is now open!

To register, a player must send an email to blitz@kgsenclave.com with the following information:

1. KGS Username, one with a solid rank
2. Current rank
3. GMT Timezone
4. Any definite time concerns (meetings on a game day, work, etc.)
5. Your name

Prizes

Sebastian Rieche, Korean 4d, is providing a game with review and answered questions for the winner. A goban will be awarded to one player from a random drawing.

Current Pairings

We haven’t started yet! Give me a break!

Final Four

Coming soon!

Tournament Bracket

Coming soon!

The tournament bracket will be kept as current as possible, and updated at least once daily.

Feel free to print the bracket and track wins and losses by hand if you wish.

Previous Winners

* Tirno [1d]
* djifmaster [6k]
* cynewulf [1k]
* mike2096 [6k]
* floss [5k]

Netgoban is an electronic Go board that allows you to enjoy the feeling of a traditional wooden Go board while taking advantage of all the possibilities of online and computer Go.

It may be made out of any normal wood, such as Shin-Kaya, and it is connected to the PC through a USB cable. It detects where you place your stones, and it can indicate where a stone should be placed with a flashing light in the corresponding position. And it’s clever enough to figure out where you played even if you slide the stone over the board when placing it!

Netgoban offers plenty of new possibilities in many different situations:

If i understood everthing right, then this is only a concept and not a retail-version. I wonder if they’ll implement even more useful stuff to later versions. Like an MP3-player or a ventilator.

1. [26 votes] Pro game reviews
2. [21 votes] Articles on Go history and/ or players
3. [16 votes] News (Pro Go scene)
4. [14 votes] Tsumego
5. [14 votes] Pictures & Media
6. [11 votes] High dan amateur game reviews
7. [8 votes] News (Amateur Go scene)
8. [8 votes] Tournament Reports

Basically, Pro reviews are what you guys seem to be most interested in, so I will try to post some of them (as printable or maybe even PDF-versions) on the blog. As for articles on history and players, this should be a simpler task to accomplish ^^. News on the Pro Go scene go pretty much hand in hand with Pro reviews, so I’ll see if in future I can get recent tournament games commented and uploaded along with the results. However regular reviews as well as Tsumego and Go media seem to be fairly attractive too. I was nevertheless surprised that people don’t seem to hold any interest towards amateur news and tournament reports. Personally I find it thrilling to watch Europes top players compete in well-known tournaments, however Pro-related information seems to be more appreciated.

There were some rather interesting thoughts and ideas in the thread, so I’d like to cite some of them in this post.

Originally Posted by Koch on GoDiscussions.com

Vincent – have you considered a group blog, with half a dozen or so contributors posting original content as sol suggests? These type of blogs can be rather successful if everyone involved is committed to it.

The idea of making a group-blog is without a doubt a good one. However there are only very few bloggers out there and even fewer that actually regularly blog and are keen on joining a group. As much as I’d appreciate a Co-Blogger, it’s very difficult to find one.

Originally Posted by daal on GoDiscussions.com

I’d like to read interviews and profiles of prominent GD members. Why doesn’t MDobbins actually live in Philadelphia? How does Sol.ch find all those images to use as comments? Does Kirby enjoy go as much as posting? Will Bill Spight’s book include principles for 4ds? Does _____ have time to do anything else? etc.

Interviews are always a very enjoyable task. Also most of the time you will learn new things and expercience a diffrent point of view. Especially with well known players from KGS or the national Go Association.

Eventually I would like to thank everyone that voted in the poll and made suggestions in the forum, it really helps me a great deal and makes blogging easier.

Last time something like this happened there was a flood of KGS-players migrating to CyberORO or IGS. Of course one could also take this as an opportunity to study some more

UPDATE -  KGS is back up. The cause of the crash was described by wms as follows:

FYI – The cause was the disk of games filling up. I thought I had some room left, but I forgot that Linux refuses to let non-root users fill up the last 5% of the disk, so the server crashed when it couldn’t save games. I transferred the games from 2004 to another disk; this took about 5 hours. I can’t believe that “cp -rp” could run that slow on an otherwise-idle system, even if it is copying millions of small files. I suspect that the server has too strong a journalling mode enabled or something like that, but there you are. Once 2004 was transferred to another disk, I was able to delete it and restart the server. Should be safe until the next time the disk fills up.

Alexandre Dinerchtein [3p]‘s newest project GoSensation.com is a website that contains the most interesting recent games from all major Go Servers, such as:

• KGS
• Oro
• Pandanet
• Tygem
• Dashn
• Turn based Go-servers such as DGS and Go Online

The games are really interesting and very easy to acces, so it’s definately worth a visit.

This was posted a couple of minutes ago on GoDicussions.com

Kim Myungwan, 8p said: “I heard many times that I am “mymy”. I don’t know why people believe that I am “mymy”. I am NOT. Actually I played against mymy and won at KGS”. It’s a big hint.

I checked all games, played by “mymy” on KGS archive: http://www.gokgs.com/gameArchives.js…&oldAccounts=y
He lost only few of them. The only unknown person who beat “mymy” is “tartrate”! Here is that game:
http://gosensations.com/?id=2&server_id=1&new_id=53

~ Alexandre Dinerchtein [3p]

Soon after that, the theory was confirmed by DrStraw as follows

[...] Now that breakfast has revealed who Tartrate is, despite his wishes to remain anonymous I will confirm that he is right. I have know for several years that Kim Myungwan is, indeed, Tartrate.

He created the KGS account when he was only 6p and his English was not so good. He had a Korea student, resident in the USA, who would log in and chat as Tartrate and negotiate games. He would start the game, disconnect immediately, and the real Tartrate would log on and play. The two of them communicated with some other tool whenever Tartrate wanted to play a game. This is why there was a rumour that he lived in the upper midwest – his student did. Tartrate, himself was in Korea.

I was told this in confidence. I did not learn it because I was an admin. I did, however, use my admin privelges to confirm that the account was logged into from two different countries.

~ Steve Fawthrop [AGA 5d]

The legendary player that striked fear in the hearts of all KGS-players (even high-dan) was none other than Kim Myungwan [8p] from the Korean Hankuk Kiwon.

Kim Myungwan 8p

Update: For everyone who doesn’t know who tartrate is, he used to be the strongest player on KGS. At his peak tartrate managed to beat high ranking players, such as Alexandre Dinerchtein [3p], Svetlana Shikshin [1p] and KGS mymy [6p]. Due to these victories it was rumored that tartrate was no ordinary amateur, but a pro-player instead. Now this rumor has been confirmed.

However it seems kind of sad to finally know his identity. Everyone that has heard of him and seen his games, will agree that to some (or most) players he was something like “the Sai of KGS“.

The regular Baduk has now been around for quite a while. Now Korean software-developer Eplayon has come up with a new variant of it: Batoo. As you would expect, there have been some major adjustments in both appearance and rules. As for the appeal, the (internet only) game has been given the feel of a modern MMORPG. After installing the program, you need to choose one of the predesigned characters to create an account. Once you’ve done this you gain EXP by beating your opponents and rise in level (not rank). The interface is rather modern and pretty fancy, as you’d expect it from a modern online-game.

Now to the most important part, the rules. One thing beforehand: they’re nothing (well, almost nothing) like Baduk. There are only very few things that Batoo has in common with the traditional Baduk.

• You play on a 11×11 board
• There’s a scoreboard on top of the interface that keeps track of your points during the game. There are specific intersections that make you gain or lose points during the game.
• Every player places 3 stones at the beginning of the game (a base). If you and your opponent occupy the same spot, it will become empty once the game commences. Before the placement is finished, your opponent can’t see where you’re building your base.
• There is no komi. Players bet points before the game starts, whoever bets more gets to go first.
• Probably the most interesting concept are the “hidden”- and “scan”-feature. Each player can place a hidden stone on the board. It will remain invisible to the opponent until it causes some kind of effect (killing a stone, connecting a group that would die,…). The scan-feature allows you to (only once in a game) guess if the hidden stone is on a specific intersection you choose.

The game has reached a high degree of popularity in Korea. Even Baduk-Pros participate at the tournaments. It remains to be seen how exactly the development of Batoo will influence the status of Baduk. Enclosed you find a video of a Batoo-tournament.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Hikaru no Go

Phew, I’ve been away for half a year. Didn’t play too much Go though. Now that I have time for Go again I thought: why not blog again? And as the demand was high, I even do it in English ^^ However I decided to change the platform. Blogger just didn’t seem up-to-date anymore. This is just a raw first version of the Blog. I’ll try to make some more changes as soon as I have time to.

I look forward to providing all of you with more news from the Go-World again (despite me probably making dozens of spelling mistakes )

UPDATE: Anyway. After my break I noticed that some things had changed. First of all. My local Go-Club now opens its gates on fridays too. Which would be great in theory, but becomes a bit disappointing after realizing that only around 4 people appear. However the wednesdays are still awesome. Lots of players, lots of chatter and of course: Li Ang [5p]! He’s visiting the club every now and then and giving lectures on all kinds of stuff (usually openings). I ran into one of them a couple of weeks ago. It was kind of refreshing to hear the familiar sound of clacking stones. Next thing I need to do is participate at a tournament ^^

Moreover there have been some major changes in the world of Internet-Go as well. The Enclave has now published a Magazine similar to Suji (which unfortunately got discontinued). They’ve got some pretty interesting stuff in there and it’s written and designed pretty well.