Cyber Oro!

Today I discovered Cyber Oro. It's another online Go server, and it is based in Korea from what I understand. The players are primarily from Korea, Japan, and China. KGS, by comparison, is mostly composed of players in the United States. Generally speaking, players in the East are stronger. The lowest rank you can possibly have on Cyber Oro is 25 Kyu. There is a comparison table here that shows relative rankings. According to that, a 23 Kyu ranking on Cyber Oro is roughly 15k on KGS.

I played two games vs. a Japanese player named sm88 ranked at 23 Kyu, with two stones in my favor. I won the first game after sm88 resigned, and then lost a rematch by just 2 moku! I then played two games versus a player in Vietnam named tin308. Tin308 is ranked 25k, and I won two games against them. Now, my ranking on Cyber Oro is 24k.

Overall, it is a bit less user-friendly so far than KGS, but has stronger players and is more user-friendly in my opinion than IGS. You can easily go down a list of players, sorted by rank, and send game offers, or, as on KGS, send out a game onto a list for someone to pick up.

What a cut!

Today, I played camou23[19k] on KGS. I had 4 handicap stones. It went well, and I felt as if I would win. Right near the end, I found a great cut that absolutely ended it for camou23. You can get the SGF file here. What a game! I am now [21k?]. Go to December 28th, 2007 and get the game versus Camou23.

23Kyu? Books on the way!

Today I played Holly in a few 6-stone handicap games on KGS. I won both, the first by only a small margin. Then, I played versus Linxcool[30k?] and they resigned on about the tenth move. After this game, I played versus Stelios33[21k] with a four-stone handicap in my favor. I won by the large margin of 70 or so moku. This set my rank to [23k?]. I'm pretty happy that it is that high already!

On another note, I ordered two books with some Christmas money. I ordered Life and Death and The Second Book of Go. They should be here in a week or so. Holly and I also started reading through my Go book Learn to Play Go Volume II.

I also found out about a site where you can view game records and download SGF files for each player on KGS. My profile is here.

First rude encounter on KGS.

Well today I was playing a 13x13, unranked game against an unranked player named Naz98. It was an unranked game, so if we make a mistake that is not an obvious mouse-slip, let's just learn from the mistake and move on, right? I suppose not for some players.

The game was about even the whole way through, with White (myself) being slightly behind. Black made a mistake by placing a stone on one side of the board in an obviously deliberate attempt to invade an area when he should have been defending on the other side of the board. As soon as I replied with my play, and the mistake was realized, I began getting "undo" requests. I denied them three or four times. I thought it was pretty rude to keep sending them after the first and second denials. After the fourth or so, I got the message that NAZ98 had left the board, and I could either wait for him or her to return, or I could go start a new game.

I thought it was quite a bummer, as I was pretty satisfied at the prospect of making a comeback. I've learned that these people are called "escapers" on the KGS server. Hopefully, I won't run into many more of these; however, the internet being what it is, I'm sure I will.

Holly has graduated to the 19x19 board.

Holly and I played our first game on the full 19x19 board today. I gave her nine handicap stones to see where we stood. She won by about 25 moku. We then played a second game, this time with only eight stones, and she whooped me by over thirty moku! It was a great game, and the next time around we'll probably try it with six stones.

My Introduction to Go

I was first introduced to Go in 2000 by the movie π. In this movie, the main character, a statistician of sorts, plays Go with his mentor. I thought the game looked nice in an aesthetic sense, and so I got a little starter Go book with a little tiny cardboard Goban and plastic stones. I learned the basic rules, but didn't play much. I did still enjoy the aesthetics quite a bit, and so I bought a Go set from Samarkand. Shortly after receiving it, I stopped playing. Later, around 2003, I started playing again, but quit after about a month and having bought a couple of instructional books. I was probably close to a meager 24 Kyu ranking on KGS when I quit.

A lot has changed in my life over the last few years, and I have recently taken the game up again. My main issue before was not having a consistent Go playing partner. My girlfriend, however, loves the game, and we play together each day. We are also watching Hikaru No Go online until our DVD rentals of the series arrive from Netflix. We started playing on 9x9 boards, with four handicap stones for her, and we go back and forth between winning. The smaller board got boring quick, and so we have moved up to the 13x13 board. We are using five stones on this board, and we are each winning about half of the games. If I had to guess, I would say that Holly is 29 or 30 Kyu, and I am around 25 or 26 Kyu.

Today I played my first 13x13 game on KGS in a number of years. I was White and playing against mrnoob [18k]. There were no handicap stones, and so it was quite a satisfying victory, as you can imagine. Here are a few pictures of the game. The fight for the lower-middle area was quite interesting. I ended up winning by about 33 Moku.