A few simple rules ... limitless possibilities
September 2006
This is mainly a program which plays go. The standard is about as good as you can get at present. I find actual grades hard to judge, but Go Professional plays at a similar level to Many Faces of Go or Handtalk, it does not try to swindle you as much as Handtalk, and plays quite correctly for much of the time. For all three programs I can give a 9 stone handicap and win by over 100 points without difficulty, but killing every stone on the board is very difficult (I have not managed that against Go Professional yet). Anyone below 10 kyu can expect a decent challenge.
To run Go Professional, you will need a PC running Windows 95, with a CDrom drive and a graphics card that supports a 256-colour mode (or better).
Review by Nick Wedd, from British Go Journal 132 (Autumn 2003)
Goliath version 3.5
One of the methods of study which has always been favoured by strong players is to go through games. The laborious method of placing 200 stones on a board from a diagram has shown its worth over the years. In the computer era there is a choice.
BGJ 119 Autumn 2000
Reviewer: Mogens Jakobsen, June 2000, with help from Lene & Lasse
Installation was very easy. However when I tried to run it on two PCs running Windows NT, it did not load, but produced ten "ding" sounds. Presumably this is an error message, stating that it does not like NT, or high-resolution graphics, or something. But the manual is minimal, and gives no explanation of this.
Go Dojo is a Go training program. It runs only on Windows (or Linux/Wine). Its author is Bruce Wilcox, the author of the Go-playing program EZ-Go, and originator of the concept of “sector lines”.
Reviewer: Nick Wedd
Bakaban is a free Windows program, which allows you to play Go on a variety of surfaces other than standard Go boards.