Software Review

GoGoD was previously reviewed in BGJ 135, Autumn 2004

Regular tournament attendees will be familiar with the sight of T Mark Hall sitting in a corner with his laptop, demonstrating and hoping to sell GoGoD (Games of Go on Disc). Many's the time I've walked past.

BGJ 155 Spring 2011 Reviewer: David Carter-Hitchin

Microsoft Research has recently developed Go-playing software, which was released last December to run on the Xbox 360 games console. I downloaded it out of interest. It’s polished but the AI engine is very weak—it looks to be about 15 kyu! It will appeal to children though, and anything which promotes Go is a good thing, particularly when big names like Microsoft put their name behind something. Shame about the AI though, really. The ’story mode’ does a reasonable (but not perfect) job of teaching the rules; for example it was asking me where to play to make a live group (by making eyes), without explaining the principle of two eyes, or the suicide rule.

Missing and very easy to add: Joseki dictionary and problems.

BGJ 155 Spring 2011

MyGoFriend is a strong program for Windows with some interesting features for studying, at least in 9x9. As fits the gold medallist from the 2010 Computer Olympiad it is powerful, but limited in some ways and lacking some features which may be considered basic in other programs. It has 7 pre-programmed levels of strength, beginner to sensei, which search through a certain number of game trees. This means the strength should be the same across different computers, although more powerful hardware will move more quickly.

The first 3 levels are very weak, regularly missing ladders. I found the 4th and 5th levels (club player and expert) gave a good game (I am 1 kyu, but much more used to 19x19 than 9x9), while 6th level was tough if it had komi and took about 20 seconds for the first few moves, then speeding up. The sensei level thought for so long I got bored.

BGJ 147 Spring 2009

Reviewer: Pat Ridley

The article has its origins in a conversation with Gerry Mills, our esteemed Bookseller, one night at the Chester Go Club. Gerry asked us if we thought the future for books lay with ebooks rather than with traditional paper copy.

BGJ 135 Summer 2004

Reviewer: Andrew Morris

In the old days mighty tomes would arrive on a reviewer’s desk with a ‘thwump’. GoGoD, a massive database of over thirty thousand professional games, plus additional material and go utility programs, comes on one CD.

BGJ 135 Summer 2004

Reviewer: William Brooks

The Many Faces of Go Joseki Base is a very useful piece of software for the PDA created by David Fotland. It contains josekis for corner positions starting from the 5-5 to 3-3 points and has a very thorough set of variations.

BGJ 135 Autumn 2004

Reviewer: Mike Harvey

My first impression of SmartGo was of a bewildering range of options, so that I didn’t know where to start. I discovered later that there were even more toolbars that are initially hidden. Most of them relate to diagramming, annotation, editing and maintaining a library of game records, and these are SmartGo’s strengths. Simply playing Go against it is to ignore its best capabilities. The facilities to annotate games, create diagrams, compose problems and to make a library of games are extensive.

With the optional library of 27,000 professional games you have the opportunity to study fuseki and joseki, including the interesting statistics of how frequently a particular move has led to victory or defeat. Rather than describe the tools in detail I suggest you download the SmartGo:Viewer from www.smartgo.com and see for yourself.

BGJ 135 Autumn 2004

Bakaban is a free Windows program, which allows you to play Go on a variety of surfaces other than standard Go boards.

It has a limited understanding of the rules of play. It automatically removes strings that have no liberties, but it does not know about the ko rule, and it does not allow suicide.

BGJ 134 Summer 2004

Reviewer: Nick Wedd

In the previous issue of this Journal, I reviewed Go Dojo: Contact Fights. Go Dojo: Sector Fights is another module of the same training program by Bruce Wilcox.

The structure of the program

The structure of Go Dojo: Sector Fights is identical to that of Go Dojo: Contact Fights. Like that module, it is easy to install and run, and uses hypertext links in a non- standard way that takes some getting used to. If you already have a copy of the Contact Fights module, you will find it easy to use. It is larger than the Contact Fights module, with 1905 pages. It only runs on Windows.

Sector lines and Sector fights

The concept of "sector lines" was invented by Wilcox in the 1970s when he began working on computer Go, and described in his 1993 book "Instant Go Volume 1". To quote from the program: "A sector line is an imaginary line running between two stones of the same color, anywhere on the board.

BGJ 133 Spring 2004

Reviewer: Nick Wedd

Go Dojo is Go training, 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".

The structure of the program

It is easy to install and run.