European Go Tournaments and Rating

As I discussion today about rank differences between countries it made me think of a problem I had before.

The discussion about rank differences between countries comes now and then and in the end of the discussion most people agree the solution is that people need to travel around and play in tournaments against players from other countries.

Yes that would be perfect, in theory. Not so many can afford to do that. But if you are really interested in go and are prepared to spend money and time to travel to other countries to play in tournaments then you can do it.

So I started thinking about it. I can combine a vacation with a tournamenet. Pick out nice cities in the world, look up what tournaments they have and book the tickets. Maybe take one or two days vacation from work to get some extra time for sightseeing. If I make some friends there then I can maybe save some hotel money and sleep on a couch for free and later return the favor when that person visits my city for a tournament.

Then came the next problem, how do I find a list of all the tournaments? First I looked at eurogofed and there I found a link to EuropeanGoTournamentCalendar and http://www.eurogofed.org/eurocup/calendar.htm and http://www.eurogofed.org/calendar/calendar.htm. It is quite obvious that there are a lot more tournaments played than this. So how do I find the rest?  I asked online at lifein19x19.com.

Soon I got a lot of links. So many that someone created a new wiki-page at Sensei's Library called NationalTournamentCalenders. Great stuff! So many places to look at. It would be great to have some central place for all this information. Like a web page where you can search and sort by date or country and city. Such a web page would be easy to create but hard to maintain. How would we get all organizers to use such a tool? And if they use it would the players find it useful? Would it encourage players to go to tournaments in other countries? Maybe, maybe not. It might be worth a try, but this page should probably be hosted by EGF. They should see an interest in such a project.

Another thing to try to solve the rank difference problem in Europe could be to arrange online Internet tournaments that get reported to the European rating database (EGD). With such tournaments we have the problem of cheating. You can let some strong player do the playing for you. Yes there is a risk for that and I don't have a clever idea how to prevent it. The best way is probably to avoid any prizes and only let the players compete for the fun and honor. I have been thinking of creating such a tournament myself and if I am allowed to report the results to EGD I might even go through with it.

How Many Squares are there on a Go Board?

Kami Kaze: How many squares are there on a go board? Go away and think about it for a while and then come back and we will discuss it!

20 kyu player: 361 of course.
Kami Kaze: Wrong...

10 kyu player: No silly, that's the number of vertices. There are 18x18 or 324 squares.
Kami Kaze: Wrong...


(A pause follows, but frantic calculations occur.)

1 dan player: Aha, there are also squares 2x2 and 3x3 and so on, which means that the total is 18x18 + 17x17 and so on making a grand total of 2109!
Crowd: Aaaahh very clever!
Kami Kaze: But wrong...

3 dan player: You've forgotten that they aren't squares, they are rectangles. There are no squares on a go board!
Crowd: That's a dirty trick.
Kami Kaze: And still wrong...

(Another pause, and many puzzled faces.)

Crowd: Well how many squares are there on a go board then?

Kami Kaze: It is perfectly true that the smaller areas are rectangles, and each of these is one twelth longer than it is wide. Therefore, if we take an area twelve rectangles long and thirteen wide, we have a large square, and this is the only size which works. There are (19-12 ) x (19-13) or 42 such squares. The answer is forty-two.

Douglas Adams: We all knew the answer, it's the question that we didn't know. Thank you Kami Kaze, the whole question of the meaning of Life, The Universe and Everything is simply "How many squares are there on a go board?"

Marvin: I tried to tell them, but you know what humans are like, they have the attention span of a dead gnat. Here I am with a brain the size of a planet, and having worked out all the possible games of go, the meaning of life is to have two eyes except in seki when ......

Crowd: Which restaurant shall we eat at tonight?

(The crowd departs leaving Marvin talking to himself.)

Marvin: I can tell you what the strictly correct komi is if you really want to know? Oh never mind me, just carry on. I haven't got any feelings of course .....

(From Sensei's Library)

Go Rules Dispute

I found an interesting anecdote on Sensei's Library. Two strong European players are playing an important tournament game in EGC 2002. The rules for the tournament were the Ing 1991 rules.

Player A was leading with around 30 points in the end of the game and it was a sure win. But he didn't know the specifics about the rules that was used. Player B who was in for a sure loss in the game is an expert of rules of all shapes and forms. He saw his chance...

Player B found a loophole in the rules and used it to try to get a win. Basically it is about the dead stones on the board for both players. You are supposed to capture them and remove them from the board. Player B did this while Player A just passed, as is common under other rules. Finally when both players had passed Player B said that his stones that were captured in the opponents territory are now alive and the game is now won by him. Confusion emerged!

This lead to a dispute and the judges had to be called in. They ruled in favor of Player A. The decision got appealed to EGF rules comity that also ruled in favor of Player A. The intent of the rules won over the letter of the rules.

This has been a dispute among go players since then and is still under discussion almost ten years later. It is interesting to read but it is easy for the discussion to get ugly from time to time. Especially against Player B.

Personally I think it is not so complicated and it was a very correct decision to let Player A get the victory as he deserved.

One can argue that Player B did nothing wrong when he tried to play the rules when he otherwise would have lost. And I can agree, that nothing wrong was made, if I only look at the rules that was used. But I think it is very ethically wrong by Player B and I am sure that this is not what Mr Ing meant when he invented the rules. The whole point with Chinese rules is that the rules should not decide the outcome of the games and if the players don't agree they should play it out on the board and it is there, on the board, that the game should be decided by the players. The rules would work good if both players knew them.

Obviously the rules had to be changed. Otherwise this can happen again. So the Simplified Ing Rules was created. You would think that the creation and use of the new rules should end the above mentioned dispute? Not at all... and it will continue for quite some while...

Future go program

Sometimes when you surf around on Sensei's Library you will find some interesting, odd or fun stuff. It is easy to spend a couple of hours reading about this and that.

I am interested in programming and am still searching for the perfect go software. So when I stumbled over this page I felt that it is something worth spreading. The name of the page is "Go Software For The Future" and there anyone can post their suggestions and requests for the perfect future go program for programmers to consider.

So please do! :)

Joseki Every Double Digit Kyu Should Know

As a beginner of weiqi (go) there is always this problem in how to play in the opening. The primary suggestion is to start playing in the corners and then move out along the sides and save the center for last.

But how should you play in the corners? First you can place one stone on or close to the 4-4 point and wait for the opponent to approach it. And then what? I would tell you to experiment and learn from your mistakes. Others say that you should learn Joseki. We are both right!

On Sensei's Library there is now a page about Joseki Every Double Digit Kyu Should Know. With "Double Digit Kyu (DDK)" they mean beginner players with a rank from 10 kyu to 30 kyu. A player that just learned the rules is said to have the rank of 30 kyu. I am at the moment a player of the strength 4 kyu (Singe Digit Kyu) so I don't really qualify, but I have always been ignoring to learn joseki so there is even something for me there to learn.

But remember... you don't get strong just because you know some (or a lot) of joseki by heart. You get strong when you understand the moves behind the joseki and understand how to choose the best joseki for the current board position.

So don't memorize... Study!

Get strong at Kibitz

I was reading some random pages on Sensei's Library when I stumble upon this great page about how to Get strong at Kibitz. It is so "on the spot" how it is on KGS.

Check it out!