[Welcome to Sensei's Library!]

StartingPoints
ReferenceSection
About


Paths
KillingShapes

Referenced by
SenseisLibrary
FrontPage
StartingPoints
LibraryLobby
MetaDiscussion
RecentChangesJunk...
GoHumour
Nerai/Discussion
HowOffTopicCanWeG...
GeneralDiscussion...
MenchiSSiteMap

Homepages
Frs
Sebastian

 

Coffee Machine
   

Taking a break? Go ahead and add what's on your mind right now. Alternatively, take a look at some go humour.

Motto for today:

"It's not that I can't find any good place to play... And not as much that I see too many - It's more of a matter that if you ask a trully strong player all are wrong" - Hopeless beginner (Secret nick;P)

(You may change the motto of the day, but please save the old motto in Old Mottos.)

Some news are found at Go News.


September 27, 2004

JohnAspinall: How do people feel about prominent (i.e. in a title) spelling mistakes? On the one hand, we should value the content more than the appearance; on the other hand, this makes a bad first impression -- it's like introducing yourself with stuff hanging out of your nose.

(Sebastian:) I think we need to de-, i mean: distinguish if the typo is the page title or in part of the text. If the latter, then, by all means, use the edit button - regardless of how prominent it is. If it was intended (e.g. as when someone corrected the alternative spelling "tumego" on the tsumego page) then the author will change it back and should add a clarification why it was spelled this way. This is the way a Wiki grows, as Hikaru79 pointed out below.

The title itself can not be changed so easily, so I think it would be appropriate to write a comment in the page or its discussion page before making a change request. If the situation is really embarrassing you might want to give the offender a chance to save face by first informing them by e-mail.

September 24, 2004

PurpleHaze: We are on the frontpage of [ext] Slashdot, watch out for the traffic.

September 5, 2004

StFiend: Is this where we point out things on the wiki that need to be changed? I was just checking the pattern on 44PointJosekis that is referenced as point l on the first diagram. The link leads to BQM72, where I see nothing relevant to that play. What's the deal?

Hikaru79: StFiend, if you see something that is undoubtedbly wrong, then remember... this is a Wiki :) Feel free to make corrections yourself. That's what the edit button is for ;)

August 31, 2004

Funduk | Has anyone ever noticed there isn't a page about playing a game against yourself? Is this an old idea that everyone agrees is pointless? I think it would be interesting to play against yourself sometimes. Anyone have some advice?

jfc: I challenge you to challenge yourself to a game. Let us know who won when you are finished ;)

Funduk | I played a few games. Twice Black was at a clear advantage early in the game and White resigned :), the third time the final score was W+20.5... So I don't know, I agree with a lot of the stuff below, I felt like I had to really work to re-evaluate (as well as my feeble skills allows) the position almost every move (except for some joseki stuff).

Funduk | Next step, one color go with myself. *cringe*

DJ: Playing against yourself may be a pointless exercise, but there is something that is close to such idea and it is not pointless at all.
I am talking of a rengo with an odd number of players, say three (best, IMO). In this way you get to play alternatively with black and white, but someone else has modified the position on the board before you play again...
Try it, it is fun and really interesting.

Niklaus: Playing long ko fights in Zen Go is a lot of fun! Player one plays a ko threat, player two answers, player three takes the ko. Player one plays a ko threat for the other color, player two answers again, player three takes the ko...

Edwin: We did try this (ZenGo) once, and it was an interesting exercise. But is it really pointless to play against yourself? I tried it once, and the interest seemed to be in trying to work out how to exploit my own weaknesses. It does feel a bit silly though...

Bob McGuigan: I think the benefits from playing yourself in a game come from maintaining objectivity regarding the position. It is difficult to keep from "deliberately" making mistakes that greatly help one side or the other. If you can maintain objectivity it is good practice for real games because it helps to see what is really there instead of what you wish were there in a position.

axd: A while ago I thought maybe this could be implemented by using software that submits one's own moves with some time delay (days), where the board is passed through some geometric transformation associated to the color at move, and where colors starts swapping (randomly) after a preset number of moves. Because of the time delay, several games can be started simultaneously, with the intention to overload the player memory (?). A kind of "notes" system allows the player to keep track of strategy, if necessary. Turn-based Go servers (e.g. DGS) could be used to explore this (but without the color/board juggling) by setting up different accounts.

BrendenT - I couldn't imagine actually playing a game against myself. But I think there are a couple of close approximations. The first is review. Look at an existing game, and try to figure out what moves could have been better -- possibly for both sides. The second is study. Take a joseki and work through all the premutations, trying to spot the tesujis along the way. These I think are useful ways of playing "against yourself."

August 23, 2004

kokiri - it looks to me as though the diagram in 34PointLowApproachOneSpaceLowPincerContactOnTop#3 (defending on the left or something) is wrong - i suspect that the numbers have been transposed (i.e B3 and W4) perhaps someone else could take a look and see if they agree before I alter it...

DJ: You're right. Corrected.

August 6, 2004

Naustin-I have a minor complaint about how recent changes works. I understand that sometimes despite the minor edit button pages may be getting repetitively edited. However, there are times when I edit one page multiple times and want those edits to be listed distinctly. For example when I make two different entries to my blog on a given day concerning different subject matter the two changes are lumped together. I am wondering if there is a way so that if the changes are titled and have different titles that they can still be listed at recent changes distinctly?

Arno: this is not possible. I would have to add a sort of "major edit" button for this. I think that this is not needed often, so I suggest modifying the summary on your second edit like "(updated)" or "summary of entry 2 (new), summary of entry 1"

Naustin--Ok. Thanks for responding Arno. I don't suppose it's that big a deal. :)


26 July 2004

kritz Can any of our Korean speaking friends tell us what is happening at [ext] http://baduk-academy.com/ ?

Is it worth digging around at?

17 July 2004

Warp: Isn't it curious that even though this is a game where you place pieces (ie. stones) and they don't move on the board, the game is full of terminology which is related to movement? Not only is the placement of a stone called a move, but for example there can be a running fight, you can make a slide, you can make an approach, you can make a slow move, you can turn, you can crawl, etc etc. I wonder (at a filosophical level) why this is so...

ilan: There are numerous examples of motion without actual displacement of the medium in the direction of motion. In particular, all wave phenomena (medium only moves a bounded distance, so negligible with respect to the wave).

stefp: I am also surprised to find go more dynamic than chess. This goes beyond the combinatorial explosion that is more relevant to computers. In chess, the number of pawns can only go down. Their structure is very stable and determines very much the structure of the whole game. In go, the significance of a group of stone changes very much with the surrounding. Also I wonder if the simplicity of rules does not make for the richness of a game or a society. The relative complexity of chess games with division of work between different actors makes for a poorer world. In a less hierarchic world, this is the interaction between the stones/actors that creates emerging entities that can be very fluid.

fringe : This is an interesting point of view I would quite like to explore it further. I was thinking that not all people are equal, i.e. people have talents in different thing, and this makes society more like chess where different actors have different skills. The point of chess/society is to use all the actors to make a working world. (please remove this if it is inapropriate I am a newbie)

Charles The go stones on the board form something more like contending institutions, though - not really individuals.


13 July 2004

jfc: Is there a Modern Masterpieces of Go page some where here on Sensei's Library?

The idea here is simply to collect SGF records of recent games that are considered exemplary by various experts. What do y'all think?

Bob McGuigan: Rather than collect the sgf records why not refer to them on GoBase? Also, what does "modern" mean in this context? And which experts? Under the assumption that 20th century qualifies as modern I'll nominate the famous Shusai-Go game in which Go played 3-3, 4-4, and tengen. And how about Shusai vs. Karigane, the famous group-capturing game? I'm also partial to the first game of the Go-Kitani Jubango (Kamakura Jubango). For sources there is the five volume set "Showa no Meikyoku" (masterpieces from the Showa Era) published by the Nihon Ki-in, and also the annual volumes of "Meikyoku" edited by various pros, recently Yi Chang-ho.

jfc: I was intentially vague in not defining modern and experts. By modern my intention was "games in the last five to ten years that illustrate new ideas in opening theory". Of course I'm interested in other ideas. As to experts, I don't know who the appropriate experts are. I was hoping you would tell me. yes, links to Gobase.org are an excellent idea!

Bob: For the games of the past ten years I guess the best source would be the annual Meikyoku yearbooks, edited by top pros. Unfortunately I don't have these, and the games chosen don't always involve opening or joseki innovation. Japanese 9p players like Abe Yoshiteru and Takagi Shoichi have edited these in the past and they would be knowledgeable on the topics you mention.

Charles I think one does run up here against a cultural difference (perhaps rather specific to Japan) about 'innovations'. Taking an 'art not science' line about go is still a common attitude, I believe. It is not the case that, say, Yamashita Keigo's originality is necessarily equated with 'permanent masterpiece' status.

Bob: An interesting aspect of this for me is that time is required to judge the permanent value of some innovations. That conflicts to an extent with awarding masterpiece status to a recent game. If one side tries something new and wins the game it may be hard to tell whether it was due to good play or to the opponent's inability to find a refutation. If the innovation is sufficiently far away from standard play, other pros might not adopt it, delaying its evaluation by the community.

jfc: OK, let's not call it masterpieces of modern Go. What I'm imagining here are games that change how the rest of the world plays. For example, a while back the mini chinese became very popular. In my proposed collection we might include several quintessential mini-chinese opening games.

Perhaps there are new strategies being widely employed in the middle game. In which case we might include some games that illustrate these new strategies.

Currently, I don't know where to get the Meikyoku yearbooks that Bob mentions above but looking at these is a good idea. I guess my idea is for us folks at SL to make our own yearbook showing the games we think are edifying for us.

Lets try this: Announcing the Sensei's Library Decade Book! This is a collection of pro game records from the last 10 years being assembled by the best (and average and worst) minds of Sensei's Library.


June 30

Does anybody know how to pronounce the "wook" part of korean names? (Like in Neungwook). Is it a sound like in the english "school" or a short o sound like in "top"? TIA :)

Charles If you mean the 'weok' vowel, it's a rather weak one.

There is also a family name "Wook" (like in that novel, 1st kyu). How does that sound?

Charles It's not really safe to discuss these things until one knows the romanisation involved. Native Korean speakers tend to write names in a way so that English-speakers get it approximately correct. So wook should probably rhyme with 'stook'.

Sounds reasonable. I don't know the original writing, I am reading the english translation of this great book. Thanks for the help Charles.

June 23

I just noticed the % %TOC % % wiki tag.

Table of contents

How long has this been around?

Charles 2004-05-22 - see Wiki News

June 16

kritz Interesting article on speed chess:

[ext] http://abcnews.go.com/sections/SciTech/DyeHard/chess_experts_dyehard_040616.html

June 14

Empty Sky Go Club: Register for the US Go Congress at www.gocongress.org by 11:59pm June 15th to avoid 50 dollar late fee!

June 10

bojo: Has anyone approached the difference in strength between players using some kind of mathematically derived scale? While I'm not a mathmatician, I ask this because I am curious what the relative difference in strength between players measures out to (if it can be measured at all). I am aware that there are many abstract things which define the difference in people's knowledge, and thus their play, but I am under the impression that if it could be measured (somehow, using some system) the difference would be relatively small.

Charles Yes, this idea is very old (by Western go standards) - probably goes 40 years back. The one aspect that intrigues me is whether (as seems likely to me) one stone is about 1% gain in efficiency of play.

May 24

LukeNine45: Anyone heard of [ext] http://go.meetup.com/?

May 17

Ummmm if anyone could help me their help would be appreciated greatly. Well the problem is that I am unable to connect to KGS whenever I get on the page where the Java Applet is supposed to start I get a message that says "Due to your current security settings Active X controls are prohibited This page cannot be displayed correctly." First off all KGS uses Java. Second Active X controls are activated (not that it matters does it). Well thats all if anyone can help it will be appreciated. naruto3


May 13

Wikipedia.org has [ext] won a Webby award for Best Community. Charles A good day for Wikipedians. I now know that there is a better atmosphere there, when you get past some of the more obvious problem user/nonsense difficulties, than is immediately apparent.

April 14

Shaydwyrm: Out of curiosity, can anyone tell me what the xmp in senseis.xmp.net stands for? The only answer I've found is at www.xmp.net, which proudly declares that it "is net of xmp"...

Ellbur: Searching the internet for 'xmp', I found it stands for many different things, e.g. "Extensible Modular Player"

Arno: The history is that a friend and I participated in a short-video contest over 10 years ago. We needed a name for ourselves, so we did some brainstorming. Being the twisted minds we are, we came up with "eXtreme Multimedia Productions" (multimedia being a buzz word without meaning). We also thought of many other names fitting the acronym XMP, but this is the one I remember.

rubilia: Apparently, I can hardly edit pages anymore without having to worry about unintendedly deleting the lower part of it. ... (moved to SL Page Editing Cutoff Problem)

April 8 (i think)

naruto3 I have found a glich in the hikaru no go manga go read about it in references under hikaru no go manga at the bottom of the page thanks ;-)

2004 March 31

mAsterdam: It is almost april, and there is no page of the month for march yet. The world won't stop turning because of that. I would not like to just take the top of most popular for every month. I also would not like a formalized procedure to decide which page it is going to be. If, within one week from now, nobody proposes another page or seconds my proposal, I'll state there that there was no page of the month award for march 2004.

2004 March 30

andycjp:I keep getting thrashed by the go computers on KGS so I was just wondering what the best ever game for a computer has been so far?Has one ever beaten a dan,for example?

Niklaus: Nope, the computers at KGS are about as strong as they get. At least so far. But it's doubtful that they will reach dan level any time soon. See Computer Go.

2004 March 24

Phelan: I was wondering if there are any go related icons, of the [ext] kind people use on their sites and/or blogs. Since SL is my main source of Go related links and sites, I tried to search here, but didn't quite find what I wanted...Any ideas?

(I don't know if this is the right place in SL to put this, but feel free to move it if it isn't appropriate.)

axd: I think it would be interesting to have a GoMedia page where one could find all sorts of Go-related media files, such as sounds, textures, wallpapers, art pictures...

Phelan: I was thinking of using Scartol's images of the Japanese charachter for Go, and reducing them to create icons of the kind I wrote about above (asking permission from him first, obviously :p). And I also think GoMedia would make an interesting page...

2004 March 14

Blake: Could 36Strategies be deleted? It appears to have, ah, experienced some difficulties.

2004 March 01

bojo: I'm going to be heading to [ext] Japan in a year and a half on exchange, and am trying to gather more information about the listed cities. What I am really curious about of course, is the Go scene each city has to offer. Does anyone have any recommendations, feedback, or comments that can help me out?

Bob McGuigan: The Central Japan Branch of the Nihon Ki-in is located in Nagoya. Sapporo and Sendai are large cities and so would have a fair amount of go activity. Most universities have a student go club.

2004 Feb 27

kokiri - I've moved from one computer to a new one; how do i salvage my identity? I'm sure this is dealt with somewhere, but I can't find it.

Matt Noonan: I mean no offense by this, but I'm really delighted by the phrase "do not use acronyms on SL" appearing in RecentChanges today. Pure gold!

  • Fwiffo: No irony there... SL is not an acronym, it's an abbreviation. Same for AFAIK, LOL, IMO, etc. Scuba, laser and radar, on the other hand, are all acronyms.
  • Korinu: If you pronounced it "Suhl" or "Sluh" then it would be an acronym. And LOL is definitely an acronym. Does anyone read LOL in their heads as "El-Oh-El"? Nope. Have you ever head someone say LOL out loud? It's pretty funny. You can point at them and laugh.
  • Feeman?: haha, I'm sorry to say that I actually do read "LOL as L-O-L as opposed to laugh out loud. It's actually quite sad, I've actually found myself on several occasions actually saying "T-T-Y-L" to some people, it's kinda embarrassing. ^^;;

2004 Feb 20

Is it just me or has KGS been down for a few days? I can't connect at all... the MOTD doesn't even pop up any more :S bobulatorm

Hikaru79: I think it may just be you... I just tried a second ago and I got on fine... KGS is teeming with people =/ Have you tried re-installing Java?

hmm i've not but i have tried it on 2 computers that normally work fine. i can't even access kgs.kiseido.com on the net. ill try reinstalling java later. i did randomly get on for a few seconds the other day, thought woo tis working ill play later, came back and same problem. hmm.

this gets weirder. i can ping kgs.kiseido.com but not access it via the net or cgoban. if i was blocked for any reason i'd have had a warning or something wouldn't i? can't think why i would be though :\ bobulatorm

2004 Feb 18

What happened to the games of Rengo on here? Anyone for a new one? ~ian~

2004 Feb 13

According to a full-text search there is no mention yet on Senseis of Andrei Kulkov, our (in Europe) new holder of the [ext] Crown. I can't contribute, I know nothing about him. Maybe someone else can, or even knows him and can ask for a fact or two? It seems he is an amateur who managed to beat two professionals to win one of the most prestiguous titles in Europe. Without doubt there is some interest in him!

Follow-up after a search with Google-archives: 18.August 2001 Charles Matthews writes to rec.games.go "He was European Youth Champion (2d) in 1999, did well in the Ing Memorial this year (4d), is now 18 years old.". That was the year he became European Champion.

2004 Feb 08

Just a silly idea, which I got from a bug I just made in Miniban: Only black could kill white stones, and not vice versa. Wouldn't this be an interesting handicap?

Stefan: Wouldn't Black always win? No matter what territory White constructs, Black could always turn it into dame by playing inside.

30 January 2004

Kami No Itte found! ([ext] here)

BenAxelrod: That's awesome!

27 January 2004

Dan Argent: I was just thinking, as I sit here sipping my caramel java here at the coffee machine. How is this site funded. I have found that arno is the founder and maintainer here, but this can't be a small drain on his pocket book if he is paying for it by himself. Like most open sorce pages I haven't seen the polite request of a paypal donation just in case you want to get the warm fuzzy feeling. I also haven't seen any advertisments, which is how the more evel of the free services survive.

so I think to myself, prhaps arno here is filthy rich... perhaps he's realy Bill Gates... But wiki stikes me as something completely un-Gatesish so that could never happen. Oh well, somethings will never be known. (more of my useless rambelings)

Morten - Well, Mr 'Silver' you were expected to pay for that caramel Java coffee... :-)

Seriously, the only real cost on SL is the domain registration. The hosting of the site is kindly donated by a third party.

Dan Argent: It just seems like there are a lot of pages on SL. Why is some random third party donating so much server space to the site?

Morten It is not the server space but the bandwidth/processor time used (most pages are created on the fly) which might be an issue. Anyhow, isn't it nice to know that we live in a world where this is still possible?

11 January 2004

Just a dumb question, if you allow me: Does the supercute mascot at the top left of sensei's pages have a name? How about its own page? Just curious.

mAsterdam: Just [ext] Stones. Maybe someone can name the senseis stone?

Arno: well, we could give them names like (Disney did to) the seven dwarfs: dopey,doc,sleepy,happy,sneezy, ... Of course, I can see that Andreas would argue that stones should be indistinguishable from each other, so giving names to them is against their "we are all equal stones" mantra :o)

Dan Argent: On the SL main page, there is a link at the bottom to the cartoonist's website. I went there and there are many drawings of go stones. I asume our particulr favorite has a name but the site is in a language that I do not speak and I was unable to tell. I beleive it is German or another similar language of the Indo-European branch. If anyone who thinks they might speak it goes to the web site mabee they can figure it out. ("actualy posted of Jan 27th")

Zarlan: Yes it is in German. A language that I know and like. But if you follow the link above, you will see a bunch of stones holding different flags for the choice of different languages, such as [ext] English (posted the 28th. Should I have posted this in the right date and refered to the question instead?)

Dan Argent: I read through the english cartoons (thanks for the link Zarlan, I just thought they were international go stones). Unfortunatly I couldn't findany referances to the name of our particular stone. I did notice that tehre were some sectons of the site that were only in german. Did you find any referances to a name Zarlan? If we can't find what the name is, mabee a german speaker could drop the cartonist an e-mail and ask.

9 January 2004

EncyGoPédie a french wiki about Go based on the GoWiki code has opened some days ago. See: [ext] http://www.jeudego.info/

4 January 2004

David Foale: Anyone fancy a game of go-jujitsu? [ext] http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1348


previous versions (before WMEs):

  • 2004-04-15 (deleted everything prior to January 2004)
  • 2003-12-14 (deleted everything prior to August 2003)
  • 2003-08-03 (deleted everything prior to 2003)
  • 2002-12-30 (deleted everything prior to 2002)


This is a copy of the living page "Coffee Machine" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.