Igowin

    Keywords: Software

Igowin is a 9x9 demo version of The Many Faces of Go. It's considered to be a nice, fairly easy introduction to Go.

You can get it at David Fotland's page: [ext] http://www.smart-games.com/igowin.html

Note that the difficulty levels indicated by Igowin is seriously overrated, so take them with a grain of salt.

See also:


Difficulty (no komi)

 Rank       Handicap    Igowin's colour
 ---------------------------------------
 25k-23k        5           White
 22k-20k        4           White
 19k-17k        3           White
 16k-13k        2           White
 12k-9k         0           White
 8k-5k          0           Black
 4k-1k          2           Black
 1d-3d          3           Black
 4d-6d          4           Black
 Professional   5           Black

Jasonred: A pretty unique thing about Igowin, IMHO, is its speed, responding to moves as soon as you place them. This is good and bad, in that it makes practice smooth and quick, no waiting for your opponent. On the other hand, this teaches some bad habits, like playing too quickly (in response to Igowin), thinking during your own hand, instead of while the opponent is thinking, and such. All in all though, I prefer Igowin, as it annoys me no end when a program takes like 2 minutes to block my peep during the endgame...


JanDeWit: It has the standard Way to Go tutorial, it plays only on 9x9 and you can only crank up the difficulty by getting better yourself (after studying a little bit I rocketed up from around 23kyu with 4/5 handicap to 12 kyu with no handicap, so I guess I'm getting better).

I actually like the fact that you can't undo moves, as this forces you to think and not just click somewhere in the hope that your move works out OK. Too bad I don't have the cash to buy the full version (yet?). I think this program is nice for beginners to practice their tactical skills.


Sometimes, Igowin cannot properly count territory

[Diagram]

Igowin at 5k; unknown marked territory

The marked points are considered dame by Igowin during the counting.

Igowin also doesn't recognise seki.

  • Not true - I've played games with it where seki was recognized. DrStraw

Dead or Alive?

[Diagram]

corner

It thinks the marked black group is dead (white's turn). What do you think.

Aloril: Its unconditionally alive, no matter what white does black can just pass and white still can't capture it.

[Diagram]

Black is alive

gtwade: Black is alive?

If I'm reading this right, after 1 and 2, white cannot play in this corner, and black at x will take white's two stones and seal up the eyes. There are other variations, but it looks like black is alive in this corner!


Igowin was my introduction to go. I still fire it up often, even though TurboGo offers games on other boards. It's an incredible program, despite its bugs. It's very aestetically pleasing, too :)


High score:

What is your high score in this program. Mine is 2 Dan +0.50 with 4 Dan as the most common and 6 Dan as the best rank after only 188 games.

  • DrStraw This is probably not a very interesting question as it is easy to get lucky one time and get a high rank. More interesting would be the highest average rank attained after a sizable number of games, say 100.
  • So you are saying that 188 is alot more than 100? I could play 12 games more, and then give you the average at 200 games. But that would still be around 2 Dan + 0.50.

This is a copy of the living page "Igowin" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2005 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
[Welcome to Sensei's Library!]
StartingPoints
ReferenceSection
About