GoJaC
My real name is Hugo van der Merwe, I am busy with my masters degree in electronic engineering (digital signal processing, specifically). One of my many distractions from my studies is Go (the other big ones are mostly "outdoor" activities).
I only recently (end of Feb 2005) started playing Go seriously, though I knew the rules and played two or three 9x9 games in previous years. I currently play mostly on DGS during the week, a little on KGS during weekends, and a few games a week in "real life" - mostly Thursday evenings at the Stellenbosch Go Club, South Africa.
The Stellenbosch Go Club is currently run by Steve Kroon.
Rank history:
- 13kyu on DGS on 1 September - definately overranked, due to a DragonTourney2005 resignation. I can't handle white in a high-ish handicap game, for example...
- 14kyu on DGS on 23 August
- 15kyu by 19 August (DGS on 12 August, thanks to DragonTourney2005)
- 16kyu by 24 June (Won a scratch "2nd league" game against a 15kyu, resulted in both of us ending at 16kyu. DGS on 9 August, thanks to DragonTourney2005. KGS on 22 August.)
- 17kyu by 3 June (Briefly on KGS around 14 June, back on 22 July. DGS on 27 July, thanks to DragonTourney2005)
- Came second in the
Stellenbosch Club Second Quarter Handicap Tournament - I was entered as 22kyu though...
- 18kyu by 18 May (national ranking system update) (KGS briefly on 14 June, only back on 17 July. Skipped 18kyu on DGS.)
- 19kyu on 13 May (DGS on 18 May, KGS before 15 May)
- 20kyu on 5 May (DGS on 14 May, KGS on 26 April, briefly)
- 21kyu on 11 April (KGS&DGS by 26 April)
- 22kyu on 1 April (KGS&DGS by 17 April)
- Joined Stellenbosch club on 11 March, 2005, at 23kyu.
Game count:
- 30 August 2005: 108 KGS games. 55 games logged at the Stellenbosch club. 39 "finished" games on DGS (about three timed out), 14 still running. About 2 games on IGS? Probably >20 19x19 games against GnuGo. Less than 10 other (unlogged) games. (A total of about 250.)
Nick origin: the "GoJaC" nick has been with me since around 1996, when I was 14, so it has some sentimental value. It was my original gaming nick, constructed from the end of my first name and the beginning of my second name (my second name is Jacobus). It is therefore pure coincidence that it starts with "Go".
Some Go Bookmarks For Myself
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Stellenbosch Go Club
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My KGS games
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My KGS rank graph (the graph started out at 14k after I resigned against a person with 28k? rank that turned out to be around 13k... so the system thought "I must be just below 13k then")
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My DGS games (you have to be logged in to see this page, possibly as guest)
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My DGS rank graph (you have to be logged in to see this page, possibly as guest)
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The Interactive Way To Go This is where I started, and I think I recommend any other beginner to take a look!
- The 30k-20k Study Book - I only read this once I was already about 21k, but it looks useful.
Contact Me
Feel free to leave me a message below, especially if Go related, but consider email or IM (Jabber or Google Talk) first if the communications are not of interest to other Go players.
For people wanting to get in touch through email or IM, here is a casual-reading-or-spambot-proof description of my contact details: my username for Google Talk, Google Mail and jabber.org consists of my first name and the first characters of each of the words of my surname. A total of 7 characters thus.
Ek dog ek soek Hugo van der Merwe op die internet op (Ek het Fritz Grobbelaar opgesoek en toe net Debian Mailing list goed gekry toe ek 'n issue gekry het wat veels te maklik uitgesorteer was)
Elk geval. Good luck met jou great game goed en ek praat dalk weer met jou.
cheers fritz
GoJaC: Hi Fritz, thanks for contacting me here. It did encourage me to reconsider providing contact details (which I now did, above), so that this page can remain mostly Go related, respecting other users of SL. I feel it is "appropriate" for me to delete this message, and will do so next time I edit this page.