MyGoFriend

MyGoFriend is or was a Go playing program for Windows systems by Frank Karger.

It can be purchased (19 Euro) at the mygofriend.com shop

Website: mygofriend.com - no longer working.

Table of contents Features Drawbacks Trophies, Tourneys, Titles Latest version The improvements: Screenshots Short Userguide Pinwheel Board with Magnifier Level Users' Comments and Reviews Positive: Negative: Links Remarks

Features

• Board size from 2x2 to 52x52 (playing!!)
• Analysis for experts
• 11 preset levels (Beginner, Novice, Advanced, Club player, Master, Sensei, and 1, 2, 5, 10 and 30 seconds per move) + custom level (seconds per move)
• Several windows of MyGoFriend can be opened on the desktop simultaneously, for instance with different komi values.
• MyGoFriend's GUI can be configured for many languages (English, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, German, French, Dutch, Russian, Spanish and Taiwanese)

Drawbacks

The scoring is always Chinese

Trophies, Tourneys, Titles

It was as a new entry the winner of the 2010 Computer Olympiad in the 9x9 Go section see: http://www.grappa.univ-lille3.fr/icga/tournament.php?id=215

Latest version

The latest version is version 1.1 (march 2011)

The improvements:

• settings (for last komi, levels, board view) are automatically saved
• pass behaviour is much more natural
• clocks for the players
• new levels with time per game
• thinking on opponents time (pondering)
• better multithreading (=faster) especially under Windows XP
• better support of older Window versions
• detailed help
• much more convenient saving and loading of games
• stronger highlighting of the engines thinking process
• new menu for choice of language
• several minor bugfixes -> running much more stable

Screenshots

More screenshots at http://www.mygofriend.com/en/content/screenshots-0

Short Userguide

Pinwheel

(also Engine -> Make Move or spacebar)

If you play against MyGoFriend the pinwheel will rotate while MyGoFriend is thinking.

If you play the black stones and black is to move and you click on the pinwheel then MyGoFriend will start thinking and take the black stones (the colors for the players swapped).

If you click on the pinwheel while MyGoFriend is thinking then MyGoFriend will move immediately.

So clicking on the pinwheel means something like "Force computer move" or "Make move". In most cases you will simple play against MyGoFriend and only notice the rotation of the pinwheel and no click on it is needed.

Board with Magnifier

(also Engine -> Analyse or Crtl-spacebar)

The board with the magnifier is for a deeper analysis. A typical use case would be this: You played a game against MyGoFriend. After that you want to get a deeper understanding of the game. Then you click on "the board with magnifier" and step through the game e.g. by pressing the arrow keys. In this "analysis mode" MyGoFriend analysis a position as long as you want. And if you change the position it will immediately analyse the position on the board. Then you can observe the evaluations of the analysis window and find the critical points in the game where the evaluation changed dramatically.

Level

Under Level there are 12 preprogramed levels (Beginner, Novice, Advanced, Club player, Master, Sensei, and 1, 2, 5, 10 and 30 seconds per move)

You can also set a custom level (in seconds per move with the custom option, the higher the number of seconds, the stronger MyGoFriend plays)

Users' Comments and Reviews

• The 2010 version received a lot of attention on the kgs server: http://www.mygofriend.com/en/content/user-opinions

First Impressions (Download version 1.0 ) (by willemien?)

Positive:

• Very nice graphics (It are the nicest stones I have ever seen)
• after some playing around the program works very intuitive
  • it by itself plays white (or click on the moving pinwheel)
  • Big buttons to move back and forth)
• Strong
• Cheap (19 Euro, but it is unsure if this includes uppdates to later versions)

Negative:

• Only 9x9 boards. (Bigger board sizes will follow in 2011.)
• The longest licence key I have ever seen (It includes your contact details)
• Only Chinese area scoring
• No sgf editor: it is not possible to erase moves or branches and it is not possible to add marks or comments
• Saving is complicated (It doesn't allow you to easely save under the same name)
• There is no real help (the links under help refer to webpages on how to learn go not on how to get the most out of the program)
• The turning of the pinwheel is not very visuable, and this can lead to some confusion. (why can't i to this? Because the program is thinking)

Links

Big interview with Frank Karger (july 2011): http://rusgo.org/an-interview-with-frank-karger/

Remarks

^[1] MyGoFriend doesn't play rated games on KGS, so, after looking through the wins/losses of 19x19 games against rated opponents of dan strength in the last month I estimate it to be 2k-1d; in 9x9 games it plays a bit stronger: 1d-3d --RueLue, sept.'12