Ian Davis
Although I play a lot of Go on KGS, I also play at my local club. The website for Belfast Go Club is at http://belfastgo.yolasite.com. The Belfast Go Club is split between my place of work and TableTopNorth? at Belfast Boat Club.
You can also find me on Dragon
I learnt to play at Durham University, gave up for a few years then took up the game on arriving in Cambridge, where I actually improved pretty dramatically. Attending tournaments is quite expensive for me nowadays. Therefore I prefer whole weekend tournaments. I have started to think about being more European in my attendance. It has struck me that it is more culturally fulfilling to travel across Europe than to play Go against the same old crowd in the UK all the time.
history viewable here.
- American Sandan (3.38446) after US Open 2009
- Represented Ireland in Japan (WAGC) 2008.
- Shodan after British Open 2007.
- Represented Ireland in Korea (KPMC) in 2006 and 2010 (25th place).
- Irish Champion in
2007,
2009 and
2010.
Teaching
I love teaching people Go, it really makes the game for me. If you are below 10 kyu I offer very cheap but irregular lessons . Will also swop teaching for french lessons. :)
I also made some software for Wings but it's not used anymore :) see WingsSGFPlayer for this.
Current Sensei :: Guojuan, JennieShen
Ex Sensei Solaris Tictactoe
Online Go
I ran the first online tournament for the BGA in 2004 and 2005.
For the IGA, I was responsible for a Texas - Ireland match, I also organised some 9x9 events on DGS and two Irish Online Championships in 2007 and 2008. In 2009 I created an Irish Interprovincial Team Competition, which is still going.
Top Blogs
http://gooften.net/ The Torminator
http://gogameguru.com/ Aussie blog
http://desprego.ro/ Romanian Go
http://jeudego-rfg.blogspot.com/ French Go
All other go blogs are a waste of time
Irish Go
In 2007 I organised the first real tournament in Belfast with Catalin Taranu as guest pro. The tournament was repeated in 2008, 2009, 2010 and (soon) in 2011. I have also been on the IGA committee for 2 years and then reigned as President of the IGA for 3 years.
Projects for the year 2011 are the following
- Augment 2 university clubs as much as possible
- Breakthrough somehow in outreach / publicity
Orava
My pet project, which i've tried before, is making a MC Bot. It's a very basic beast designed only for 9x9 right now. 5th Jan, restart project, begin with transposition to 1d
EGF Histograms
Another reasonably useful tool I wrote allows me to examine rating distribution across active populations in EGF member countries. It's very improvable, if you want the java source just ask. A really basic plot from its output can be seen below. Normally I compare individual countries, you can see the album on flickr.