Life In 19x19

In most skill oriented hobby's people tend to overspend on gear and underspend on education or training.

One data point -- in the US, a full-time Golf channel launched almost a decade before a full-time football channel, even though the viewership of golf is much lower than NFL. The enormous ...

If memory serves from back around when it was implemented, the idea behind the tilde was something like this:

- Many in the community had requested a way to know if their potential opponent only played stronger players
- wms wanted a way to encourage people to play players with a ? rating

Hence ...

Some trivial observations:

⋅  Game #2 (where B287 captured 29 white stones) had the most white stones captured by black (51), but white won the game. It also had the most prisoners total (80), resulting in the fact that over 25% of the stones played in that game were captured by the ...

White wins 8 of 10, I wonder if that suggests that komi should be a little lower. Though I suppose that it could also be an idiosyncrasy in how AlphaGo plays.

If changing it by one point, it may just flip similarly in black's favour. Deepmind said that 7.5 with Chinese rule is as good as it gets ...

White wins 8 of 10, I wonder if that suggests that komi should be a little lower. Though I suppose that it could also be an idiosyncrasy in how AlphaGo plays.

Once automobiles became faster than runners I don't think too much time was spent on designing contrived races where the human might win...

Mef, could you elaborate? There are differences, but I'm not sure how you think they might matter. I can think of at least two possibilities, but am not sure if they're what you mean.

As I've understood it, most of the Japanese titles have a challenger who comes out of a league, and to get into ...

Actually, mid-30s is still young, compared to the ages at which Sakata-era best players were taking titles. That's what I meant. Sakata would not have thought mid-30s was impressive longevity. But unlike today's top players, the top players of that era weren't taking titles in their teens. If a ...

Kirby wrote:Here's a screenshot (and no, KGS admins, I'm not playing myself. I'm just looking at the dialog window here):

It's a free game, go ahead and play yourself

Interesting, I agree with most, but for sure having a good social component is key. When it comes to being in a public place I agree when thinking of access to the club. 3rd floor library isn't something people always wanna search for. However, the success of being visible such as having the club ...

Kirby omitted to say that the AGA gives a lot of support to teachers of go, especially in schools. Supporting the AGA is also supporting go in general and the development of the go playing population.

Gowan - as an educator this might be the best motivator of all. I am tired of watching students ...

In terms of recruiting and keeping active players, in my experience the biggest positive for a club has been a strong social component along with regular meetings in a public place.

A simple illustration of the social component: some of the "strongest" clubs I've been to would have an environment ...

This is also why I tend to say that opening theory is not important, because I tend to just play randomly most of the time after the first few moves against corner approaches and it "seems fine". At the same time, it does make me feel a little uncomfortable knowing that if I was playing a teaching ...

However, it may also be an example of rule 13: Both players lose because they have left a gainful play on the board. AFAIK, that rule has never been invoked in professional play. But I doubt if it has ever been invoked in amateur play, where it could well occur.

This clause always made me think ...

Interesting post, I wasn't familiar with the Blub paradox!

On a related note: An easy way to demonstrate a significant component of the "waiting for your opponent to collapse" phenomenon is to sit in on one of Jennie Shen's reviews at a go congress . She has no qualms about announcing "Pass!" if ...