Life In 19x19

Ok, the name of the subject might be a little bit misleading.
I`m not a software developer, but my very good friend who accidentally has enough free time at the moment is one and he promised me to help me. This topic, at the moment, is just for sharing the following idea and open up for discussing it.

Recently i discovered "Josekifarm.com" which is (or actually could be) a very fun and useful way to practice joseki.

By the way: i hope very much this topic does not lead to the warmed up discussion if studying memorizing or whatever with joseki is good or not or whatever...


I think Josekifarm is 100% based on "Kogo's Joseki Dictionary". That brings 2 problems...

1. Kogo is showing sometimes bad variations labled with a comment for example "A is good, B is a game over move" ... in Josekifarm you can sometimes play the B variation, wich means you made a big mistake, but josekifarm rewards you with a winning score.

2. Some new developments (for example the frequently played one space kakari against 3-4 - than one space low pincer joseki) are not in Kogos ...

So, while i like the josekifarm idea (and design/gameplay is good enough as well) i don`t like to use it like this.

I wrote to the email given at the website if i can somehow help them developing (i even thought of making a small donation) it further, but they did not reply. Than the idea came to me to ask my friend if we can do something on our own.

I started to collect the joseki i know or the ones i looked up because the happened in my games ... in one singe SGF file. I decided to not include any "wrong" moves or continuations... keep it simple on the basic josekis.

This sgf will grow and change with time...

I hope me and my friend can produce a software which can load my sgf, with all the josekis i collected, every time i want... and practice with the similar experience like at josekifarm.com. I don`t need points or rankings, just the software to tell me as soon as i did not answered correctly and what would have been the "right" moves.


And of course, if we can do it, i would love to share this with all go players who are interested.

The best joseki software I've seen is http://www.dailyjoseki.com/ sadly the developer is no longer developing it but you should check it out - I believe the joseki are harvested from the GoGoD database (with their permission).

CnP wrote:The best joseki software I've seen is http://www.dailyjoseki.com/ sadly the developer is no longer developing it but you should check it out - I believe the joseki are harvested from the GoGoD database (with their permission).

Agree 100%. Dailyjoseki is based on moves played in actual pro games, so it won't contain obvious errors like other sites.

It's problems are that it hasn't been updated in several years, and that it doesn't include a filter, so you can focus on currently played joseki, for example.

I've messaged the developer, Daniel Smith, who used to be an active member here, just to let him know this thread exists.

FYI, I currently use SmartGo Pro to research joseki, though it suffers from the same filtering issue.

i checked daily joseki, it is cool, but what i like so much about josekifarm is, that it automatically plays the other color and because it is superfast and has some kind of nice "surprise effect" ... sometimes you start, sometime the computerplayer starts, sometime it passes...
i think it is almost perfect... but the new josekis are missing.

Of course, if Daniel Smith is willing to join or to help somewhere, we would be very happy

Maybe we come to a point where my friend can do it any more with his skills, but i think it should be clearly possible to do it.

Most important for me is, that the software does not just use database moves, but that it can be filled with one single individual sgf file... (like Kogo's Joseki Dictionary, but not like Kogo's Joseki Dictionary )

Maybe for some other people a database approach would be nicer, for me the single sgf file thing is best.
(with that ... you could for example decide to train only a few new josekis ... and on the other day you can decide to use a other sgf wich contains all the collected joseki of yours)

eyecatcher wrote:This sgf will grow and change with time...

This seems very optimistic to me. Well, more like a no-starter. There are reasons why there is no other joseki-sgf out there than Kogo. Maybe it's doable if you restrict yourself to the variations of the avalanche or taisha, but I don't think that this is what you want (it would be appreciated by go players though, I am sure).

It's a lot less work to take Kogo and get rid of all the lines you don't want. That's the road the josekifarmer want to take. According to their homepage they got 2000 faults highlighted in Kogo and are working through them.

I'd prefer a database approach: Something along the lines of every move is good which has been played by pros at least 20 times in the last 10 years.

About josekifarm, I don't like that they don't let you correct your mistake and continue from there. in order to improve you should be able to see the correct sequence to the end. The way it is, it is more a tool to check how good you are not to get better. Having the possibility to play around on the board and check moves after a mistake would be helpful, too.

Database curation doesn't sound like much fun to me, that's why I went for datamining pro games with dailyjoseki.com. dailyjoseki.com's latency problem is pretty easily fixable, just haven't had time to do it. Nearly all the time is spent in schlepping stuff across the internet to your browser. I sorta made the classic software engineering mistake of rewriting a bunch of stuff and then running out of disposable time to finish it up...

Good luck!

http://ps.waltheri.net/ is also nice.

bayu wrote:

eyecatcher wrote:This sgf will grow and change with time...

This seems very optimistic to me. Well, more like a no-starter. There are reasons why there is no other joseki-sgf out there than Kogo.

hi, thanks for your reply!
I think i did not made clear enough what i mean. My aim is neither to make a complete joseki dictionary nor a software that helps you to train ... "all" joseki. For that you are right, that is not going to happen, i can`t do it (maybe with a daily joseki approach, using databases is possible).

I can look up and study joseki with my dictionary books, kogos dictionary and databases, that is fine (and what i wanna do with the software will not compensate for that).

But what i like so much about josekifarm is: the computer player imitating one color and you are playing the other color. It is fun and a nice and fast way to learn. Although i agree with you bayu, that it would be cool to browse threw the joseki after making a mistake.

Here is a link to my actual joseki file ... there are only very few inside, but if a software like josekifarm would play with me based on these few josekis, i would be happy

https://www.dropbox.com/s/i5agarqy15uno ... i.sgf?dl=0

@daniel_the_smith
i just found out about dailyjoseki, it is very cool, good work.
But it is a little bit different because you have to play both colors and there is no computer player, playing one side. but anyway it is a great tool. Hope you will have time someday for it again

@Kirby
yeah, i know that as well, thnx