Harry Fearnley's Main Go (Baduk, WeiQi/Wei-Ch'i, Igo) Page


Last Updated 2000/03/13

- - - - - - - - - - - Items marked [NEW] have been added, or updated, in the month before this date.


[Go kanji]

Keywords: Go, Igo, WeiQi, Wei-Ch'i, Baduk; TsumeGo, Britain, Computers, Rulesets, "Bestiary", Books.


Contents


Introduction

This page contains material related to the oriental board game Go (Japanese Igo , Chinese WeiQi [ Wei-Ch'i], Korean Baduk/Paduk). Please note my use of the word Baduk, and use the word "Baduk" in a prominent place on your Go pages -- preferably in the TITLE, and in the META tags within HTML. Doing this will make it much easier for other people to find your page using simple search tools. Apart from its use in Korean (meaning this game), the word Baduk seems to exist only in the Basque language (as a stative verb!). All the other obvious names for Go also have other meanings in other languages (Go - English verb; WeiQi/Wei-Ch'i - Chinese name), and/or exist as widely-used abbreviations (Igo -- IGO : Inter-Governmental Organization; International Golf Organization).

On this page I will specialise in links to British Go activities and people, as well as matters broadly relating to Computers and Go, and Rulesets (and problems arising from them, thus giving us "beasts" for a "Bestiary"!)

There will also be a number of links of particular interest to me. However, where other people are providing well organized indexes, I will often simply point to them.


Lots more Go links

Please note that I cannot update this page as frequently as I would like to. Please check out my Personal "Bookmarks"/ "Hotlist"/ "Favourites" file, which has lots of Go links. I find new links almost daily, and I check, and update, the links in my bookmarks fairly frequently. My bookmarks are likely to contain many things that are not here.


Go in the British Isles

Go in the rest of Europe

Go in the rest of the world

Some personal, and other, pages


Computers and Go

Combinatorial Games Theory/ Maths/ AI, and Go

Combinatorial Games Theory is based on work first published (formally, and in a book) in On Numbers and Games by John Horton Conway; publ Academic Press; 1976. These ideas were developed, in a more accessible way, in the 2-volume Winning Ways, for your mathematical plays by Elwyn R Berlekamp, John H Conway and Richard K Guy; Academic Press; 1982. (If you like these, or you are simply a fan of Donald Knuth, then check out Surreal Numbers , by Donald Knuth; Addison-Wesley; 1974. This humorous, though basically,teatment pre-dates On Numbers and Games by 2 years).

Most of the work being done now in CGT and Go seems to be by people centred on University of California at Berkeley including Elwyn Berlekamp , David Wolfe , YongHoan Kim, Bill Spight, and possibly others. Others who are active in this field include Howard A Landman, David Moews , Martin Mueller , and Ralph Gasser.

Available resources include:


Introduction to the Game; History; General

General introductions to the game include:

Some other articles are:

A good starting point for other introductions is the "general" section of Ken's "Web Go (Wei Qi, Baduk) Page Index"

Do your own searches on the Web for pages about Go, now:

Books and Bibliographies


Playing Go on the Internet -- IGS, NNGS, GIGS, LGS, WWGo, the Gaming Zone, iGo, etc

You can play against opponents ranging in strength from complete beginner to Professional. You can even play against a very recent version of the program Many Faces of Go. If you're tired then simply watch others playing and make comments on their games!

The Internet Go Server (IGS) has been around for several years, and the No Name Go Server (NNGS) is a more recent creation. There are several "clones" of the NNGS. These include The Legend Go Server (LGS) in Taiwan which opened in early 1996(?).

The IGS, and NNGS (and "clones"), all work with various "Internet Go Clients", which can be obtained from various places, including the IGS itself. The Gaming Zone is different.

Other -- non IGS-compatible

The following do not use the standard IGS/NNGS Go clients:

Play Go by E-mail

Richard's Play-By-E-Mail (PBEM) server makes life easier than having to find your own opponents, and keeps game records ...


Newsgroups : rec.games.go, fj.rec.games.go, and japan.games.go

Newsgroups are a kind of electronic notice-board. You can post messages there for people to read world-wide. there are currently three newsgroups which specialise ing Go/ Weiqi/ Baduk. You will need access to a news server to read these directly:

If you do not have access to a news-server, or you have difficulty reading some of these newsgroups, then try:

Archives of Go-related information

For everything from game records (professional and amateur) to game-diagram typesetting and printing tools; from Go-playing programs to tools for converting game-records; lots of information about/from the IGS, and tools for using it; etc.

FAQs, other information

Printing and Typesetting

Go products and Services

Go Problems

I have a great interest in Tsume Go problems, and am in the process of putting the 1,454 problems of the KanZuFu (Chinese "GuanZiPu") into computer-readable format. If this is a success, I may well do the same for the other classics:

Here is a table of the better known "Classic" works.
References: (from Harry Fearnley's post to r.g.g. 17/10/95, substantially amended 19 Feb 1996 and July 18 1996 (Korean added))

Some Classic TsumeGo problem books
NumberTitle (Jap / Chinese / Korean) Author(dates) Publishing date
1a --- / XuanXuan QiJing / Hyun Hyun Ki Kyung Yan TianZhang & Yan DeFu 1347(??1349)
1bGengen Gokyo / --- / Hyun Hyun Ki Kyung Ed. Honinbo Sansa 1630
1c Gengen Gokyo / --- / Hyun Hyun Ki Kyung 20 editions Edo & Meiji
"Mysterious ..."/ "The Gateway to All Marvels" # Problems = 290/349?
2Kanzufu / Guan Zi Pu / Gwan Ja Bo Meijin Guo BuiLing
(Ed. Tao ShiYu et al)
1689
"Manual of Endgame Positions" # Problems = 1,454
3a Igo Hatsuyoron(a.k.a. Fudanzakura)
/ FaYangLun / Bal Yang Non . Hyun Gam
Inoue Inseki (1673-1692)1713
3bIgo HatsuyoronEd. Honinbo Shusai 1914
"On the production of Yang in Go" # Problems = 183/201?
4Gokyo Shumyo/ QiJingZhongMiao / Ki Kyung Joong Myo Hayashi Genbi (1778-1861)1811
"Brilliancies from Go Classics" # Problems = 505/515?
5 Shikatsu Myoki / --- / Sa Hwal Myo Ki Honinbo Shusai (1874-1940)1910
"Life and Death Brilliant Stratagems" # Problems = 168
6a Kifu Genran / ? XuanLan / --- Akaboshi Intetsu ? 1833
"Go Diagrams: Mysterious Vision" # Problems = 15-20?
6b Genran / XuanLan / --- ed. Inoue Shuntetsu ? 1846
"Mysterious Vision" # Problems = 69

I am very grateful to John Fairbairn in helping me compile the above table -- all errors are mine!

You can also get Two new problems (and solutions) every day from Thomas Wolf's Go Tools collection.

Here are various problem pages:

Check out the Go Problems page of the BGA site, for links to several more pages.

A "Bestiary"

The above are just some examples of many similar questions which one can think of and which give rise to strange or weird positions.

I am starting a collection of these "beasts" (hence the name "Bestiary"), and would be grateful for any information. If you have an interesting position, please send it to me by e-mail, and I will make a WWW page here -- you will get the full credit. I will place links to any relevant existing pages here.

My interest in such positions is partly an abstract interest in rulesets, and partly because I want to have a collection of positions which I can use to check whether computer algorithms work as they should -- for such tests, it is often helpful to have very bizarre positions -- the more bizarre the better.

I already know of John Tilley's "International Go Handbook and Dictionary", as well as the invaluable "Go Player's Almanac", by Richard Bozulich. I also have a Japanese "Go Encyclopaedia" published some years ago by Nihon Kiin.

Rulesets

Game records

Dictionaries, Encyclopaedias, Databases

Teaching and Studying Go

Go Variants, and Go-related Games

I am interested in collecting information, about Go-variants (games which broadly similar rules -- perhaps on different shaped boards), and also about other games which can be played with the same equipment. I am hopeful that one day enough of these can be brought together into a compendium of games so that Go equipment will get in into a shop in every main shopping centre!

Some Korean pages - not further classified

If you can provide more sensible descriptions, for these please tell me.

Not Elsewhere Classified


Ko position - GIF created by Nick Wedd Ko position - GIF created by Nick Wedd Want to join the Game of Go Ring?

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Check out my home page , where there is some contact information, and a link to my "Bookmarks"/ "Hotlist"/ "Favourites" file, which contain many Go-related pages not listed here, especially the newer ones.


Copyright © 1994-1999 by Harry Fearnley. This page maintained by Harry@goban.demon.co.uk.NOSPAM (sorry -- please remove ".NOSPAM"), whose WWW page is Harry Fearnley's Home Page