I like it very much.
I play there for some time now. See also one of my earlier posts.

GoQuest uses a approach different than other go servers, but I find it very addictive.
Stronger players: do not let yourself be fooled by first appearance - there are a lot of (very!) strong players. Equally good for beginners and youngsters as well.
Many players, of all levels, speedy pairing.
Much fun, good for real life practice and reading skills. Recommended!

I like it, too. The Elo rating is very sensible. Unless you see a 15 kyu at 1800 Elo, then it is someone on his way up to 2400 and will give you a hard time. I had many good games against strong opponents.

A few things bug me, though. The remaining time should be somewhere central on top. I see a fair amount of time-outs of opponents who are winning, and I got a fair share of them, too. When focussing on the board the small number at the bottom right, often covered by my playing hand, doesn't get my attention.

I don't do sound, so the only sign to find out, whether the opponent passed is: your clock is running and there is no last-move marker on the board. Especially a challenge when you're in the 1 sec byoyomi.

I really like that you can review the games and edit them to play out variations. Unfortunately it doesn't offer a scoring function.

_________________
If something sank it might be a treasure. And 2kyu advice is not necessarily Dan repertoire..

Especially on 13x13 and with Smartphone this server teaches me to appreciate the value of misclicks. I had quite some situations where the "misclick" turned out to be much better than what I originally was up to. Another nice feature of the server is the very generous ranking system which - despite of being not a "serious" ranking system - gives a good feeling^^.

Nah, I've been stuck at 1790-1810 since I was like 18k or so (now 4k.) I'd love to shoot to 2400, but looks like my current ability is slightly below 1800 (my current ELO hovers just below 1800, passing it occasionally.)


]

Me too, indeed. Maybe it's psychological, but players in the 1850 area seem to play different from players in the 1700 area (and I'm still in the latter, or so it seems.)

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

I joined but now I cannot reaccess, I do not recall getting a password it went straight to a game. : ( And now says I have to go to my page....

_________________
Walla Walla GO Club -(on FB)

We play because we enjoy the beauty of the game, the snap and feel of real stones, and meeting interesting people. Hope to see ya there! お願いします!

Anthony

I tried out the Go Quest app and it's nice for a quick small game. I'm 10k 1970 rating so far and have now had a few losses, but quite a few of these have been because if I have say four minutes left and go to the loo for two minutes then on my return I have lost by disconnection. Not sure if this is a bug or a feature to discourage AFK. During play I sometimes see a message 'reconnecting' so it seems activity is needed to maintain connection.

Since i read this thread i got addicted to it.
Thank you forum for turning me into a junkie...

There is no password when you join, but it is device specific. If you connect on the same device you should not need a password, but you can go to your profile page and find a (randomly generated) sequence of letters and numbers that will allow you to log in from a different device.

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I have been playing on the GoQuest server a lot lately, and on rare occasions I will encounter a method of winning that I do not understand. When the game has gone very long, and then I capture a large group of stones, it will sometimes end the game immediately, and say that I have won by "TKO". I only know that term from boxing, does anyone know what it means to win by TKO in Go?

You sure they don't end with 2 passes? I assumed TKO means winning regularly while your opponent doesn't even have a single living group.
Like boxing. Unfortunately it gets very rare as most opponents resign when that happens.

_________________
If something sank it might be a treasure. And 2kyu advice is not necessarily Dan repertoire..

http://wars.fm/go13/game/p98edrc5eslu

Here is the game link, from the most recent time it's happened to me. I don't think there is any way for me to kill his last remaining group.

Looks like GoQuest now has an option to play 19x19 now. Doesn't seem to be fully operational yet though. Just started using the app today, I never realised how addictive 9x9 games are,although I can't help feeling that the 6 point Komi is a bit steep.

19x19 is only active when the number of users reaches 1000. I live in the US eastern time zone (UTC-5), and I find that it tends to be available in the mornings, ending somewhere around 11 AM. It does vary of course, since it's dependent on the combined schedules of the entire userbase.

It's not the most visually pleasing server, but it definitely gets the job done. I just downloaded it this morning, and despite being at 25k currently, I already lost a game against a 4d! Pretty fun.

Yeah, because their pairing system is based on your ELO, not your rank, you sometimes run into very good players who still have double digit kyu rankings. What this usually means is that they are new to the server. The rankings are treated like achievements, so if you haven't played many games, it doesn't matter how good you are, your ranking can only improve so quickly.

On the other hand, sometimes the pairing system just doesn't work very well, and you can find yourself up against near impossible odds, or trouncing an opponent who can't really compete with you. Because the games are so short though, it's usually not long before you find yourself evenly matched again.

It's quite rare to happen and if it does there are often only few people on the server, so might be the best pairing available without stretching waiting time. I like it when it happens. I don't mind getting schooled from time to time. Chances are that I played a pro for free. Usually the opponents are within 200 elo points which seems appropriate. The profiles show also the peak elo of a player which is often 100 points or more higher than their momentanous elo. It's blitz, so I expect a rather volatile rankings. Occasionaly you get paired against a new player, and their level can be anything between bloody beginner and bloody hell. That's for the server to find out the appropiate elo of the new player and affects your rank only minimally.

There is the option to hide the opponents rank/elo. I realised that I play differently depending on the assumed strength of my opponent, so I switched on this option. Now I like it that my opponent has to show me on the board how strong he is. I play a lot more reckless against somebody 500 elo higher. And when they're tired or careless, I unknowingly take my chances

_________________
If something sank it might be a treasure. And 2kyu advice is not necessarily Dan repertoire..

Does anyone know the exact rules used in GoQuest? In particular, is superko used? If so, is it positional or situational?

I saw this server mentioned elsewhere and since I've been playing a lot of 9x9 recently I checked it out. GoQuest is definitely quick to get a game going. The match making is an issue though. Often I'll be ranked against someone much weaker, even though they have a much higher elo rating (not kyu ranking), or against someone much stronger. This is less of an issue after about 60 games but it still happens frequently.

I tried a bit of 13x13 and it is also quick to get a game going but then I suffer from the same match-making issue all over again.

It seems normal to me to be matched against player from a wide range of ratings when playing small boards on GoQuest. The stronger player has a lot less advantage in 9x9 and 13x13 than in 19x19. If you wish you can change your options to play handicap games, I disable that options because the handicap is quite steep on 13x13 (the only board size I play regularly on GoQuest) but I remember trying it and never feeling I had any idea why the handicap was what it was.

I don't know what the ko rule is, such things rarely matter in practice but it should be possible to create a test for different types of superko. I'd actually wouldn't be surprised if it was just the simple ko rule, no superko. There doesn't seem to be any superko in game edit, I tried repeating positions with two send-two's, which I think sensei's declare as forbidden even in Chinese rules. Also I don't remember if there is territory in seki.

I have definitely had some surprise results but I think that is just do to he automatic scoring declaring some status incorrectly. Occasional player will capture every dead stone to make sure but it is more common that they pass while filling dame.

Thanks for the tip. I checked my settings and it turns out that handicaps are enabled but I have never seen it, with a lot of 9x9 (handicap is supposedly possible) and only twelve 13x13 games.

That's another good tip. The website says that they use Chinese scoring so I guess it makes sense to put the board in an easy to score state.

---------

Is GoQuest more mainstream than I previously thought? I hardly see it mentioned here or elsewhere, Maybe it is just not mentioned often because it's rankings and settings are so informal.