I haven't used an offline database / pattern-search program for a while and haven't really kept up with the state of the art.

What's available, for the desktop (Windows) computer, these days?

Is Kombilo still the bee's knees?

Is anything else even a viable alternative?

I use Kombilo and my most recent copy of GoGoD. I messed around with Drago for a while, and while I liked a lot of the features in this program, their pattern search is just horrible. It even seems to get worse and worse with newer iterations of the program.

I use SmartGo for windows for pattern matching.

I still use Kombilo. Like Hushfield, I tried playing around with Drago a bit but did not make much progress. Recently I subscribed to Go4Go and combined it with GoGoD (using kombilo's "strict duplicate checking" parameter). This keeps me current on a weekly basis and added a lot of Chinese games (presumably, I didn't actually check that carefully) to what is in GoGoD. It brought the total in my database up to about 87,000 games. I still need to get the latest GoGoD update. I have the feeling from JF's post that it adds a substantial number of historical games. If he let's his interest in the old stuff run wild while macelee feeds my addiction to the latest and greatest, I figure I am good to go.


p.s. But note that I am still running on Kombilo 0.72 due to the inability of 0.74 to produce the correct result from searching on the empty board (which I use as the baseline for frequency/popularity type questions). I am too lazy to bug Ulrich on this.

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

How would you compare SmartGo to Kombilo search?

I use Moyo Go but quite a few people here don't use it because they consider the author controversial. Don't ask for details, just search the discussions about it on the forum or on SL if you want to know the history.

As for the software itself, I personally prefer Moyo Go to both Kombilo and SmartGo. BUT Moyo Go will probably never be developed further. IIRC, the author at one point was so disappointed with the go community that he deleted everything including the source code. But he is currently selling it again. Probably this version is the one which he had once released as freeware but had since revoked it's distribution freely.

If you want to the software with the most go games in it's database, you might try BiGo Assistant Full. But this is quite expensive compared with other products. A post on their forum says that they plan to release a new version in second quarter 2014.

I'd recommend purchasing GoGOD along with Moyo Go to get one of the best combos. If you are not really interested in older historical games and just want to add more recent pro games, the cheap solution is to grab the free pro database from badukmovies.com which has currently over 47k+ of pro games.

So if you want to get a nice free pattern search, you can either use the pattern search on badukmovies.com on just those 47k+ pro games or use Kombilo with those games.

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http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

Hmmm... that MoyoGo web page fills me with foreboding... and sentences like "You must turn off Windows Defender and add a DEP exception for the Setup" make my professional software architect hackles rise; those around me tell of low, growling sounds being heard near my desk.

SmartGo looks promising. I actually bought the iPad version, years ago, but no longer have an iPad (and have absolutely no intention of ever owning one again) so all my Apple stuff is effectively down the bog. SmartGo was, without doubt, the most useful thing I had on the iPad - perhaps even the ONLY useful thing...

How good is the Windows program?

I see that SmartGo 3 is en route but details are scarce. What should we expect from SmartGo 3? Has anyone tried the Beta? Are screenshots available?

Lastly, what are the chances of SmartGo books ever being available through SmartGo for Windows? (Yes, I bought some for the iPad and have always considered them to be down the bog too.)

In my opinion, there is still no "best" solution.

SmartGo comes closest, because it comes bundled with an authorized GoGod complete database, but its interface is often non-intuitive and explanations are hard to come by. Also, its features are not quite on par with those of MoyoGo. It does however have the advantage that in contrast to MoyoGo, it is still being developed and there are no issues regarding the source of the database. MoyoGo was originally made for older windows systems, which is probably the cause of the warnings that the site warns you about that may crop up on newer Windows versions.

Kombilo has the big advantage of being free, and is still being developed, and its most recent versions make it work like a regular old windows program, which has made it much more useable. Drago is also free, is also still being developed, and also comes without a database, but the pattern search functions leave something to be desired.

There are also other programs out there - BiGo and MasterGo come to mind.

I use SmartGo, and think that its a reasonable product, but I hope that it will be redesigned. Whether future versions will include features such as smartgo books is up in the stars.

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Patience, grasshopper.

As a regular GoWrite user I'm quite happy with all database search features there. I have GoGod and Go4go databases with some irregular additions, all included in the GoWrite DB search.

Cheers,
Vesa

What database search features Vesa? I use GoWrite somewhat often and am not aware of them

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

GoWrite Database Setup and Search - Quick Intro

Setup:

Open Options - Game Database
for the first setup, use Database Setup Wizard

When the Database is built, search patterns:

Mark the searched region by right mouse click and drag
Press Ctrl+E
Voila!

Vesa

How about for non 19x19 boards? Maybe I gave up too quick but kombilo looked like it didn't do 9x9 (for example).

If that is the case, any suggestions for 9x9 on Windows or Mac platform?

Thanks,

Bruce "Cheater" Young

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Currently reading: Plutarch, Cerebus, and D&Q 25th Anniversary

Lots of good info here already, and I don't have much to add, but I'm another SmartGo fan. After getting past the first hour or so of playing with the pattern search features, I've found them pretty easy to use and flexible. But that's just my opinion.

One big difference between the Windows and iOS version is that you can set custom boundaries for the pattern search. You can also filter games to search (e.g., only search for the pattern in games played in the past 5 years, or only games by a certain player). You can also pull up a list of all the matching games.

I find SmartGo to be more user intuitive. I've used kombilo in the past, and I could get what I wanted, but it seemed slower and harder to use. I do all my game analysis with smartgo, and after my experiments with kombilo, I never got enough ability to do it. I think a couple days with SmartGo (which you can do under the one week trial) is enough to get an idea how to do what you need. Of course if you have any questions, just ask here.

You can try SmartGo for free and kombilo is free (although you'll need to get a database of games), so try out both.

Whoah, I wasn't aware of it (thanks Vesa!) but GoWrite works with 9x9. So I think I can scrap the small amount of code I wrote to analyze 9x9 openings and just use GoWrite with my database of pro 9x9

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

How about MasterGo. I use it ever since and IMO it beats them all.

Thanks for the help. This looks like it will provide a start for me.

Bruce "49er" Young

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Currently reading: Plutarch, Cerebus, and D&Q 25th Anniversary