Sad, very sad. But more than understandable decision.
I ordered from them several times, always satisfied.

Hope the game analysis and articles will be as great as they used to be after they took their time to regain their passion for the game

I'm ambivalent about this. While GoGameGuru has been providing a great service to the Go-playing community for a long time, but what it did to Yellow Mountain Imports was downright shady.

Back in 2013-14, GoGameGuru was quite active on Reddit accusing Yunzi stones sold by Yellow Mountain Imports as containing unsafe levels of lead, all without providing proof.

https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/1rfxov/looking_to_buy_a_go_board_and_stones_but_not_sure/cdnyocg/?context=3

https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/209e26/shin_kaya_reversible_go_board_12_by_ggg/

Later, GoGameGuru opened up a dedicated Reddit thread to make further accusations of unsafe lead levels in Yunzi stones, again without furnishing evidence. Reading through that thread, I was quite disappointed by GoGameGuru's disingenuousness and blatant fear-mongering. I couldn't help but think that GoGameGuru was engaged in a concerted effort to harm the reputation of Yellow Mountain Imports, a direct competitor of GoGameGuru.

https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/20dj1c/why_we_dont_sell_yunzi_and_why_lead_in_go_stones/

While it is true that Yunzi stones sold by Yellow Mountain Imports DID IN FACT CONTAIN HIGH LEAD LEVELS some ten years ago, a subsequent reformulation by the Yunnan Yunzi Factory (at the behest of Yellow Mountain) had reduced the lead content to far below that of the recommended safety threshold set by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

In response to GoGameGuru's accusations, many had their Yunzi stones tested using consumer test kits, and all came back negative. One of our members on this forum even had his Yunzi stones tested at the Schneider Laboratories in 2014, and the result again came back safe.

http://i.imgur.com/0azOoi7.png

So the controversy died down, but the entire episode dissuaded me from buying products from GoGameGuru.

After reading through all of that, i'm not sure if it's a deliberate attempt to discredit YMI, or it's just an overzealous effort for consumer advocacy.

Gogameguru didn't start the discussion about lead in Yunzi stones from YMI. It's been an active discussion topic for several years. There's even a thread on it here: http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewto ... f=9&t=9770

YMI responded to the thread here and indicated that they can't say that the stones are lead free.

The impression I get is that the stones may contain lead, but likely at lower levels.

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be immersed

It's pity, they didn't renew their domain name. Someone grabbed it and is reselling it for $1000.

All their resources are gone now.

What does the contents of the OP link say? For me, that server is down.

I checked archive.org and it seems most of the content (eg. SGF files) has been saved.

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12k: 2015.08.11; 11k: 2015.09.13; 10k: 2015.09.27; 9k: 2015.10.10; 8k: 2015.11.08; 7k: 2016.07.10 6k: 2016.07.24 5k: 2018.05.14 4k: 2018.09.03 3k: who knows?

A while back, the admins of GoGameGuru posted their SGF collections (commented game records and go problems) on GitHub:

https://github.com/gogameguru/commented-go-games
https://github.com/gogameguru/go-problems

They were released under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-SA-NC 4.0).

I don't know what the odds are that David or An will read this, but that's great. Thanks!

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Occupy Babel!

It seems like 11 days later, someone bought the domain name AND reused the navigation panel to build a (rather quirky) site about Go, or as they call it "igo board game".

… yeah, including one or two spammy links

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?