I don't know how the India Go Association picks players, but apparently Soni Shah 1d from last year was really about 1d strength. In http://www.europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/To ... n=16962231 it shows her beating 2 5ds (from South Africa and Mexico), though looking at their results 5d looks rather dubious for them (also losing to European 2k, 1k, 1d, and losing to European 1d, 2k).

During the tournament the winner was asked to record the game afterwards on some laptops in the playing room so the organisers should have sgfs for most games. After some hassling from players they said they would publish them, but I don't know if/where/when that will happen. I've been re-recording my games when I got home.

Best of luck, hope you get to go to the WAGC some day!

Here are my 8 games, in case anyone is interested. The first against Csaba had some comments from Yamashiro Hiroshi 9p.

This drew my attention because South Africa only has one 5d, and is not a citizen, so doesn't play in the WAGC. John Leuner, the apparent 5d, is actually 3d on our system*. Still a good win for the Indian player, of course. I see she improved quite a bit, because I remember her from the WAGC in 2013, where she was entered as a 2k, which was probably about right given her results: http://www.europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/To ... y=W130901A

*Our recent results in the Pandanet tournament do suggest that South Africa are a bit over-ranked, by 1 or perhaps even 2 stones, at least compared to European ranks.

I see things such as "record the game afterward"; is it expected that someone can memorize the entire game?

In chess tournaments, it is (or at least was, when I still played tournaments) obligatory to record a game on paper, and submit a copy to the tournament direction. Now, the submission is mostly handled by the DGT computer chess board, at least for the top players, but I think they still record games.

It still is, except for fast games. In the US players don't usually hand in their scoresheets, though.


Yes, they still do.

Once you get to dan level I expect most Go players could record their (non-blitz) game afterwards. Maybe the exact order of small yose will be wrong but that's not so important. I'm probably better than average at recording games from memory: I started being able to do so when I was maybe 10 kyu and I recorded all 8 of my WAGC games a week after the event. If I'd played another tournament in that week maybe I wouldn't be able to though as I probably have a 'working buffer' of something like a dozen recent games I can store in my head. When I used to play turn-based on OGS I would be able to reconstruct my 20 or so games I was playing there, which reflected the large amount of time and thought I had put into them.

I have a very good memory, and remember many things (movies, books, answers to questions, stuff that happens, and such) for a long time. There are two things I can't ever remember though: roads (I don't have a car, and even don't remember the bus route I take every day), and the Go game I played 5 minutes ago...

Can you remember your chess games? If you are a beginner at Go then your moves (and opponent's) don't make so much sense, aren't made for such good reasons etc so will be harder to remember. It's much harder for me to remember a game against a 30 kyu than against a dan player because many of their moves are strange. When I review a teaching game with DDKs it is fairly common for them to have played some slow, small gote move somewhere that is hard to recall, so I just put one of their stones aside in the "small gotes" pile and maybe later when play moves to that area it will become obvious where the stone should be.

LOL, no. In the past, I could remember slow a game for a few days, but not two or three or even more. Now the slowest games I play is about 30 or 45 minutes for the entire game per side.

(Byo-yomi didn't really exist in chess until a short while ago; now there are byo-yomi-like time rules such as "10 seconds increase per move", or "30 seconds per move after the time runs out" for some tournaments, but mostly without any periods. No move = loss. The traditional "40 moves in 2 hours, 20 moves in 1 hour, 30 minutes to finish the game" per person is now called "classical chess".)

Also, an average chess game is something like 50 moves or so, an average Go game is something like 200.

Don't forget that in a "50-move" chess game, 100 moves are actually played (50 by each player) so the differences in game length are smaller than they might appear. Also, go tends to have more canned sequences of moves than chess does. (I still think go games are harder to memorize, though).

Yeah, OK. That's true enough, but for some reason the counting is different. In Go, the moves are counted B-W, B-W, as 1-2, 3-4. In chess, they are counted W-B, W-B as 1-1, 2-2... a move by one player is called a half-move. Don't ask me why. But yeah, looked at the way you do, a chess game has 100 moves on average.



To be honest, I have never encountered a canned sequence in chess, except in some openings where only one line is playable. Don't play it, and you lose. On the other hand, in chess, an opening can take many different forms and have many different variations. In Go, you choose a joseki, and then you must play and finish it, or end up with a disadvantage. (At least, that's how I'm seeing joseki at this time; I don't yet know if there are actual, playable variations within a joseki. I've not studied them enough. The only ones I know, are the ones I often see in youtube live-play video's, and video's of pro matches.)

Endgame? (of course if both players know the "canned" sequence it will not be played out, one player will resign or they will agree on a draw, but if the game is nevertheless continued, I'm sure e.g. rook & king vs king is a canned sequence - as I understand it)

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Yeah, you could see the mating patterns as a canned sequence; especially the knight+bishop+king vs king. One mistake, and the game will be drawn because of the 50 move rule: no more than 50 moves may be made without capturing a piece or moving a pawn to prevent the game from going on forever. As you need 36 or so moves to mate a lone king with a knight/bishop/king trio, you don't have the time to start over.

All 8 of my games are now in viewtopic.php?p=205849#p205849

Most joseki, even the ones taught as simple, contain a multitude of lines that are all joseki hidden beneath the surface, along with vast numbers of lines that are playable in the correct situation, but generally not considered equal. If you look at the Igo Daijiten, it has more than 20,000 diagrams of joseki, some of which are perhaps more theoretical than others, and while it's a gigantic work, it is in no way complete. I have certainly run into moves that seem quite plausible to me and stronger players but are not to be found in it. There are also numerous joseki being created (and discarded) as we speak.

My recommendation would be to go to eidogo and select a joseki you know, and look at the alternatives. You are almost certain to see playable variations.

P.S. The joseki dictionary there was compiled by amateurs on the internet, and is not completely reliable. But it's good enough for seeing that there are lots of variations.

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Yes, all I mean is that to compare apples to apples as far as number of decisions goes, one should count moves in both games the same way.


I am thinking mainly of things like recaptures (although of course even there you have to beware of zwischenzugs) and sequences of checks.


In my experience, chess openings and josekis both have many playable variations at many different levels of the move tree.