Life In 19x19

In any case, Yutopian was at the congress last year, and they were awesome. Just super nice, first class people.

Oh, that's good to hear--I was wondering what the shopping might be like! I haven't been to the US Congress (I just missed the last Seattle event due to schedule mayhem), but given ...

I checked out OGS, but I didn't like the matchfinding interface as compared to IGS. IGS is the biggest one right? Is there a reason I should switch to another one? I'd rather just stick with one, at least for now.

Everybody's got their own opinion, but fwiw, from at least somewhat of a similar ...

The real point is that betoacosta passed, then realized during scoring that he could have won, and resigned anyway. Classy move, imho.

The less classy approach which I came up with the other day: somehow convince your opponent that their bent-four in the corner (with two of my stones in the ...

I have a very similar box that contained the slate and shell stones I bought in late 1971 from Richard Bozulich of The Ishi Press. The Nihon Kiin catalogue of Showa 44 (1969) October lists the same thickness stones that you have, 2kyu, which is 5.7mm. In that catalogue stone sizes run from 37 to 25 ...

Thanks, all. With hindsight, 19 does indeed look pretty bad--interestingly, I remember looking at things at the time (with sente, and generally a lot of freedom to do whatever) and evaluating the upper move as perhaps the beginning of an attack on the entire upper right corner. At this point, though ...

...but merely lose, and as the universal advice here seems to be "no, really, post your games, no matter how awful", here you all go.

Comments are very welcome; I see #23 as a poor response which invited the mess in the lower-left corner in the first place (but I am not sure what is best), and ...

I was just worried White would play in that large open space, so that's my reasoning behind playing B8 (D8).
Not that I'm remotely an expert, but my experience so far with weaker go-playing programs is that they adore the in-your-face tactical and prefer it overmuch to big moves. In the larger ...

I think players often feel a pressure from byo-yomi that doesn't exist. They see the timer and think "oh know I won't be able to find a move in 30s!" and panic. But if you just played as if the timer wasn't there, you would probably pick a move before 30 seconds anyway.
I was originally going to ...

amb:
Maybe you are confusing the term "hamaguri" with "suwabute"?
Yes, indeed, the root of my confusion; I had thought "hamaguri" was species-specific for some reason. Thank you (and John Fairbairn as well) for the clarification, and thank you Erythen for the detailed analysis.

My only remaining ...

...oops, and the stones. (The board color does not look true in this one, btw.)

I'm curious, how do you make the hamaguri determination?
It says so. The white stones are made of 蛤 ( Meretrix meretrix lusoria ) and the black stones are described as 那智 or Nachi slate.

The other critical phrase on the box is 特選 or "specially selected" which usually implies Mexican clams or ...

"What is this curious 'click click' noise I keep hearing? What are you staring at so intently? Can I eat it?"

Thank you both! I tried to get a better picture of the grain of the stones and found it vexingly hard. (Erythen, the job you do for your sales listing is amazing!)

Hinata is just a reading for 日向 which is read Hyuga in the go sense in reference to Hyuga City, home of the famous hamaguri clams ...

Hello all! I value this forum greatly, though my playing has never been strong enough for me to have anything cogent to contribute. Now, though, I have an odd puzzle regarding the infrastructure of the game, in particular a complete but somewhat odd set of stones, bowls, and board I have come across ...