Update 04 Feb 2013: Everything solved! Thanks Hebsacker Verlag!

Hello everyone

I just arrived ... and already have a question

After much reading about Go stones, I decided to purchase Yunzi stones at Hebsacker. Unfortunately four white stones were broken upon arrival, with white powder, which was a bit upsetting as the stones were not a small investment for me.

I asked them if they could send replacement stones so that I can have a full 181+180 set, but they replied that there are no exact number of stones for a Go game and that they will not send replacement unless more than 5 stones are damaged/missing per color.

Sorry for being blunt and direct, but, is this standard procedure? Being new to the Go scene, I have to admit it feels quite frustrating and hard to swallow as a first experience with purchasing Go gear

Any advice or similar experience to share would be much appreciated!

Broken stones are not common, but stones sometimes do broke. I don't think it's important at all to have 180/181 set, that it is rare to use more than 150 stones each in a game. You may lose some more stones naturally as you use them.

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Amsterdam, soon.

The white powder is absolutely normal. There is a washing procedure that many people use to wash their stones.

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Founder, Central Mississippi Go Club
Free tips and resources for clubs and teaching
Go Kit Club Pack - pack of 13x13 go sets for clubs
Go Tin - very portable go

I was short three stones in the set I bought there. viewtopic.php?f=19&t=6708.

I did care but I admitted to myself it was for purely "OCD reasons", I'm pretty sure I'll never run out of stones. I also feel lucky for the set I got to buy there, as I've not seen anything even close to that quality for that price since.

I don't know what to tell you. I feel your pain, but I also think it's not important from a pragmatic point of view. The traditional number could have been 170,171.

I recently bought a set of yunzi stones from Yellow Mountain Imports and it came with five or six extra stones of each color, in separate little ziplock baggies. Clearly their supplier recognized the value/need to supply extras given the chances of breakage. In the set I received, only one black stone was broken, but all the black stones had a fine white powder covering them, which I simply rubbed off, stone by stone, with a soft cloth.

It could have been, I suppose, but 180+181 was not simply pulled out of thin air. 180+181 is the sum of the points on the board. It seems pretty natural/logical to me to give each player enough stones to cover exactly half the board. Which color you assign the "extra" stone to seems a little arbitrary, but I assume there is some meaningful basis behind the tradition of making it black.

I had always assumed it was because black goes first, if black also goes "last" on filling the board, then black would need one more stone.

Also, is slate is less expensive than shell?

But these reasons are made up by me after the fact, obviously. Thus a false history is created

_________________
Founder, Central Mississippi Go Club
Free tips and resources for clubs and teaching
Go Kit Club Pack - pack of 13x13 go sets for clubs
Go Tin - very portable go

And if you use Ing fill-in counting rules, then each player needs the same 180 stones (not 181 for one or the other)

Useless answer, but why not get normal glass stones? I keep reading about these weird things happening to yunzi stones. I have had glass stones chip, but that has been really rare.

Because yunzi is way better. (A matter of preference of course.)

To the OP, just don't worry about it, excessive OCD is not compatible with Chinese go playing culture. If you really want to indulge in OCD, get a Japanese slate and shell set from Mr. Kuroki. Otherwise, the number of stones will never be an issue in practice.

Better still, get a set of stones of each material (plastic, glass, yunzi, slate&shell) and play with whichever set suits the circumstances (and your mood) at any given time.

Wow, so many replies, so quickly, thanks everyone!
I'll respond to some in particular.



It's actually with your post that I learned about this shop and decided to order there.

Well, thinking about what you said and what Alguien said, it's not so much the OCD thing, and of course I'll be able to enjoy playing the game with four missing white stones. As a matter of fact I already started.

The thing that annoys me here is the fact that it was, for me, a much bigger investment than just getting plastic, wood or glass stones and that I feel a bit like a sucker with an incomplete set. On top of that the whole issue of whether or not sending replacement stones really feels like the infamous dead pixel policy of some LCD manufacturer:



So to sum it up, I won't be freaking out every time I look at my set, starting to have chills thinking about my missing stones. I was just curious to know if these issues, broken yunzi and seller policy, were common, as it was certainly not a pleasant experience for a newbie at Go and Go gear.

Regarding cleaning, yes, I did that following the first step from the link mentioned by msgreg. I haven't oiled them yet though, haven't had time to buy the right oil.

About the broken stones I read similar stories about shops providing more stones that needed to compensate for defects. I also stumbled upon the forum/guestbook of a French Go game shop and they were also keen in shipping extra stones in case some would be missing.

So I naively ordered yunzi stones without a doubt, being sure that Hebsacker would provide extra ones if there was a problem. That's why I mailed them in the first place.

Well they won't be shipping any replacement for these broken stones. Lesson learned.

Like many sellers of products, return policies and availability of extra stones are some of what differentiate go equipment sellers. I don't think sellers generally have a statement specifically regarding stones (except perhaps a money back guarantee or similar).

Based on what I have ascertained about the equipment supply chain, any seller that replaces stones is essentially breaking up "original sets" (as supplied by the manufacturer) to do so. Of course one full set will supply 5 extra stones to about 35 other sets, so it increases the seller's cost by a few percent.

GoGameGuru has "Money Back Guarantee, 30 day guarantee, 100% refund" (read their site for specific details).

YMImports has a more nuanced return policy, but they also offer for sale "spare stones" (costing up to about 20 cents per stone) for their yunzi and glass stone products.

_________________
Founder, Central Mississippi Go Club
Free tips and resources for clubs and teaching
Go Kit Club Pack - pack of 13x13 go sets for clubs
Go Tin - very portable go

When I started to look into Go gear, yunzi stones kept on coming back in discussions as nice ones in terms of tactile feel and weight. And on top of that they did look very nice in the various shots that I saw, so I thought it could be worthy investment. And now that I have them, indeed, I think they look great and it's very nice to play with them.

I guess it is a personal thing. My opinion is plastic->yunzi->glass->slate and shell.

Since it's fairly easy to find reasonable glass sets, I'm surprised yunzi is so sought after. I've also found all the issues brought up about these types of stones on the board to be surprising.

Going slightly astray …

I’d like to mention that I have the impression that many if not most of the western Go shops are not big professional vendors but rather Go enthusiasts who are in it in order to spread Go and help the Go Scene get easier access to playing materials and books.

Of Hebsacker Verlag in Germany I know that they are exactly two people (Steffi Hebsacker and her husband Tobias Berben), and to make a living they have “normal” jobs (plus kids). So … I think they are more in it for the love of Go and to support the German/European Go community than for the money.

Yutopian in the US, IIRC, also consists of only two people (or was it just one person?), and I have read several threads regarding a somewhat difficult communication with them … delayed replies, sometimes sending wrong parcels etc., but usually eager to compensate.

I write this not to be apologetic about whatever may have happened with any of the mentioned suppliers but rather to explain why some interactions with these smaller vendors sometimes can be somewhat difficult, and that they really don’t get rich by supplying the Go communities with their so urgently needed materials, I guess the margin is rather narrow if one knows that they have to invest larger amounts of money for quantity imports to be able to offer anything at all.

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Yellow Mountain imports sells top-up packs (10 stones of each colour). If they have the same size, you could look into that.

I completely agree with you. Broken/chipped/missing/deformed stones are something to be expected by the producer, not the customer. It's a completely trivial issue from the point of view of go-playing, but throws the vendor into a bad light: you paid for 180+181 stones, and whether/why you need them is entirely up to you, because 180+181 is what you should get. I would expect any vendor to take it as seriously as a chess set with a broken piece or a book with a missing page, purely to keep customers happy. I'd be unhappy too.