Best programs to practice go?

[jseaturtle]

Hi all,

I'm looking for a program to help me develop my go skills, especially eye-building and life and death problems. I play online when I can, but my schedule is a disaster, and I hate to start games with a person when there's a good chance I"ll have to walk away, so was hoping to find a program that would help me practice!

Preference for Mac programs, but can always run in windows programs if necessary.

Thanks!

[CnP]

you might want to consider playing on a turn based server - like DGS.

for offline - well you could always get some problem books - no OS required

As for software, it's well documented on SL: http://senseis.xmp.net/?Software

Digitally, perhaps GoGrinder for problems (http://senseis.xmp.net/?GoGrinder), Go Game Guru have released their problems in sgf format (https://github.com/gogameguru/go-problems) and they work well in GoGrinder. Go playing AI? there are free ones and paid ones (listed on Sensei's library http://senseis.xmp.net/?GoPlayingPrograms). Crazy Stones is the one to get IMO if the $80 price doesn't put you off, though ManyFacesofGo includes problems (from the Graded Go Problems for beginners book series).

[sybob]

Fairly extensive lists of programs and apps can be found here
http://www.goishi.nl/411053686
and
http://www.goishi.nl/411297138.

It is in Dutch, but links are provided.

If you want to practice life and death, perhaps Sahwal in particular can be of help to you.
Available both for Android and Apple. I also like the Tsumego Pro app for Android.

[Jujube]

I will second the shout-out to GoGrinder. I'm working through GGPFB vol 2, and as I'm working through it, I'm making the SGFs in GOWrite so I can put them in GoGrinder for quick and efficient practice later on.

What I especially like about GoGrinder is that it will swap around colours and orientations on the board at random, so that each time you revisit the files, they look different.

It also tracks your statistics so you can see if you're getting more accurate. Great for, er, grinding.

[jseaturtle]

Great! Thanks everyone for the suggestions! Sounds like GoGrinder is a popular starting point tailored for this purpose. Crazy Go and Many Faces sound like good tools down the road, but maybe only after more time iwth this programs.

CnP: I've read some books, but they don't give me the opportunity to play incorrectly and see why my decisions were terrible (as they usually are at this stage!), so I like the idea of a program. But thanks for the recommendation!

[Richard Hunter]

For the iPhone and iPad, I recommend EasyGo.

I collect problems in a zip file, save it to Dropbox and import it on the iOS device. The app also comes with a large set of problems.

SmartGo Kifu on iOS and SmartGo for Mac also come with problem sets, but you can't import your own collection.

Actually, you can open your own problem collections in SmartGo for Mac (currently in beta). You surely know how to create an sgf collection of your own problems with multiple problems in one file. What you may not know is that you can turn it into a problem collection. There are two ways.

1. Duplicate the file and change the file suffix .sgf to .prb and Smartgo will handle it like the bundled set of problems.

2. Open your sgf file. File menu - Save As. Change the File Format popup from Go Game to Go Problem. That saves a copy as a .prb file. However, it displays incorrectly. You need to close the file and reopen it to get the problem interface.