Life In 19x19

Hello all,

apparently, at the end of March Yahoo closed their Go server, together with other games … let’s tell them where to play.

Here’s a comment I found that one can vote for (sadly, I can only give it three of my ten votes):

https://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/2322 ... here-check

Greetings, Tom

I have not been on that site in years but from what I remember it is not a great loss.

DrStraw wrote:I have not been on that site in years but from what I remember it is not a great loss.

D’accord, but apparently many people used it who liked that one could play a quick game w/ registration (so I’ve been told).

To be fair, IGS, OGS, and KGS are all much more polished and player friendly than Yahoo Games. These servers are for players who are at least moderately serious. If you want to send Yahoo users to a server that is more like their own, you need to send them to FlyOrDie.

That said, this is a sad day for the world of go in America. Thousands of players learned about the game through those servers. I've met several people who said that was the first place they ever played go. Hopefully some of Yahoo's regulars will decide to come to a better go server.

I'm pretty sure I played Go on Yahoo for the first time. I didn't really pick it up until I met back up with a Korean friend of mine in college and we started playing.

DrStraw wrote:I have not been on that site in years but from what I remember it is not a great loss.

I think Yahoo is a major loss. Yahoo (whether we like to admit it or not) for most of its run was larger than KGS or IGS often larger than both put together. It did the go community an incredible service in the form of raising awareness of the game.

Yahoo wasn't pretty, the rating system was crap, a lot of the user behavior was annoying, and it's rules implementations were questionable...but perhaps that was the beauty of it. Instead of getting bogged down in all the minutiae as we go players are wont to do, Yahoo ignored all that and gave a wide audience a "play now" button. It didn't care how the stones looked, how fair a pairing it was, or how the exact procedure for ending a game should be...it simply wanted to make go as readily available, as quickly as possible, to as many people as possible, knowing that if they just play they'll fall in love with the game exactly how many of is in this forum have.

If you ask me, we could all learn a thing or two from Yahoo.

I think the now server-less people from Yahoo might feel right at home at http://www.playok.com - the interface is very similar, the rating system pretty much the same, but its overall nicer. And it follows the same multi-game concept as Yahoo.

Bantari, thanks. Their UI is much better than Yahoo Games' ever was:

Xiangqi:Go:Chess:Backgammon:Shogi:Bridge (not very spectator-friendly! ).

EdLee wrote:Bantari, thanks. Their UI is much better than Yahoo Games' ever was

Yes.
As I said - it is overall nicer.
What is important, I think, is that conceptually it follows the same idea as Yahoo
So I thought the orphaned Yahoo people can feel more at home there than on KGS or IGS or OGS or WhaterGS.

Bantari wrote:

EdLee wrote:Bantari, thanks. Their UI is much better than Yahoo Games' ever was

Yes.
As I said - it is overall nicer.
What is important, I think, is that conceptually it follows the same idea as Yahoo
So I thought the orphaned Yahoo people can feel more at home there than on KGS or IGS or OGS or WhaterGS.

Thanks for the heads up on this. I'm thinking maybe I should start playing there.

I heard a lot of complaints on KGS yesterday about people from Yahoo Go server coming to KGS. Many people were complaining that they 'cheat'.

Dante31 wrote:I heard a lot of complaints on KGS yesterday about people from Yahoo Go server coming to KGS. Many people were complaining that they 'cheat'.

"Cheat" in what way? They hide aces in their sleeves? Use counterfeit money to pay for KGS+?

From what I remember from Yahoo, the "culture" there is very low-level, and many people will have to be re-educated to successfully fit into a better behaved community like KGS. This is another reasons I suggested PlayOk - it is a sort-of middle-ground between the mess of Yahoo and the order of proper Go server. Might serve as a half-way house.

Whether interface was bad or not, yahoo go server did great service to go community. They created go server well before any other server was created and made it available to go community. We used to have fantastic tournament for few years before some people migrated to KGS. I used to manage Korean team there and it was fun while lasting.
RIP Yahoo Go Server!!!!!!

trout wrote:Whether interface was bad or not, yahoo go server did great service to go community. They created go server well before any other server was created and made it available to go community. We used to have fantastic tournament for few years before some people migrated to KGS. I used to manage Korean team there and it was fun while lasting.
RIP Yahoo Go Server!!!!!!

Yeah, was my first server as well. It was called Microsoft Gaming Zone then, and looked differently. In '96 or so...
Then I found IGS, NNGS, and the fun begun. Still played on Yahoo occasionally, but then KGS came and I pretty much stopped. Good old times.

Bantari wrote:

Dante31 wrote:I heard a lot of complaints on KGS yesterday about people from Yahoo Go server coming to KGS. Many people were complaining that they 'cheat'.

"Cheat" in what way? They hide aces in their sleeves? Use counterfeit money to pay for KGS+?

From what I remember from Yahoo, the "culture" there is very low-level, and many people will have to be re-educated to successfully fit into a better behaved community like KGS. This is another reasons I suggested PlayOk - it is a sort-of middle-ground between the mess of Yahoo and the order of proper Go server. Might serve as a half-way house.

The answer I got was: they mess with the scoring at the end, and try to prolong the game needlessly hoping to win on time.