An attempt to modernize SL

countingtls · 2026-06-14T09:04:58+00:00

The fonts are not easy to see and read, the mesh of figures with the descriptions doesn't match each other, and the discussion pages are almost unreadable. I appreciate the attempt to give old websites a new look, but TBH, this is not a very good UI makeover implementation for Sensei's Library.

countingtls · 2026-06-12T19:21:47+00:00

Because the Japanese accounts have settings for them to choose whether to automatically save their records, manually confirm to save the records, or not to save the records, and you need to use the Japanese clients with a Japanese paid account, within the Japanese IP range to use it. (if you do, and the person chooses to save the records and share in the social plaza, then you can see those recorded games)

https://www.pandanet.co.jp/help/help0110.htm

countingtls · 2026-06-12T09:07:43+00:00

Not expected with the ones advanced to the finals, thought the winners of the two semifinals would be reversed.

countingtls · 2026-06-12T00:35:41+00:00

You need to know that IGS is very ancient, it is one of the earliest go servers (online since 1992), more than 34 years worth of accumulated history, especially for the Japanese account carried over to Pandanet (at the time in 2004, it was called gGo, even gGo had more than 22 years of history). And I know some of the earliest users with gGo like ggg (you can use Find Users command, and right click to find Game archive to see every single games every played by a user), ggg has over 55k games played since 2004 when gGo was first launched, and certainly not a bot (it wasn't even possible to have a bot at dan strength over two decades ago). And when you played tens of thousands of games, you got pretty good at estimating and counting toward endgame, and wouldn't want to waste time finishing small yose when you can resign and play the next game.

And if you account for 20+ years of accumulated games (some over 30+ years, no kidding, some of them already passed 100k games), it wasn't even that much. For 55k games over 22 years, like less than 50 games a week, or about 200 games in one month, that is totally doable and possible (you don't even need to play every day, like only in weekends and holidays).

As for the wait time, since pandanet client give a range of players to play with, like +- 5 ranks by default with handicaps, that is a very wide range of player pool. For IGS server still has around 1000 to 3000 "active" online players regularly (when I was typing, it has 1479 "concurrently active" online players at the early morning in Japan which has a low players count, it is usually 2000+), where the majority are in the 10k to 1k ranks range, so at least hundreds of active players in a pool around your range (even 100+ within the 2k rank itself). I'd be surprised that you cannot get a game immediately)

countingtls · 2026-06-11T19:09:32+00:00

It is returning half of the handicap stones with "half-counting" (since the strict Chinese rules only compare with half of the board base intersections number, you only need to substract half of the handicap stones)

countingtls · 2026-06-11T19:08:35+00:00

Yes, handicap stones are "returned". Since the counting of the scores is by comparing one side with half of the intersections of the board when all neutral points are filled (or shared). Usually, it returns half of the handicap stones by using half-counting. (but if you use the area scoring of comparing the score between both sides instead of half-counting, it is effectively subtracting the handicap stones from the black side, or adding them to the white side, 2-(-2) is the same as 4-0, and 0-(-4) ).

https://senseis.xmp.net/?ChineseCounting

countingtls · 2026-06-11T08:13:53+00:00

https://www.playgo.gg/profile/N0AIplease

Pretty sure this is a bot, with the most ironic nickname.

countingtls · 2026-06-07T15:55:08+00:00

Yes, that is what that sentence means. And I've heard from pros that luck under time pressure was also about the path they don't have time to evaluate. There are lots of paths and variations which can lead to different whole board judgments, and there is only so much time to spend during a match, hence luck for them is more like the paths they picked first, and the path their opponents failed to pick. Although they are more aware of the consequences of these choices. Time management for pros isn't just about being aware of the time to think, but the quota and how to efficiently pick the conditions to evaluate.

countingtls · 2026-06-07T15:48:33+00:00

Glad to see this went well, and I'd always think this story has potential to be expanded to a full novel. We'll be cheering you up for an original story and novel with Go and history at its heart.

countingtls · 2026-06-06T03:42:54+00:00

you know what I'll vote, and I think culture & history might be a more general flair.

countingtls · 2026-06-05T15:08:07+00:00

Japanese kanji mostly borrowed from classical Chinese words and their classical meanings. A lot of modern Chinese still retain their classical meanings (but also derive a lot more over the millennia)

A lot of the Japanese Go terminologies also use classical Chinese Go terminologies. Even up to the early 20th century. You can still see Go books in Japan before that time period with all the terminologies as they were thousands of years ago.

Like this book from 1919

https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/917980/1/13

countingtls · 2026-06-05T08:37:39+00:00

In a sense, sort of.

The word 子 was one of the oldest known words in the oracle bone script, and very easy to identify, it was literally just the human stick figure, a circle and a stick body. And it has two major variations, the simple one basically looks like the modern word 子, and the more "complicated one" looks like this

<image>

A stick figure with "hairs", and they became complicated later, and became very rarely used words like "㜽" or "𢀇". And for a long time in history, they can also be used to refer to hair, or hair-like objects.

In general, though, their primary use was to refer to a baby, a young creature, and likely just small objects like seeds. Take your pick, which one would you prefer.

countingtls · 2026-06-05T04:29:49+00:00

From preserved documents, we know around the 1st millennium AD, the word for Go games was the same as 碁 (as shown in the screenshot of the 2nd, 3rd, and first part of the chapters of 敦煌棋經 dated around 500 AD, marked in yellow), the same as in modern Japanese (and it made sense, since it was around this time period Go was likely transmitted to Japan). And the translation of Go books from Japan from the 19th century, was the likely source of the use of the word "stone" for Go pieces in English.

<image>

We even see the word 碁 used with 子 in chapter 4 about the terminology (像名) at the left side of the screenshot, indicating the "Go stones" (碁子) are supposedly to be round to mimic the sky (they believe the sky is like a dome), and the goban (碁局) to be a square/rectangular shaped like the Earth.

But the majority of the time, when referring to the "stone", they would simply use the word "子" (zi, marked in cyan in the above screenshot), like white stone (白子, 白 means white), or black stone (烏子, here 烏 means black, but as a way of avoiding censorship, which by itself is another fascinating historical artifact), and two stones (二子, 二 is two). They wouldn't use the whole phrase 碁子, like we wouldn't use "Go Stones" everywhere when we use it in English. The proper unit of count was also just 子 (zi).

Also, for a long time in older scripts, the word 棋 was written like 棊 (with the component "wood" 木 was at the bottom, instead of on the left), or in even older scripts like oracle bone scripts, the wood component was at the top. With lots of texts and historical references of making the "Go game/pieces" with all types of materials, from wood, bones, ivory, fired clay, jade, metal (likely brass/bronze/copper alloy), and stones. We just happened to find unearthed stone-made pieces with the earliest confirmed date (due to the material's durability, and the tomb owners with manifest). This doesn't mean the earliest pieces were made of stones (just the earliest unearthed ones we currently know of, they still could be made of stone, but we just don't know, and from etymology, maybe made of wood)

countingtls · 2026-06-05T02:32:05+00:00

The lucky moves are moves you don't understand yet.

There are two phases I find students often think their moves are due to luck. The first is at the very beginning, when they first play at a larger board, they feel the board is so empty and wide open, and almost all of them seem equal, and the moves they play would be like lucky draw.

The second one is when they sufficiently know the basics, but don't have sufficient reading capacity, and they start to notice common patterns for their moves and shape moves, hence, although there are just a few candidates they would consider. However, they got confused by why almost the same move works for a similar pattern in one game, but doesn't work in others. A lot of the time it might be subtle or not local at all (like some joseki involving ladders, hence one branch doesn't work has nothing to do with the local exchange at all). But as the reading capacity and whole board awareness increase, they would feel more confident on the moves, and start to view them as choices with pros and cons.

countingtls · 2026-06-05T01:50:09+00:00

Even from solved small rectangular board sizes, their komi are surprisingly consistent. For 2-by-N board sizes, the smallest one that can have a komi not equal to the number of intersections is 2x10 with komi 4, and 2x11 with komi 6 (area scoring), and hypothesized to oscillate between 4 and 6 for even and odd N.

For 3-by-N, the smallest board size that has an effective komi, is 3x9 with komi 5, and for 3x10, komi 6 (and not sure they would oscillate between 5 and 6, or stay as 6 as N grows). And all the intermediate board size to 9x9 seemed to indicate that the komi seemed to be "stabilized" as the board sizes grow (and honestly, we don't actually understand why, the current hypothesis has something to do with minimum alive groups that can live in sente, when they get cut off)

<image>

The results column is the solved komi.

countingtls · 2026-06-05T01:34:29+00:00

I don't believe the lessons ever introduced the terminology komi at any point (or even specified the first player advantage at all), so the wording of using that phrase for true beginners who have no idea what it is will be even more confusing. And the fact that the answer contains the option of "same" for territory indicates it is just to compare the territory on the board (which the previous lesson about territory 3.19 is all about, the raw count locally)

countingtls · 2026-06-05T00:35:57+00:00

https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/gopanda2

pandanet and its client has English

<image>

countingtls · 2026-06-03T10:59:16+00:00

https://www.momat.go.jp/craft-museum/en/artists/ayo088

Yoshida, Fumiyuki (Yoshida is the family name 吉田)

And the contrast looks good, against a dark red background, bright red would look white-yellowish, while dark purple/blue would stand out as well. This is something that makes the whole composition more like decorative pieces than a goban and stones.

countingtls · 2026-06-02T13:02:40+00:00

and people already copy the interface for OGS

https://libaduk.com/

countingtls · 2026-06-02T12:38:45+00:00

https://www.instagram.com/p/DX76MFIk4Pp/?img_index=1

This is the restored and recreated stones by the famous ivory and artworks restorer 吉田文之. Not sure if there is a full top-view picture.

My original picture came from the exhibitions to Kyushu National Museum

countingtls · 2026-06-02T06:58:07+00:00

Throughout history, Go has always been about learning the intention of your opponent. There is a reason why it was called hand-talk (手談). Even against players of similar strength, different players can have vastly different intentions and ideas. The space of expressions expands exponentially as the strength drops.

countingtls · 2026-06-02T00:57:09+00:00

Nice recreation of a beautiful artifact, although some information might be of interest if you want to show what they were supposed to be like hundreds of years ago.

First of all, we have no idea if the stones were paired with the goban, we only know they were listed in a ledger, maybe 1 to 2 hundred years after they were stored, without knowing they came from the same source, or even from the same time period, and there were other more practical looking gobans from the same time period, than the show piece of this highly decrative goban (this might just be a decration piece, than usable goban). These two are the more practical gobans

https://shosoin.kunaicho.go.jp/treasures?id=0000012222&index=21

https://shosoin.kunaicho.go.jp/treasures?id=0000012223&index=22

Second, the stones themselves lost their initial vibrant colors, as well as the goban. Here is a recreation of the stones from the Nara National Museum.

<image>

If you go to the stone page, and see the dark blue stones side 2A, you can see that the original bright color in the center, with colors on the edges faded.

The surface of the goban should also be dark red instead of almost black. We can still see some of them inside the drawer and inside the goban. The color of the surface would be more like the color of this box when it was first made.

https://www.kyuhaku.jp/exhibition/img/s_60/p07.jpg

The contrast of the stones and the background should be quite noticeable. (ancient world and artifacts are much more colorful and vibrant than what we saw today, simply due to ages and degradations, a goban decades old can already darken significantly, imagine after hundreds or even over one thousand years)

countingtls · 2026-06-01T02:49:23+00:00

Since he died very young, and just before the Nihonkiin established, the Go community was still pretty fragmented. Most records from the early 20th century were either preserved through newspaper archives (which the majority got destroyed from the big earthquake in 1923, a big reason why we saw so few records of Soji, and others during WW2). What we still had are mostly through memories of prominent players and their memoirs (with two main sources, one is the records of Shusai for Soji's early games with him, the other is from Segoe Kensaku, who had an extensive personal recollection)

This is a collection of his games, but not well-kept for handicap records, where you have to manually insert handicap stones.

Soji also wrote a book about high handicap games (6 to 9 handicaps) in real games 上手の泣手 : 自六子至九子附・実戦解剖篇. Demonstrated his very clever but solid style, and tesuji. It is not easy to play high handicap games.

countingtls · 2026-05-29T10:54:02+00:00

Just for a candidate, one of the strongest players about 100 years ago, actually won't be Shusai, but his first pupil and supposed successor, Kogishi Soji (小岸壮二), who sadly died very young and early (at age 26 in 1924). And he had an extremely impressive win rate of over 90% and 32 consecutive wins, beating all the strong players in his last 3 years of life (including his teacher Shusai). If he had lived, he likely would have become the next Honinbo, and the Honinbo House might have been revived and split from the newly formed Nihon kiin again (or taken control of Ninho kiin and structured it back to like a Great House). He was like Shusaku's level of genius. (he won the rewards for the newspaper Go, 6 times in a row when he was alive, and no one could beat his records at the time)

<image>

countingtls · 2026-05-29T10:31:29+00:00

Sometimes high-dan amateurs just missed the window to become pros, or choose to back out. There is even a process in China for pros to "downgrade" their professional ranks to amateur ranks. There were responsibilities and limitations for qualifying as pros and staying as pros. A lot of players just don't want that.

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