American Go E-Journal » 2013 » February

Redmond Cup Open for Registration

Saturday February 2, 2013

Young American go players can now sign up for the 20th annual Redmond Cup Tournament. For the first time, the tourney will be held on KGS instead of IGS. There are two divisions in the Cup; the Junior league for kids under 12 years old, and the Senior league for those under 18, on August 10 2012. The two finalists in each division win a free trip to the 2013 US Go Congress to play the final games in person.  Competitors in the Senior League must have an AGA rank of  1 dan or higher, in the Junior 5 kyu or stronger. The participants must be members of the American Go Association or the Canadian Go Association and either residents of the U.S., Canada or Mexico, or citizens of the United States living anywhere in the world, provided that they are also members of the AGA. The tournament director for the Redmond Cup is Michael Bull; AGA rules for all games. To register e-mail youth@usgo.org with your name, phone #, date of birth, AGA rating, KGS ID, and citizenship. The registration deadline is March 10, 2013. The Cup is sponsored by Michael Redmond 9P and his family, the American Go Association and the American Go Foundation. Photo: 2012 finalists, Jianing Gan 7d (l),  and Calvin Sun 7d(r) compete at the US Go Congress in Black Mountain, NC. – Paul Barchilon, Youth Editor.


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SGFs and iStuff

Friday February 1, 2013

When I was reviewing Weiqi2Go (Weiqi2Go Update 1/29 EJ) and discovered that there was no “Import” function, I thought it strange. I assumed that most go apps include this function, but it turns out that a good sgf reader is surprisingly hard to find. Most apps just save the records the user creates. I found only two programs that allow the user to import games: Smart Go Kifu, priced at $19.99; and EasyGo, priced at $11.99. It’s easier to import a large number of files into EasyGo; Smart Go Kifu only lets you do one at a time. On the other hand, Smark Go Kifu already contains a library of 40,000 games,  as well as a way to record your games, a tutorial, a pretty strong playing program, 2,000 problems, 30 annotated games, a joseki matching feature, and more. You can also purchase and read many classics from Smart Go Books. Seems worth the extra cost unless you really need to import large databases.

What if you just want a free app to look at your sgfs? For now, it seems there is only one option. It’s a little clunky, but it works. Here’s how:
1. Install the latest version of Panda-Tetsuki, Pandanet’s client for  The Internet Go Server client, on your device.
2. Install Dropbox on your device.
3. On your desktop, move the files you want to review to a directory in Dropbox.
4. Make sure your device is connected to the Internet.
5. Open Dropbox on your device, find the sgf you want to view and click on it.
6. A window will open with a button containing the Pand-Tetsuki icon. Click on it.
7. Voila! The game appears onscreen.

You need to be connected to the Internet to load a game, and you can’t save sgfs in Tetsuki, so if you have 3G great, but Wi-Fi has its limits. I guess if you’re serious enough about go to collect game records, you’ll have to spend a few bucks.

Thanks to Tomasz Podolec for pointing out the Dropbox connection.

– Roy Laird

 

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