American Go E-Journal » Tools: books, software & hardware

The new Igowin Pro brings the features of “The Many Faces of Go” to the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. Igowin’s apps include Igowin Tutor – a free introduction to go– Igowin — 9×9 play — Igowin 13×13 — 13×13 play — Igowin Life – solve life and death problems — and Igowin Joseki, a joseki dictionary and tutor. “The playing apps adjust to your rank and can play a good even game against anyone from 19 kyu to 1 dan,” says author David Fotland. “The knowledge-based engine allows the program to play human-like moves at the weaker settings, generally with good shape,” while the Monte Carlo engine from the latest Many Faces of Go “gives the program great strength.” $4.99. available in the iTunes App Store.

The Go Consultants documents a unique event in go history, Kitani Minoru and Go Seigen’s 1934-35 consultation game against their teachers Suzuki Tamejiro and Segoe Kensaku.  Authors John Fairbairn and T Mark Hall provide fly-on-the-wall observations of what each side was thinking at every stage of the contest, doing an excellent job of describing the characters and putting their status into context for 21st-century readers. In fact the story is related so naturally that The Go Consultants reads like a hard-to-put-down novel, complete with amusing anecdotes as well as keen commentary on the actual progress of the game. It’s like a show-within-a-show. On top of the pure entertainment value of the story, I found it insightful to learn how professional players approach serious games and a relief to discover that even professionals can be taken by surprise. I have always appreciated tightly-decided games more than landslides, because they tend to exemplify the ideal of ‘balanced play’, and without giving away the ending, this game was very closely fought indeed. Whether you’re a novice historian or an obsessive student of go, you won’t find a more thorough deconstruction of a professional game-in-progress. As a bonus, the book includes the players’ own post-mortem analyses. $18 from Slate & Shell
– adapted from Tyler Reynolds’ Go For All blog

A digitized version of Go Review, one of the very first English go publications, is now available. Go Review was published monthly by the Nihon Ki-in from January 1961 to March 1973, then quarterly through Spring 1977. The 160 issues — comprising some 15,000 pages —  are available on three DVDs ($75 each) from Kunaki. The early issues on disks 1 and 2 — 60 issues each, from January 1961 through December 1965 and January 1966 through December 1970 — “represent the halting attempts of the Japanese go world in the early 60s to start spreading the game internationally,” reports Bob Myers of Kiseido Digital on GoDiscussions. “The content is basic and written in poor English. However, it’s still very interesting. There are more handicap games (often with famous Japanese pros) than tournament games, apparently in the belief that pro-pro games might be too hard for foreigners to understand. There’s lots of go news, including about foreigners we all know well now. There are great teaching series by big names. Even the ads from big Japanese companies (which are included in the PDFs) are interesting.” Disk 3, — 40 issues from January 1971 through Spring 1977 — contains the last few years of monthlies and then the “meatier quarterly issues,” which are roughly equivalent to Go World (which succeeded Go Review) in terms of quality and content. A sample of the June 1963 issue of Go Review is available for download at Kiseido Digital.  NOTE: Disc 1 is shown as “Go Review Archive”, and the DVD cover art could mistakenly imply that this item contains all three discs. It does not. This item is Disc 1, and contains only the first 60 issues.
– includes reporting by Sensei’s Library

AllAboutGo.com is a new website dedicated to promoting the knowledge, culture and beauty of go worldwide.  Organized both as a blog and as collection of useful links and articles, the site will feature blog posts from an international team that includes Alexandre Dinerchtein 3P, Hajin Lee 3P, and Youngil An 8P, with  Tyler Reynolds from the Canadian Go Association, and Paul Barchilon from the AGA rounding out the contributors. A downloadable toolbar offers instant RSS updates from several go sites, as well as the ability to search on Sensei’s Library.

If you know them, following joseki is easy, but what happens when your opponent veers off course? Will you know how to handle it? Alexander Dinerchtein 3P has teamed up with Josekipedia to offer a joseki contest exploring this problem. The contest contains three real high-level games containing joseki mistakes. “Find the mistakes, then the best refutations, and win fabulous prizes,” says Dinerchtein. “Even if you are not a joseki expert, you will learn a lot from participating in this contest!” The contest ends April 30.

Early adopters who have already picked up their iPads can use SmartGo Kifu to transform the just-released iPad into a go board with 20,000 professional gamerecords and 2,000 problems. “SmartGo Kifu also offers an innovative way to view and replay games using figures and diagrams like in go books,” says author Anders Kierulf. “Twenty games annotated by Alexandre Dinerchtein are included to showcase this feature, and you can import your own games to view them the same way.”