The Way to Go
Years ago, I learned to play the board game Go.
I was never very good at it. I learned to play quickly, but reached a plateau quickly as well. I would win battles, but lose wars.
This was over eight years ago. In the meantime, I took up music. Now, I play a wide variety of instruments, and even have four albums available on Jamendo.
It’s time for a fifth.
However, I’ve found that in order to create, I need to also be learning something unrelated. I’m not sure how it works, but recently, I looked back through my music notebooks (I’m on #20, now). Every time, my periods of greatest creativity came when I was studying something else, something non-musical. Over the years I’ve studied French, the Python programming language, the Napoleonic Wars and the Age of Sail, Discrete Mathematics and symbolic logic, and countless other minor projects.
So this time, I’m returning to Go.
The online world has changed quite a bit. Here’s what I’ve found so far:
Places to Learn Go
Years ago, the American Go Association had a decent site, as well as Kiseido (a Japanese publishing company focusing on Go related products.)
They are joined by an absolutely amazing site, Sensei’s Library, which seems to operate in a similar spirit to Wikipedia. Like most collaborative sites, the information flows in a sort of tidal wave — or tsunami, I guess I should say — and I still haven’t finished navigating even a tenth of the site. However, the quality of the information is very good.
Places to Play Go
In the old days, there were a few online Go servers, but there was a problem. Back then — you youngsters may not remember this — there was this irritating thing called a “dialup” connection 
This rather tenuous connection to the internet ran at a slow speed, and sometimes collapsed entirely, usually during a crucial operation such as a download or a pitched battle in an online game.
Well, in the year 2008, the internet is a bit more sane in many places. Further, the online sites have had enough experience dealing with disconnect problems that the elements are already in place to smooth out irregularities.
That being said, there are still two fundamental options for playing Go online.
Turn-Based Servers
The games take place in a manner similar to a web forum — you post a move, then your opponent posts a move. The advantages of this method:
- Plenty of time to think about your moves.
- No software to worry about — it’s all handled by a web browser.
- Dropped connections not a problem. Nor are unexpected interruptions to your game.
I am signed up as ‘bmccosar’ on two turn-based servers: Dragon Go Server (DGS) and the Online Go Server (OGS).
Realtime Servers
Here, the choices are legion. However, I have one factor that weeds a lot of them out: I don’t use Windows. I’ve been running Kubuntu Linux for months now, and I’ve been using Linux in general since about 2001.
Many of the realtime go servers require some sort of software client. Few of them have one which can run on my OS easily.
However, the one which is the most open, the most welcoming, and the most Linux-able, is IGS, the Internet Go Server. Because their interface is public (you can even log in and play via telnet), there are many quality clients available, and there are many options for Linux users.
The one I’ve used, so far, is ggo. It has worked pretty well.
As of yet, though, I’ve only played one realtime game.
Endgame
Remember the concept behind my playing Go? Ah, yes, to be able to make better music. It’s much easier for me to play a turn-based game. I can log in, move, then switch back to working on music projects.
Also, frankly, at this stage of the game, I need time to think between each move. There is an old Go proverb that says “Lose your first 50 games as quickly as possible.” Well, there’s losing, and then there’s losing. I see no point in just zipping into a game, plunking down stones without deep thought, then marking up another loss. When I lose, I want to have actually gained something from having played. That way, in the global sense, it’s not really a loss at all.
See? This time, I’m focusing on winning the war, not the battles.
KGS is java based. I use it on linux every day.
Yep — in the days since I wrote this post, I learned how to get cGoban 3 to work on my computer. Here’s the problem:
1. I have a 64 bit machine.
2. The current ‘javaws’ for 64 bit is broken (openjdk — sun-java hasn’t ported it to 64 at all).
3. In order to do it, I have to boot into a 32 bit environment — which I’m doing right now, since I dual-boot.
Took a while for me to figure it out, though, which is why it’s not mentioned above!
Can’t you just run the 32 bit java in your 64 bit os? (I don’t know but it would seem reasonable)
I always have a 2nd ‘experimental’ partition available for emergencies. Usually it’s Xubuntu. This time I chose 32 bit not only to run Sun’s javaws, but also to run Renoise. I figured other 32-bit only apps will come along. All things considered, an entire operating system doesn’t take up that much space — compared to all of the audio files I work with!