Playing through and Creating Game Records

A recommended method of learning about Go is to play through games by professional players; or some prefer to play through games by players slightly stronger than themselves. You can do this with a printed record and a physical Go board. But unless you are very competent, you may find that most of your concentration is spent on following the record accurately and correcting the inevitable mistakes, leaving little for studying the actual moves. It is much easier to play through game records with a computer program that puts the stones in the right positions automatically, allowing you to concentrate on the ideas behind the moves. To do this, you need two things: a program, and some computer game records.

Unfortunately, as is often the case with computers, there are many formats in use. The two commonest formats are Ishi, which looks like

        W 1 r14
        B 2 r9
        W 3 r7

        ;W[ns];B[ss];W[nr]
        ;B[rr];W[sp];B[qs]

        White[qf]
        ;
        Black[qk]
        ;

Recently XML has also been used. There are many other formats, and most programs use only one. Jan van der Steen has a program, sgf2misc, which converts between Ishi, SGF and other formats, and can be obtained from his site. Dieter Garling's GoBase utilities also make some of the many possible format-conversions, and can be downloaded. There are official definitions of the SGF, Ishi and XML formats.

If you want to play through particular game records, you should find out what format they are in, and choose an appropriate program. The Ishi format is preferred by some U.K. players; the SGF format is popular on the internet.

You may also want to record your own games, so that you can play over them yourself later, or so that you can send them to a stronger player who will analyse them for you. In the latter case, you will want to know what record formats she can use. You will need a program that can create game records as well as reading them. Choose one from the list below with Yes in the Allows recording? column.

In choosing a program, you might also consider:

• does it display any comments in the record?
• does it display variations given in the record? I find it very useful when the game record shows what might have happened if another move had been chosen. Others dislike this as they claim it weakens their reading skills.

Some of these programs are no longer available:

Of these GoGap, SmartGo:Board and TenGo are commercial.

GoScribe written by Wayne A. Lobb, had a good, easily learned, user interface, for Ishi format, but was somewhat pricey at £49.95.

SmartGo by Anders Kierulf is the originator of SGF format. It is available for purchase from Smart Go, Inc.

Baduktracer by Changsup Ryu is shareware. If you decide to keep it, you should send him the appropriate amount.

Game Records Website

There is now a web site that allows collection and recording of game records. It was created by George Gozadinos from Greece and is called Egoban.

Obtaining Game Records

Many game records are available on the web, see our list of links.

One particularly complete online collection is available at GoBase.

John Fairbairn and T.Mark Hall offer a large collection of game records in GoGoD, available from Het Paard in Holland, Yutopian in the U.S., or from GoGoD directly.

If you play go on a Go Server, you may be able to arrange for it to send you records of the games you play there.

This page is part of the British Go Association website.

It is part of a list of the ways in which you can use a computer in connection with Go.

Last updated: 2007-04-23.

If you notice any errors, or have any other comments, please inform the webmaster.