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

and SGF (Smart Game Format) also known as MyGoTutor which may now look like

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

though older files may look like

        White[qf]
        ;
        Black[qk]
        ;

The SGF format is the one used by Go servers.

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.

Programs for Playing through and Creating Game Records

Some of these programs are no longer available:

Name of program	O.S.	Allows Recording?	Format used	Handles Comments?	Handles Variations?
BadukTracer	Macintosh	Yes	SGF	Yes	Yes
cgoban	Unix/X11	Yes	SGF	Yes	Yes
CGoban3	Java	Yes	SGF	Yes	Yes
GoScribe	Dos	Yes	Ishi	Yes	Yes
Goban770	Maemo (Nokia)	Yes	SGF	Yes	Yes
GoGap	Windows	No	its own	No	No
GoGoD	Dos	No	Ishi, SGF	Yes?	No?
GoGoD/GoGoD95	32-bit Windows	Yes	Ishi, SGF	Yes?	No?
Go Info	Windows	Yes	SGF, Ishi	No	No
Go Maximizer	Dos	No	its own (GMX)	Yes	No
Gome	Jav Mobile/PDA	?	?	?	?
Go Scorer	32-bit Windows	No	Ishi	No	No
GoView	Dos	No	Ishi	Yes	Yes
Go Write	Windows	Yes	SGF	Yes	Yes
JiGo	Any (java)	No	SGF	Yes	No
My Go Tutor	Dos	Yes	SGF	Yes	Yes
My Go Tutor for Windows	Windows	Yes	SGF	Yes	Yes
Parker's program	Dos	Yes	its own	?	?
PilotGOne	Palm Pilot with PalmOS2 or better	Yes	SGF	?	Yes
Primiview	Amiga OS 3.0	Yes	SGF	Yes	Yes
SGView	Dos	Yes	SGF	Yes	Yes
SmartGo	Windows	Yes	SGF (also reads Ishi)	Yes	Yes
Smart Go Board	Macintosh	Yes	SGF (also reads Ishi)	Yes	Yes
Telego	Dos	No	Ishi	Yes	Yes
TenGo	PalmOS 5 HiRes or better	Yes	SGF	Yes	Yes
Went	Psion-EPOC32	No	SGF	No	No
Yago	Windows	Yes	Ishi, SGF	Yes	Yes

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.

Promoting Go in the UK and beyond