Software and Hardware Reviews | British Go Association

Software and Hardware Reviews

Click on Title or Review Date to sort into that order. If you're a beginner please visit our Top Picks for Beginners page.

Title	Review Date	Body
Many Faces of Go, version 10.0: review	1997-11	In Number 101 of the British Go Journal Journal, I wrote a review of version 9.0 of David Fotland's program "The Many Faces of Go". Since then, I have been recommending it as the best all-round Go program for someone who is willing to pay for the best. Version 10.0 has just been released. Whereas version 9.0 was a Dos program (and therefore compatible with Windows), version 10.0 is a Windows 95 program. It...
Games of Go on Disk: review	1997-12	One of the methods of study which has always been favoured by strong players is to go through games. The laborious method of placing 200 stones on a board from a diagram has shown its worth over the years. In the computer era there is a choice. It is still much to early too say that the machine-assisted study of games brings the same benefits. It may be that it will influence the training of future professionals, in particular...
Go Professional II: review	1999-09	This is mainly a program which plays go. The standard is about as good as you can get at present. I find actual grades hard to judge, but Go Professional plays at a similar level to Many Faces of Go or Handtalk, it does not try to swindle you as much as Handtalk, and plays quite correctly for much of the time. For all three programs I can give a 9 stone handicap and win by over 100 points without difficulty, but killing every stone on the...
Go Professional III ~ Oxford Softworks: review	2000-06	The programme is very easy to use, with an intuitive interface. Twelve large buttons at the top, information down the left, and the board taking up most of the rest of the screen. It does all you would expect: saving games, loading complete and partly complete games, stepping backwards and forwards through saved games. You can add comments to the games but there is no facility to record alternative sequences. ...
Go Professional III	2000-06	BGJ 119 Summer 2000 Reviewer: Paul Hazelden The good news: Go Professional III by Oxford Softworks is a nice, solid piece of Go-playing software. The bad news: it is, as far as I can tell, almost unchanged from the previous version. There may be some subtle changes to the Go engine, but as a rusty 8 kyu I haven’t worked out yet what they are. I had hoped to review this programme on the basis that I could...
Go at Ease	2000-09	BGJ 119 Autumn 2000 Reviewer: Mogens Jakobsen, June 2000, with help from Lene & Lasse Go at Ease, from Yutopian Enterprises, is a multimedia introduction to Go from Yutopian Enterprises, aimed towards children and beginners. The game is taught through animations and small cartoons. As reviewers of this program, we have been playing Go for around 4 months our son who is nine and a half years old didn't have...
Obsolete: Many Faces of Go Joseki library for the Palm	2001-03	Probably obsolete and no longer available as of March 2014 In my last game at the last London Open, both my opponent and I recorded our games on a Palm using PilotGOne. Now Smart Games has produced the Many Faces of Go Joseki Dictionary for the palmpilot, so I can see just where I went wrong in my first corner against Jim Clare. For those unfamiliar with Palms, they are small personal data assistant (PDA) devices...
Obsolete: Many Faces of Go Palm OS Edition	2001-03	BGJ 122 Spring 2001 Reviewer: William Connolley In my last game at the last London Open, both my opponent and I recorded our games on a Palm using – quick plug – PilotGOne: www.skarpsey.demon.co.uk/pilotgone.html they seem to becoming quite common. Now David Fotland has produced the Many Faces of Go Joseki Dictionary for the palmpilot, so I can see just where I went wrong in my first...
Many Faces of Go, verson 11.0: review	2002-09	Review by Nick Wedd, from British Go Journal 128, Autumn 2002 In issue 109 of this Journal, I wrote a review of version 10 of David Fotland's program "The Many Faces of Go". Since then, I have been recommending it as the best all-round Go program for someone who is willing to pay for the best. Version 11 has now been released. Like version 10, it is a program for Windows, and comes on a CD....
SmartGo:Player and SmartGo:Board	2002-09	Review by Nick Wedd, from British Go Journal 128 These are both programs for Windows, by Anders Kierulf. They are both available from the SmartGo website. SmartGo:Board costs 29 dollars, SmartGo:Player costs 59 dollars. SmartGo:Board SmartGo:Board allows you to play through and edit Go game records. It can handle the two most commonly used formats of game...