Goban - 3.2.12

3.2.9 was actually released on October 28 of last year. The web site shows no more recent version. (There's a new universal binary of Gnu Go.)

It seems this listing was premature. (Not that there is anything wrong with 3.2.9, which works very well.)

"Goban" is Japanese for the Go board itself, a fitting name for this program. These days you can pay up to a quarter million dollars for a classic-style Japanese (or Korean, or Chinese) Go board with legs, carved from a huge butcher's block of kaya wood. Goban is carved from the ethereal stuff of pure mind, plus a few zillion whizzing electrons, and I am hard pressed to say which is the better value. For one thing, Goban is a self-teaching tool. You can play against GNU Go 3.4, which is built in, or GNU Go 3.6, which you download from the official GNU Go site. You can even watch as GNU Go 3.4 plays against GNU Go 3.6. You can download one of hundreds of "sgf" files from the net, and replay the games one stone at a time (sometimes with comments!) or as a movie. You can set the board size to 7x7, 9x9, 11x11, 13x13, up to the full 19x19. You can play against beginners on the major internet go servers, you can watch pros and talented amateurs play against each other on the same servers -- and Goban is pre-configured to work as a client with two of the best, IGS Pandanet and No Name Go Server -- all you have to do is apply for a username and password. And you can simply bask in the aesthetic pleasure of seeing the games drawn so beautifully. Speaking of which, look at the About box. The graphic is "Sparrows nesting in a Go bowl", taken (with permission) from the IGS Pandanet collection of Japanese art featuring Go themes. The only thing Goban won't allow you to do is pick up the board and hurl it, kabuki-like, at an attacker (or Go opponent), with Go-ishi scattered to the winds. Maybe with a laptop...? Brilliant, brilliant work. If I could wish for anything, I'd ask for a way to turn the board around and see it from the opponent's point of view. That, and an up front explanation that 30 kyo is as low a Go ranking as you can possibly get. I hate this game. I love Goban.

This is truly an excellent and well-designed program. It looks beautiful, has dozens of settings, and isn't just a go-playing program, but lets you save, analyze, annotate, and review games. Absolutely awesome.

One big problem: Every time you leave an old game open and choose "New" from the File menu, a new copy of gnugo starts up (the CLI app that provides the Go engine). Each instance takes about 12 megs... I found 10 of them running at once. Biiiiig memory leak!

Play against Gnugo, play over the 'net with others, what does one want more?

Plus, this game is beautifully designed, and it has a nice little community mailing list with an attentive developer.

Oh, and it's free... I'd probably also pay for it -- if I currently had any money. It's worth good money, and we get it for free.

Thank you

Unfortunately, this new verson (v59) hangs upon launching. The board and the server window are opened, the spinning beach ball appears, and the only way out is a forced quit. Earlier versions didn't have this problem; I hope it's a small glitch that gets fixed soon, because Goban is a beautiful app.