HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (Bob Sloane)
Newsgroups: rec.games.go
Subject: Re: FWD: GO RULES FOR BEGINNERS (rec.games.go)
Date: 26 Jan 93 15:09:32 GMT
Article-I.D.: kuhub.1993Jan26.090932.46768
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

In article <9301221630.AB00981@enet-gw.pa.dec.com>,
 osman@hannah.enet.dec.com writes:
> 	For example, imagine a hypothetical game where lots of the board is
> 	filled with live black *stones* but white has more territory and less
> 	stones.  White wins, even though black has occupied more of the board
> 	with his groups.

No, black wins (unless he moved last, and the difference is 1 point).
Barring seki and handicaps, japanese and chinese scoring can never
differ by more than one point.

If the board is filled with live black stones, but white has more
territory and fewer stones, then black must have captured a bunch of
prisoners.  Keep in mind the fact that the players alternate, and must
have played the same number of stones (within one stone if black moves
last). For example, suppose the (9X9) board looks like:

X X X X X X X X X
X X X . X X . X X
X X X X X X X X X
X X X X X X X X X
X X X X X X X X X
O O O O O O O O O
O . . . . . . . O
O . . . . . . . O
O . . . . . . . O

Black has two points of territory and white has 21, but black has
played 43 stones, so white must have played at least 42 stones. Since
only 15 of them are left on the board, the rest must have been
captured, giving black an additional 27 points. Black wins. You might
be able to construct artificial games where white passes and black
playes inside his/her own territory but in real games, if you occupy
more of the board than your opponent, then you win.
-- 
USmail: Bob Sloane, University of Kansas Computer Center, Lawrence, KS, 66045
E-mail: sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu, sloane@ukanvax.bitnet, AT&T: (913)864-0444
From: mdobbins@asns.tredydev.Unisys.COM (Michael Dobbins)
Newsgroups: rec.games.go
Subject: Re: FWD: GO RULES FOR BEGINNERS (rec.games.go)
Date: 26 Jan 93 14:43:57 GMT
Organization: Unisys Corporation, Tredyffrin, PA

In article <1993Jan26.004136.28008@news.acns.nwu.edu> jzy@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Jim Yu) writes:
>Could this be a difference in the scoring rules?  In my experience, if we
>use Chinese scoring rule, then the winner is the one who gets more points
>(intersections) *on the board*, regardless of prisoners.  Eric's example
>can be possible if we use Japanese rule -- which makes me feel that this is
>a drawback of Japanese rule. :-)

Before we go too far down this path, I believe that it has been proven
that the Chinese and Japanese scoring systems typically produce the same
win/lose results (within one stone).  Normalizing the seki scoring rules
and proper handling of pass stones make them identical.  This is what
the AGA rules have done. Following those rules either Chinese or
Japanese counting is legal in an AGA tournament.
Organization: Penn State University
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 11:26:53 EST
From: <GDH3@psuvm.psu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.go
Subject: Re: non-Cartesian boards

In 1975 I made a GO "board" that could be carried and played on while
walking.  It was a balsa wood cube, about 4 inches square, with very
rounded edges, to roughly simulate a sphere.  On each of the six faces
was drawn a 7 X 7 grid, but all the lines were extended to connect with
the adjoining faces.  Hence every line went all the way around the sphere.
This gave a total of 294 liberties, ALL of which have 4 adjoining liberties.
(i.e., there are no corners).  The same pattern could be drawn on a
sphere, of course.  The "stones" were thumbtacks, the long handled kind,
in two colors.  We carried the tacks in pouches and tossed the "board"
back and forth as we walked.  We also played it sitting in easy chairs,
again not facing each other, but just tossing the cube back and forth.
This all happened in Berkeley, CA.   Mitchell Timin
From: smidt@fy.chalmers.se (Peter Smidt)
Newsgroups: rec.games.go
Subject: Re: TGIGC: two problems
Date: 21 Jan 93 16:20:31 GMT
Organization: Chalmers University of Technology

In article <18005@umd5.umd.edu> zpy@lpf.umd.edu (Zhiping You) writes:
>Another problem I have with TGIGC is that I cannot turn the beeper
>off. When I play in the midnight, this upsets other people in the
>same house. In PCIGC, I can just say beeps=0, I hope I can do the
>same thing to TGIGC. Anybody knows how?

maybe you should try 'toggle bell' on the server.
-- 
+=======================================+
"The whole valley is like a smorgasbord."
					-- TREMORS
Newsgroups: rec.games.go
From: tanaka@til.til.com (Yokichi Tanaka)
Subject: Re: Etiquette question
Organization: Togai InfraLogic, Inc.
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 00:38:09 GMT

In article <1jinj3INNdud@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu>, smg6@po.CWRU.Edu (Stanley M. Golem) writes:
|> 
|> About the Japanese custom on "nigiri":  the literal meaning of the 
|> word comes from the Japanese verb meaning "to grab" or "to grasp."
|>

Yes.  "Nigiri" comes from the verb "to grab" or "to grasp", but is
actually a noun.  So, the closest translation would be "the grab",
"the grip", "the grasp", "the hold", "the clench".

-- 
Yoke Tanaka                Togai InfraLogic, Inc.       "fuzzy"
tanaka@til.com             5 Vanderbilt, Irvine, Calif 92718, USA
gordius!til!tanaka         714-975-8522
From: jonathan@cats.ucsc.edu (Jonathan Cano)
Newsgroups: rec.games.go
Subject: Re: Internet Go Server Status.
Date: 25 Jan 1993 22:17:48 GMT
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz
NNTP-Posting-Host: am.ucsc.edu


cust_ts@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Tero Sand) writes:

>In article <1993Jan25.104132.575@otago.ac.nz> barryp@otago.ac.nz writes:
>>If I have a suggestion it is that some more
>>information be made available about other people's ratings.  I hope that
>>this idea wouldn't offend too many people now.

>One solution I heard from someone: a 'toggle public' flag, which (when
>enabled) would let other people see your rating.

   This is an excellent idea!!  All the people who are opposed to ratings
   can continue to ignore them ...
   
   On the subject of suggestions: I've been meaning to add some
   functionality to IGC - I would like to issue some sort of 'who'
   command that would do more complex filtering e.g. filter out all
   people who have their open flag set to false, then sort the remaining
   list according to rank and/or 'looking' flag ...  This would make it
   simpler to look for an opponent of similar strength who is interested
   in a game.  The reason I'm mentioning this here is because perhaps
   someone will *get to* these improvements before I do (which might be
   never :^).

--Jonathan

>	Tero Sand

-- 
============================================
| Jonathan Cano             |     //   _   |
| jonathan@cats.ucsc.edu    | \\ //   (_)  |
| 10kyu (+- 2kyu)           |  \X/     |<  |
============================================
From: ocrow@zonker.cs.berkeley.edu (Oliver Crow)
Newsgroups: rec.games.go
Subject: Request xgospel help
Date: 27 Jan 1993 01:27:26 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: zonker.cs.berkeley.edu


I'm trying to install xgospel on our Sparcs, but I can't
get the observe window to come up.  On clicking an entry
in the game, window, I get the message:

Warning: parse error, expecting `OBSERVE':
Somewhere in
----------
9 Adding game to observation list.
2 
15 Game 1: Meijin (0 255 -1) vs laker (0 36 -1)
15 127(W): E3
1 8

----------

presumably meaning that somehow the parser has failed to
recognise that I am now observing a game.  Has anyone else
had this problem, or does anyone know how to get it to work?

I should very much appreciate any advice on this matter
(pref. send a copy by e-mail), as the program otherwise 
seems to be a big advance on xigs.

Oliver
From: dwr2560@zeus.tamu.edu (RING, DAVID WAYNE)
Newsgroups: rec.games.go
Subject: Re: Help needed with go terms.
Date: 26 Jan 1993 00:31 CST
Organization: Texas A&M University, Academic Computing Services
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: zeus.tamu.edu
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

I write...
>This isn't right. One does occasionally overlook a zwichenzug, but
>it is really just a forcing move outside the main sequence.

And its spelled zwischenzug.

>Dave Ring (Cdude 5k)
>dwr2560@zeus.tamu.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.go
From: olounela@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Olli Lounela)
Subject: Commented game archives corrupted?
Organization: University of Helsinki
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 23:53:05 GMT

Hi everybody!

One of these days I uncompressed and unshar'ed (using 'sh <archive>') a
game from one of the commented games bundles.  I was soon horrified as
it became apparent that the game was corrupt! Some kind of line-eater
had clipped a few chars from the tail of the game file, and while the
fix was easy enough, I now fear that all the games are similarily
corrupt!

Now for the real question: has anybody had similar experiences, and has
someone found a way to unshar the games correctly? Using unshar program
instead of 'sh <archive>' seems an obvious first try for a workaround of
the problem. 

If this problem is widespread and no workaround is to be found, I will
fix all the games by hand and use some other archival program, probably
tar.  Due to the nature of this problem, and since I probably have
de/recompressed the archives, I'll likely have to snurf them from the
washington go archive myself to get more uncorrupt files. 

Also, another question concerns the names of the games.  I have so far
named them Un*x-style, whiteplayer.blackplayer.# , where # is an
ordering number and the player names are as they appear in the IGS.  If
people find this difficult, I can and will easily enough edit the
archives to rename the names -- even if the PC style 8.3 is pretty
uninformative (not to say distasteful :-). 

Whatever the result, I find it important that the archives in
ftp.u.washington.edu can be faultlessly decompressed. 

-- 
	Olli, 3 dan

E-mail: olounela@cc.helsinki.fi           ! .sig still under construction.
Blame me only for any opinions expressed. !  Never you mind, I don't either.
From: bil@Sweden.Sun.COM (Bil Lewis - Sun Sweden)
Newsgroups: rec.games.go
Subject: GO_ing to Suomi...
Date: 25 Jan 1993 14:51:38 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems AB, Sweden
NNTP-Posting-Host: mandera.sweden.sun.com


  I'll be in Helsinki for the first time this weekend (giving a programming
seminar on Thurs/Fri, then I'm free).  Wonder if there might be some chance
of visiting a GO club (or just a player) on Sat.?

-Bil

  (I know about two words of Finnish, but my Swedish is OK.  Or French,
German, Spanish or Swahili!)

Newsgroups: rec.games.go
From: tcasey@adobe.com (Tim Casey)
Subject: Re: close the igs server
Keywords: igs, go
Organization: Adobe Systems Incorporated, Mountain View
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 01:47:32 GMT

In article <1993Jan27.163815.26850@ll.mit.edu> nates@ll.mit.edu ( Nate Smith) writes:

>is there a phone number we can call?  is that a good idea?  what
>about starting it up on some other site?  and what does this mean
>for the site in France?  i take it this means that UFO's plea was
>too late to change their minds?  do we have any recourse?
>
>save all the software somewhere!!!  if not soon, it shall return!
>somewhere.

I am sure there is a number somewhere you can call.  Just make sure it is
not any number associated with the server!!!!  

DO NOT MAIL ANYONE AT ICSI, much less call them.
Newsgroups: ia.events,rec.games.go
From: frank@IASTATE.EDU (Frank A Poduska)
Subject: ISU GO Club meeting Wednesday night at 7:30, Memorial Union Commons 
Reply-To: frank@IASTATE.EDU (Frank A Poduska)
Organization: Iowa State University
Distribution: ia
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 20:35:15 GMT

The ISU GO CLUB meets every Wednesday night at 7:30 in the Commons of the
Memorial Union. Players of all strengths are welcome. If you have never 
played before we will teach you! It takes about 5 minutes to learn the rules
governing play, and there is a handicap system that lets you compete evenly
against very good players after just a few games.

Go is a two player strategy board game older than chess. Players take
turns putting black and white pieces (called stones) on a board. 
Stones are placed on the intersection of the lines on the board.
Once played a stone cannot be moved, but may be captured by the other player.
The object of the game is to surround territory and/or your opponent's stones.
A player can pass at any time. The game ends when both players pass.  

Go is generally played on a 19 by 19 line board, but smaller boards such as
9 by 9 or 13 by 13 are often used to play a quick game. The club brings
extra boards and stones, so just drop in and play!  


--
Frank Poduska                 frank@iastate.edu
From: jonathan@cats.ucsc.edu (Jonathan Cano)
Newsgroups: rec.games.go
Subject: Re: Internet Go Server Status.
Date: 22 Jan 93 06:41:14 GMT
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz
NNTP-Posting-Host: si.ucsc.edu


mdobbins@asns.tredydev.Unisys.COM (Michael Dobbins) writes:

>In article <1jk79mINNeh8@darkstar.UCSC.EDU> jonathan@cats.ucsc.edu (Jonathan Cano) writes:
>>tcasey@adobe.com (Tim Casey) writes:
>>>Once a player has a rating in the system, that rating stays with that
>>>player for a long time.  I have not decided how long yet.
                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

>>I don't understand.  Shouldn't the rating stay with the player
>>forever?  Isn't this what happens in the USCF and AGA?  There a rating
>>stays with a person for life (and changes ...).  How would a rating
>>not stay with a player?

>It is easy to get rid of an old rating; login as a new name!  Since the
>IGS flushes logins that have been inactive for more than a month, you
>can go back to the old name after a bit more than a month.  Am I wrong,
>Tim? 

Logging in under a new name is the obvious way to get a new rating ...
I thought Tim was saying (at the marked area above) that he hadn't
decided how long a rating should stay with a player who wasn't trying to
'dodge' the system *and* who was consistently active.  Tim has
_already_ decided how long to keep inactive accounts around ...

--Jonathan
-- 
============================================
| Jonathan Cano             |     //   _   |
| jonathan@cats.ucsc.edu    | \\ //   (_)  |
| 10kyu (+- 2kyu)           |  \X/     |<  |
============================================
From: muenx@heike.informatik.uni-dortmund.de (Holger Muenx)
Newsgroups: rec.games.go
Subject: Xigs or xgospel for VMS?
Date: 25 Jan 1993 17:39:35 GMT
Organization: University of Dortmund, Germany
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: heike.informatik.uni-dortmund.de


Guten Tag!

  One of my go friends is trying to install xigs or xgospel on a machine
running VMS. Unfortunately, he is experiencing severe problems and I
cannot help him due to lack of VMS knowledge.

  If anybody got one of these programs to run with VMS please try to help
him. His name is Stefan Schmidt and you can reach him with mail to

				schmidt@EP3.RUHR-UNI-BOCHUM.DE

  Any information will be appreciated. Thank you in advance!

                                                  -Holger

==================================================================  ooo  ====
|  Holger Muenx                                                    o.oooo   |
|  muenx@heike.informatik.uni-dortmund.de                         oooo.ooo  |
|  ----------------------------------------------------------      o.oooo   |
|  "When you expect whistles it's flutes..." (Dead Can Dance)      __||__   |
=================================================================  \____/  ==
Newsgroups: rec.games.go
From: cust_ts@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Tero Sand)
Subject: Re: Internet Go Server Status.
Organization: University of Helsinki
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 08:14:23 GMT

In article <1993Jan25.104132.575@otago.ac.nz> barryp@otago.ac.nz writes:
>So far I have no complaints about the ratings and am very appreciative of
>Tim's work in programming them.  If I have a suggestion it is that some more
>information be made available about other people's ratings.  I hope that
>this idea wouldn't offend too many people now.

One solution I heard from someone: a 'toggle public' flag, which (when
enabled) would let other people see your rating.

	Tero Sand


-- 
	EMail: cust_ts@cc.helsinki.fi   or   custts@cc.helsinki.fi
   "I feel most ministers who claim they've heard God's voice are eating
too much pizza before they go to bed at night, and it's really an 
intestinal disorder, not a revelation." - Reverend Jerry Falwell
From: davids@ICSI.Berkeley.EDU (David Petrie Stoutamire)
Newsgroups: rec.games.go
Subject: IGS future
Date: 27 Jan 1993 22:45:46 GMT
Organization: International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: icsib18.icsi.berkeley.edu

Hi, I want to post to make a few things more clear about the future of the
present IGS.  I'm typing at icsib18 right now.

When I first suggested using this machine I figured we would be able to
keep the server transparent to the system administrators, who I didn't
want to bother.  They do a pretty good job here, and I'm going to be
around a few more years while I finish my PhD and want to remain on
good terms.

Things actually have gone pretty well.  The server, even when it has
70+ people on it, only occupies a small fraction of the CPU; the
network load isn't too bad, and icsib18 has a big local disk.  Tim and
tweet have done a great job of maintaining it without much work on my
part. 

The server has failed to be transparent in three ways:

    Root has received mail asking about the server, mainly because of
    people not typing in the port number and getting confused.

    People trying to ftp to this machine and trying to log in without
    the port number have attracted root's attention due to the sheer
    volume of console messages.

    The quantity of bouncing email attracted root's attention.

The second two were only problems because of root's relative competence;
he runs a tight ship and actually pays attention to these things.  The
first is in some ways unavoidable.

SO...

I don't want to run IGS on this system anymore.  I'm continuing to run
it until the new site at UCSF is brought up.  After that, for a few
months I'll have the telnet port just spit out a text message saying to
please telnet to the new machine.  This way, there should be no
significant disruption of IGS access to anyone; no one should be left
out in the cold.  I hope the new site is a more permanent home; I
apologize for having to pull the plug.

In the meantime, enjoy the server!  (And, don't send mail to root!)

It has given me great pleasure to be able to provide this service to
y'all.  I hope that the server continues to be as useful to the
international go community after my part in it has passed.

    - Dave Stoutamire
Newsgroups: rec.games.go
From: nates@ll.mit.edu ( Nate Smith)
Subject: Re: close the igs server
Keywords: igs, go
Organization: MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 93 16:38:15 GMT

In article <44078@sdcc12.ucsd.edu> ee52fep@sdcc15.ucsd.edu (Handy Man) writes:
>A bad news, the famous Internet Go Service is going to shut down.
>In order to memor[ial]ize this kindly server, which has given us so much
>joy and been our close friend during its existing, I call for all
>the 5d, 6d and 7d come to play a tournament, to show the spirit of
>go, to memor[ial]ize this good friend --- icsib18!
>
>Special VIP:sheah(5p), lyu(7d), jy23(6d), khuang(7d), arron(6d)
>	    sweat(6d), Xiong(NR)
>
>( all the above is just i know, welcome the other go teachers :)
>There is only 2 weeks left.  Farewell, my friend!!!

is there a phone number we can call?  is that a good idea?  what
about starting it up on some other site?  and what does this mean
for the site in France?  i take it this means that UFO's plea was
too late to change their minds?  do we have any recourse?

save all the software somewhere!!!  if not soon, it shall return!
somewhere.

- nate, full of questions with no answers (damezumari)
Newsgroups: rec.games.go
From: achim@math25.mathematik.uni-bielefeld.de (Achim Flammenkamp)
Subject: Re: Internet Go Server Status.
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 11:39:02 GMT
Organization: Math MadHouse Bielefeld, Germany

In article <1993Jan15.004720.13397@adobe.com> tcasey@adobe.com (Tim Casey) writes:
>Computed ratings have been running about a month now.  Below
>I have included a few statistics on how peoples computed ranks
>compare with their stated rank.

I see you still have fun of software administration to the server, thanks.
Therefore I will mention some wishes of myself public.
1) It is anoying to see the password you typed in, after your login id, echoed
   on the screen. Especialy it is the only login to a system I know were the
   password is'nt hided. People looking about your shoulder are ... ?
2) About the rating: I think it will be more interesting to keep them not se-
   cret. Mostly I would like to have the ability to look at a sorted "rating
   list".  By the way: If you give absolute ratings, you can show NR ranked
   people their rating, too. Nice gift to see the rating: xyz 0.7 dan :)
3) Only for estetic elegance (and maybe fairness): During the removale phase,
   after the end of a game, it should be allowed only to remove own stones.

I hope it dones't demand to much effort to install these features !

achim
Newsgroups: rec.games.go
From: mdobbins@asns.tredydev.Unisys.COM (Michael Dobbins)
Newsgroups: rec.games.go
Subject: Re: Internet Go Server Status.
Date: 25 Jan 93 13:52:17 GMT
Organization: Unisys Corporation, Tredyffrin, PA

In article <1993Jan25.104132.575@otago.ac.nz> barryp@otago.ac.nz writes:
>I would say that there is something wrong with the algorithm if a win results
>in a decrease in your rating. 

Actually it is possible for a win to decrease your rating or even a
loss to increase your rating.  The algorithm does not adjust individual
ratings based on performance.  It calculates the best set of ratings for
the population which would best predict the outcome of the games played.
This means that the right combination of wins and losses could give a
rating to an individual which does not look correct with respect to the
limited scope of game results the individual has at hand.

For example if you only play 3 games and beat 3 different people, but
these 3 play many games and lose them all; they will have a significant
drop in rating, as would be expected, but you may also show a loss being
dragged down by them.

Any rating algorithm will have some anomalies.  This algorithm trades
infrequent occurances of the above situation for a much better rating
estimate taken as an average over the entire population.


>I have a query about deleting a user id to clear ratings.  Not long ago the
>server dropped my account (I don't know why) when I recreated it I discovered
>that the rating was still there.

I forwarded that theory and have been corrected. The IGS currently keeps
the rating even if the account is cleared.