Go Orlando

Josh indicated that the Ft. Meyers Go club is holding a one day tournament on Saturday, Dec. 6. Several in our club are considering going, and there’s discussion of carpooling.

Details to follow soon.

P.S., During a recent skimming of AGA rankings, I noticed that our own Josh (ranked at 4d now) is the strongest AGA rated player registered in Florida (at least, amongst members who are registered as from FL).  Congratulations Josh!

I have created a publicly viewable Google spreadsheet with the following information:

• Member information (rank, KGS handles, etc.)
• Collective go book library

Several people have asked me to make my spreadsheet public, but I have been reluctant for privacy reasons.  To address this, I’ve made a public version of the spreadsheet that presents only first names and last initials, and I’ve greatly simplified the information on the sheet. It’s very incomplete, so I’ll need data from you all to fill it in.

If you are on the spreadsheet and you do not want to be, or you feel that there’s too much information there, please let me know (comment here, write me email at paul -AT- tesseract -DOT- org, or mention it to me on some Tuesday club meeting).

If you are a member and want edit access to the spreadsheet, send me the email address to which your Google account is connected, and I’ll add you to the editor list.  Don’t make obnoxious changes, please … and please try to respect people’s privacy.

Alan M. also suggested that we put together a collective Go library:  A list of the go books we all have.  I think that is a fantastic idea, and one of the sheets in the spreadsheet is meant to capture this.  To fill it out, I’ll need you to send me the books you have.

Josh is workng hard to get the official UCF Go Club up and running.  When it is, we will have the opportunity to get a room on campus and meet there.  He doesn’t want to give up our weekly Go Orlando meeting at Barnes & Noble, but add a second meeting.  That way members could come to either or both meetings.

He’s soliciting suggestions and preferences.  I thought I’d make things easier and add a little “vote” here.  Let me know any altneratives and I’ll add them.

n

The 2008 Fall semester at UCF began this week, and (by coincidence or not) the club saw a large block of potential new members attending last night.  I hope they will all return.

It occurred to me that it might be helpful to mention a few resources to those new to the game of Go.   I jotted a few things here, but I encourage any other members to leave comments on this post with their own ideas (assuming anyone other than me reads this site).

I’ve found Janice Kim’s book series very good for getting started. They are easy and quick reads, and even looking at the first volume should jump-start a beginner quite a bit. 

• Learn to Play Go: A Master’s Guide to the Ultimate Game (Volume I)
• Ms. Kim also has a few basic lessons available for free on the Samarkand website
• The AGA’s website has a downloadable edition of the very famous pamphlet “The Way To Go“, as well as other online resources for learning the game
• There’s also quite a bit at GoBase

I promise these statistics updates will gradually get farther apart; however, since we now have 10 club meetings since I began to doodle attendance and match stats in my notebook, it seemed like a good opportunity to offer an update.  I suppose quarterly and semi-annual statistical reports make the most sense in general.  (Or, perhaps, no reports makes the most sense?)

There’s really no new strength data, so my previous post on those matters is sufficient for now.

I’ve been keeping data since April 29, during which time the club has met on 10 Tuesdays.  I have 15 names on my list, all but two of which have attended at least once.  Josh has 26+ names in total his official list.  Average attendance is 5.7 people, and at least 62 matches have been played (that’s a little over two matches per person per meeting on average).  

Attendance is pretty consistent:  Of all the people who HAVE attended in those 10 Tuesdays, five of them attended more than five of the meetings.  Two members have attended 9 of the ten.  No one has attended every week.  Our lowest attendance was last week (June 24) where only three showed up, highest was on June 3 where eight showed.  All other Tuesdays saw five or six people.

Based on these 10 meetings:  

• Probability of there being at least 1 player 2d or above is 70%
• Probability of there being at least 1 player between 4k and 13k is 100%
• Probability of there being at least 1 player 19k or weaker is 20%

I have upgraded the underlying CMS for the website (which is WordPress) to the latest version. This shouldn’t affect much about the site to the readers, but it fixes several under-the-hood problems.

I also added (and slightly hacked) a plugin for producing go diagrams. This should be available even in the comment sections. You can produce images and the images should link to SGF’s which can be downloaded. Right now it is still pretty buggy (comments don’t come out properly for some reason). When I have more time, I’ll try to fix it.

Entering boards is pretty straightforward, and the syntax (aside from comments) should be the same as used by Sensei’s Library, except that you have to surround the block of text specifying the document with the tags [ go ] [ /go ] (without the spaces). Here is an example:

Several of us have been talking about organizing some kind of event this summer … or possibly in the fall (or both).  We are still in the early stages of this discussion, and Josh is the final arbiter of all such things, but I was hoping to get some feedback from people about what they might want. Ideas include:

•  A smaller tournament amongst club members, perhaps round-robin or instant pairing, etc.
• A social event (cookout, restaurant trip, etc.)
• An outreach event to try to get more people interested in the game and/or the club
• Some combination of any of these

The advantages of something this summer:  It’s sooner, coordination technicalities might be less challenging, those still in school will (presumably) have more time, etc. The advantages of something in early fall:  If we coordinate it with start of term at UCF and manage to use some public space on campus, we might  generate on-looker interest from students.  One thought:  a social event in late July (that includes go playing, of course), and a mini-tournament/outreach event in the first or second week of classes after start of term in the fall.   Ideas, opinions?  Post a comment or write me at paul -AT- tesseract -DOT- org .

I have been collecting data about club members (strengths, attendance, etc.) for a little over a month.  The process is just in its early stages, but I hope to keep it up.   I have this kind of information for about 14 people, though Josh has 26 people on his email list, so I clearly have a lot of gaps.  If you are interested and have not already given me your data, I would be curious to get your full name, any AGA rating data you have, as well as on-line info (handle, rank, server, etc.)

Still, I have enough to provide some preliminary summaries if people care.  I intentionally withhold all personal information in this summary.I’ve been collecting most of this information since just before the tournament (since Tuesday 4/29/08), five club meetings.  As I say, I have strength & attendance data for about 14 people, of which (since that date) we average an attendance of about 40% (5.6 people).  Our strengths range from 3d down to (perhaps) 22k-ish.  On any given Tuesday, you are almost certain to find at least one player 1d or above or 4k - 12k.  There’s also a small chance of finding a weaker player.  During the month I’ve collected data, no one between 3k and 1d has attended.

We’ve played over 26 matches since 4/29 at regular club meetings, and we average a bit over 2 games per person per meeting.

I downloaded AGA ratings for all rated players in the US over the last two years and divided those into “kyu” and “dan” (this is a bit questionable because the AGA rating system does not necessarily directly map into those rankings).  I created two histograms for each of these, including the mean and standard deviations for those data.  Again, the meaning of these summary data are at best complex (perhaps even dubious), as the distributions are decided non-Normal, but all’s fair in blogs and late-night number twiddling.

I then co-plotted some of the strengths of our members along the bottom of those plots.  You can see the dan plot here and the kyu plot here (these are small PDFs).  For our players, I used AGA information if I had it, otherwise I used the player’s self-professed rank, otherwise I used their ranking on an on-line service.  In one case (the 22k), I just speculated.  Of course we have many members whose strengths are not reflected, but I do not have their information (hint, hint).

Here are my conclusions:  From the kyu point of view, we have a strong club … most of our attending members are stronger than the average AGA player.   From a dan point of view, we are more or less on par.  Moreover, we have a good diversity of strength attending most club meetings; however, our general attendance is low (hint, hint).

It would be nice to get feedback from those that do not attend:  Is it the location?  Is it the availability of a plethora of on-line services and players?  Is it the day of the week, the time, etc.?  Is it the presence of annoying and obsessive number-crunchers?  That sort of thing.  No nagging, guilting, or arm twisting (okay, maybe some mild, good-spirited arm twisting) will be employed … just collecting useful information.

Thanks,
Paul.

I am trying to construct a little spreadsheet with some information about members of Go Orlando (nothing seriously personal).  Obviously no one is obliged to provide any of this, but if you are interested and do not mind giving it to me, please email me ( paul -AT- tesseract -DOT- org) the following: 

• Name
• AGA rank (if you have one) and sigma
• KGS handle and rank (if you play on KGS)
• Handle and rank of any other on-line Go servers you use
• Any notes you think are relevant (e.g., what you think your rank might be, likes/dislikes about the club, privacy concerns about this information, how often you play online, etc.)

I’ll also try to pass around a little table each Tuesday when I am at the club meeting (most Tuesdays).  It will be nice to have a more complete picture for what our club looks like in terms of where and how strong we play. Also:  If you care and remember to do so, help me keep a record of games played at club meetings.  Tell me the result at the meeting or email it to me later. Thanks,Paul. 

I’ve finally managed to pull together a beta version of a little game timer application in Java.  There may still be one or two issues with it, so please download it and let me know where the bugs are, etc.  The application is very extensible. It is natively capable of using AGA/Japanese byoyomi (the default), Canadian byoyomi, Fischer time (with or without capping), and a simple main-time clock.  Checkout the website for more information.