Alejo's Tenuki

Yesterday Google launched a beta version of his new browser: Chrome. 

On one hand, first independent analysis show that this application uses less resources than Firefox and Internet Explorer. It introduces some good features, as the internal task monitor... On the other hand, as it's a beta version, there are already 3 security bugs described and you'll need to upgrade to java 6.10 version if you want to use any java tool on this browser. KGS' homepage appears to be somewhat unformatted and the java applet doesn't load. I've tried a few other applications (not java based) such as EidoGo and they work perfectly well.

Unfortunatelly, there is only the windows XP version available, MAC and Linux versions are supposed to be released on the forecoming weeks. You may be surprised by the news if you already know that Google is the main sponsor of Firefox, but is is all logical if we take into account google's plans... By the way, if you are used to Firefox's keyboard shortcuts, I'm glad to tell you that they are exactly the same in Chrome.

The more I'm using unix systems, the more homesick I'm of windows. It is very secure and has lots of advantages when compared to Microsoft's operative system, but the lack of powerful go software for Unix as well as good drivers for 3D cards are two of the major drawbacks.

Today I've been playing with some programs and Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) trying to get them working.

Here you have the results, ordered from worst perfomance to best.

Worst:

Good:

Other newer programs such as Universal 3D chess... show problems mostly related with the 3D card drivers. On the specific case of U3DC, the drop-down menus are disabled and the variation tree doesn't work, once you click on the variation tree, the program breaks down. On the other hand, it is a very good piece of software for making demostrations and so on.

If you want to get more information on how to load these programs as well as screenshots and a nice trick for loading them if you have a windows partition, click on the continue reading article

On the 20th of June I started a new poll in order to know the level of the players who usually visits this blog.

Back from holidays I checked the results and the highest mark had already gone over 100 results, so it is time to extract some conclusions from the poll. The ones who already answered the question already know it, but for the ones who didn't, the categories where separated in the following way:

As you can see the lower categories have been truncated into more parts as the website is intended to be focused for these users while it may be of limited interest for dan players.

The results are shown in the next two graphics:

As you can see, most of the audience is ranked over 15k, being the most common level between 10k and 15k, closely followed by the weak single-digit kyu players (like me). Generally speaking, over 50% of the visitors have a level among 15k and 1k, which is not very surprising as it is the most common population. However, there are quite a few dan players who visit this blog, even more than complete beginners.

It would be nice to know the statistics for every single entry, as I think differences would be much more relevant, while videoreviews would be interesting for certain levels, my own reviews would be for others.

Here you have a review on the final release of Universal 3D Chess:

Currently you can only watch it through youtube or download this version with a 1036x676 resolution HERE (encoded with Xvid).

The final public realease is already available at the project's homepage: VoilaMonsieur

Last Sunday was held the final game to decide who would go to the World Mind Sports Games representing the USA in Beijing in October. The game confronted Joey Hung 8d vs Jie Li 9d and it was very interesting and very didactic as a sample of how to count ko threats and how to handle them.

But what strikes me the most was a sequence I found during the game and I'm still thinking it's worth trying. I was said during the game that my move wasn't good, but without explanation.

As you can see on the next image, there is a big fight going on the upper right corner of the board where there are several white and black groups involved and winning this fight would almost decide the result of the game.

Now that you've seen the board I'll tell you that the original sequence ends up with a huge ko for live or death. You can see the whole game on one board and my variation on another one.