Alejo's Tenuki

Last week I was told about a Go magazine published in Spanish which I wasn't aware of. It's called BuenJueGO and it's focused on South-American go players, mainly from Chile. On the same week, I happened to write to VincentV from Godiscussions, who is the publisher of the magazine Suji (in English).
So I started wondering about the Go magazines. How many are of them?

As a result of my appearance on that website, I decided to take a tour on it and start analysing some of the tables it offers, centering my attention on the next one:

 ------------------------------------------------------------
|         |      | Dan players | Kyu players | All players |
| Country |  ANT |   NP   ARGD |   NP   ARGD |   NP   ARGD |
----------+------+-------------+-------------+--------------
| Armenia |  7.5 |    0      0 |    2    -86 |    2    -86 |
| Austria | 14.9 |   26    -45 |   83    -16 |  109    -23 |
| Azerba. |  3.0 |    4   -129 |    2    -60 |    6   -106 |
| Bosnia  | 17.8 |    5   -190 |   14    -83 |   19   -111 |
| Belgium | 12.5 |   15    -40 |   71    -30 |   86    -31 |
| Bulgaria|  2.5 |    1   -163 |    1    -49 |    2   -106 |
| Belarus |  6.7 |    2    -49 |    4    -99 |    6    -83 |
| Switzer.| 10.9 |   25    -38 |  103    -57 |  128    -53 |
| Cyprus  |  5.1 |    3    -63 |   33    -20 |   36    -24 |
| Czechia | 33.9 |   39    -16 |  186     29 |  225     21 |
| Germany | 17.0 |  324    -68 |  920    -49 | 1244    -54 |
| Denmark | 18.1 |   18    -17 |   25    -41 |   43    -31 |
| Estonia |  2.5 |    0      0 |   11    -26 |   11    -26 |
| Spain   |  9.3 |   19     10 |  146      0 |  165      1 |
| Finland | 14.8 |   43    -20 |  142    -32 |  185    -30 |
| France  | 15.7 |  122    -51 |  423      3 |  545     -9 |
| Croatia | 28.4 |    7   -116 |   13    -16 |   20    -51 |
| Hungary | 25.2 |   18    -46 |   73     -8 |   91    -16 |
| Ireland | 11.5 |    3    -53 |   16    -70 |   19    -67 |
| Israel  |  2.5 |   16      5 |   53      3 |   69      4 |
| Italy   | 13.5 |   14    -17 |  145    -23 |  159    -22 |
| Lithuan.| 14.2 |    8    -62 |   66    -75 |   74    -74 |
| Luxembu.| 12.0 |    4    -63 |    4    -25 |    8    -44 |
| Moldova | 24.0 |    1    -64 |    0      0 |    1    -64 |
| Netherl.| 25.1 |   99    -50 |  226    -39 |  325    -42 |
| Norway  | 11.0 |   10    -85 |   30    -37 |   40    -49 |
| Poland  | 19.9 |   43    -18 |  305    -30 |  348    -29 |
| Portugal|  9.2 |    3    -64 |   12      7 |   15     -7 |
| Romania | 33.2 |   59    -71 |   33    -72 |   92    -71 |
| Serbia  | 22.6 |   31   -100 |   48    -15 |   79    -49 |
| Russia  | 16.6 |  102    -10 |  230     -9 |  332     -9 |
| Sweden  | 11.1 |   31   -116 |  118    -41 |  149    -56 |
| Slovenia| 25.3 |   22    -72 |   25    -77 |   47    -75 |
| Slovakia| 39.7 |   10      4 |   68    -12 |   78    -10 |
| Turkey  |  4.1 |   22    -66 |  159    -29 |  181    -33 |
| Ukraine | 13.3 |   36    -53 |  179    -12 |  215    -19 |
|   UK    | 22.1 |  108    -60 |  301    -35 |  409    -42 |
----------+------+-------------+-------------+--------------
|  EURO   | 17.7 | 1294    -51 | 4270    -27 | 5564    -33 |
------------------------------------------------------------

On the forecoming paragraphs, whenever I talk about "go player", I refer to "EGF-rated go player", which is not exactly the same, as many low DDK won't appear here.

First of all, and the most obvious one, the European country with most Go players is Germany, with 1244 players. In fact, German representation in the European Go circles is very high as they are about a fifth of the total amount. The inmediate follower, with less than a half of players, is France, with 545.

The next range of numbers to analyse is the dan/kyu proportion of the countries with most Go players. We can see that a fourth of German players have already reached the EGF dan barrier, as well as the French ones. A little bit lower on the table we may realise that Russia holds a nice dan/kyu ratio with about a third of the players having reached the dan level. The one that strikes me the most, anyway, is the case of Romania: there are twice more dan players than kyus. I assume that kyu players must be somewhat afraid of taking part in tournaments as they would have about 64% chances of fighting against dans if it wasn't because of the pairing systems...

Talking about the dan/kyu proportion... it seems like mediterranean countries don't have a high proportion, while countries in the east and the north tend to have better ones. It might be a compensation for having a worse diet.

Another weird number is the "Average Rating-Grade Difference", which is the difference between what you said you were (10k, for example) and the rating points you ended up after the tournaments (1120, for example). As you can see, the only positive result we find there is for Spain; there are a few explanations for this phenomena: Spanish players have a nice winning streak on international tournaments, or we are more realistic about our level than the rest of Europe or we are too closed to international tournaments that the level remains somewhat stable in our country.

Any other analysis or explanation for the weird numbers?

On Monday evening I happened to watch a couple of nice capture races which ended up with the same result, the loser was one liberty short. We all have suffered this sensation where you start reading a capture race and realise that you are one liberty short but play it just in case your opponent doesn't play properly. Or, if you are unable to read it till the end, play the capture race until you can predict the result with some confidence.

Though I never have experienced it to this extent, I guess it must be somewhat depressing to lose a capturing race worth over 40 points with 100 observers. Here you have two games where, all of a sudden, nice huge capturing races appear.

Whenever you see the remote chance that a capturing race appears, read it, if you realise it too late, you may be one liberty short.

A few days ago, I happened to play a game called "Through the Desert", designed by Reiner Knizia. Certainly, you may wonder why I'm talking about this game on a Go blog: I'm talking about this concrete boardgame because it has some Go reminiscence within.

The purpose of the game is to surround as much territory (sounds familiar?) as possible with your camels but, on the meanwhile, you have to make long chains of them in the different colours because the one with the longest chains will recieve lots of points. Once you start to play it is very easy to realise the three different phases openning-middlegame-yose. Funnily enough, both of the us where Go players and ended up looking for sente moves: "Hey! I took that oasis in sente!!" and "Let's see how can I reduce your desert moyo..." came up from time to time.

I must say, though, that the similarities are limited to the area scoring system as there are many big differences. Let's say: camels can't die if surrounded, the longest chain of each colour gets 10 extra points, there are trees which give you 5 extra points... And, what scares me the most, the game is up to 5 players. The only time I've played there were only a couple of us and, at the end of the openning phase, we felt that the board was already full.

Just in case you want to know more about this game, you'll find more information HERE.