Yesterday’s club day was the best yet:

• 32 visitors to the center
• 23 players played
• 27 games

Over the month of June we’ve had:

• 92 visitors to the center
• 44 players played
• 115 games

This is great, and puts us on par with many Go clubs. I glad to see so much activity!

Yesterday we had 22 people stop by the Go Center and 16 games played to completion, plus a few teaching games. This is a great turn out for the club!

This week, Macro Horowitz starting hosting the 5pm SLT slot which should work better for people in more eastern time zones. Thanks Macro!

If anyone else is interested in hosting an hour on Thursday - all it takes is commitment to be there - let me know.

While the gobans are pretty much self explanatory (mostly by being chatty), I’ve written up a full set of goban instructions.

Introducing a long awaited feature: SGF support! When you complete a game at the Go Center, the results and moves are sent to our web site. From there, you can view the game on-line, or download an SGF file for it. Follow the Games link in the navigation menu on the left.

At present, only completed games played at the Go Center are recorded.

Let me know how you like it, and if there are any improvements you’d like to see. Possible future features include:

• recording games that need to be adjourned
• recording games in progress
• recording games played on gobans outside the Go Center
• game lists by player
• RSS/ATOM feed for game lists
• improved game meta-data in the SGF

The gobans in the Go Center playing area have been significantly updated. Changes:

• Undo of self-atari now works.
• Cushions now automatically focus your camera on the goban.
• Area scoring (Chinese style) now compensates for handicap.
• Several minor fixes in wording of messages the goban says.
• Scoring choice at start of game: Area or Territory.
• Games can optionally be “teaching” games.
• Games results are sent to our web server. SGF coming really soon!
• Games can be optionally “unrecorded” games, which aren’t sent.
• New configuration layout (see below)
• Players need only touch one set of configuration stones to start the game (and should do so after setting the configuration options.

Notes

* When on the cushions, you can use opt/alt-click to move your camera elsewhere, then the escape key to return to the board.
* Area scoring uses Chinese counting: territory + stones on board. Handicaps are compensated, and outcomes are the same as AGA scoring.
* Territory scoring uses Japansese counting: territory - prisoners. However, the gobans do not implement Japanese rules. In particular, eyes in seki are scored.
* Teaching games allow either player to play the moves, so a teacher can show a whole sequence.

I’m getting closer to having SGF output for the gobans at the Go Center. But this means that I have to make a choice in which scoring rules will be the ones used and recorded in the SGF. Take a second to vote in my poll.

Today’s club times at the Go Center enjoyed a lovely turn-out. There were as many as nine people there at a time, and at one point three games in progress at once. All told, nine club games were played today. That’s a record for most games played at the Go Center in a day for 2008!

Hope to see even more of you out next Thursday!

We have four hours with hosts on club day, Thursday, at the Go Center. Of course, the center is always open for games, but having a host makes a particular time more likely to gain a regular attendance. If you’d be interested in hosting another hour, let me know!

I keep the hosted times updated in three places:

• the Go Center home page
• the Second Life events list
• the sign inside the playing pavilion

Small bonus feature: On the home page, the list of playing times is now shown in your local time zone (if you have Javascript enabled), along with the “SLT” time. You can also use the pop-up menu next to the time zone to change to a different one. Since I can’t test in every browser and OS combination, let me know if it doesn’t work as expected for you.

I just noticed that sometime this week, membership at the Go Center exceeded 250.  Way to go!

I crunched some statistics on when games are played at the Go Center.  Of the 500 games played since September 2007, the most popular day to play was Thursday.  Sunday and Saturday were second and third. While the Go Center is always open, I’m going to make Thursday, and only Thursday, be our official club day. 

It seems the most influential factor in getting the group going strong is a getting a core group of people who are reliably there.  Therefore, I’m looking for volunteers to sign up for hour slots as “greeters” on Thursdays.  I’ll be posting a roster of times and people on our home page and at the Go Center.

Anyone game?

Update: Cool! We have now have four hours of “hosts” for Thursdays. Keep ‘em coming! See the home page for who and when.