I had two solutions in mind when I came across this situation, but I believe they don’t work in OGS, so I’d like to know if I’m missing something.
1 - Both players share the same device. That’s my main idea, which would be very practical with a tablet (introducing the game in the bar after a couple of beers). The only feature I found that could be used is the “Demo Board” mode and it seems it doesn’t recognize it as a game so that there isn’t a pass/pass that leads to the final dead stones counting phase and also its “Estimate score” doesn’t seem too reliable. At least I guess it can be used as a Capture/Atari Go tool more easily (which is even better for the bar scenario, but a full game would be nice). Did I get that right? (By the way, I miss the sound of the pieces being captured in the Demo Board mode)
2 - Each player uses its own device. But note that the important thing here is to be able to enter as a guest (the simpler the better. A good scenario is a player setting a room and just sending a link to the other person). The sentence “you just need to make an account, it’s very simple” automatically leads to your exile as the momentary social leader, which could give rise to … God forbid … a match of Uno.
I’m sure there are solutions in other apps/sites and if OGS really doesn’t support the features I mentioned, please do suggest me others more appropriate! But I like the idea of an all-in-one-place solution and I’m enjoying OGS a lot. Thanks! (Sorry for some english mistakes, I try to survive without chat gpt in some areas)
Generally the “estimate score” works well enough at the end of the game, when all territories are closed. If however it doesn’t recognize dead stones, play some moves (i.e. if black stones are dead inside White’s territory, play n white stones and n black stones inside White’s territory until black stones are removed from the board) and click again on “estimate score”.
It’s possible! The feature is also combined with game invite links which should make it even easier for new players to join.
Yeah this is what I usually use. It gets me 99% there, but I can see how missing things like scoring after pass could be annoying.
I think the Demo boards estimator should be quite good though… isn’t that powered by katago? The main problem is it may tell you something is dead that you didn’t realize (especially problematic to people who are new to go)
If you have android tablet or phone, definitely check out Sente. It has In-person as a playing mode. If it’s a feature that does get added to OGS, maybe some cues can be taken from Sente heh.
But back to the question of “how to play with another person in the same space”… don’t underestimate the power of a real set. I realize it’s not always possible to have one. But that’s like half the fun of playing Go in person. Don’t rob your friends of it!
I suppose you could bring two tablets and have one signed into a guest account that YOU have set up already? Or log into the guest account yourself, on your friend’s tablet, and hand it back to her?
Well enough except when it says the score is 6.7 points or worse 3.0 when there is a half point of komi.
If it’s just a casual game I suppose it doesn’t really matter, if you just want to know who won but it is quite annoying if you want to know the actual score of the game.
I think soonish (hopefully) there will be an alternative to just estimating score, since more tools and markings were added to analysis and demo boards
Yes, but you could also just each have your own account and sign in on the tablet you want to play on - just don’t forget to sign out afterwards.
That would be totally fine.
Thanks, I didn’t know you could enter as a guest, that’s a solution! Then I look for the nickname given to the person, go to search and send a challenge, right? But I found a better solution, which is to send an invite link, I wasn’t aware of that feature.
The Sente app (if I got it correctly, it’s from “Zen Android” developer, right?) asks to “Link OGS account” as soon as you open it. If you say you don’t have an OGS account, it asks at least for a google sign-in. So that option doesn’t satisfy my conditions, but I already found a solution.
You’re right! You made me realize that my option 2 is doable. It even generates instantaneously an invite link that I can send to the other person (well, since I just keep the bare minimum on my tablet, aka a document reader and a browser, I don’t have whatsapp or anything else and setting up the “Quick Share” can be cumbersome, so my solution is to generate a QR Code, which is totally fine and even better). About the Sente app, as I said to someone else, it asks to set up an OGS account.
Yeah, I saw these weird decimals more than I wanted, which made me lose faith a bit in this feature. For example, in this simple example shouldn’t it be:
This is different. 6.5 in this case is Komi. That is the compensation white gets for going second. Or in other words black getting the first move is deemed to be an advantage worth 6.5.
The 0.5 is traditional that only means that in case of a draw, white wine. Some rules use integer Komi and hence draws are possible.
although I would prefer red 