Based on the “unique homemade stones” I am using which lie flat, when I buy more I will get ones which are easier to pick up. At as glance, the smallest stones do not look the easiest to pick up. If stones are not easy to pick up, then it is easy to disturb the board when doing so. As always, YMMV.
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If you want to train picking flat stones, use small coins (and even harder, on a grid printed on a paper)
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I would like to try something that does not exist: very short, fat, cylinders with rounded edges (glass is fine). They might be a bit difficult to pick up, but with a much larger contact area they would stay put on the board better. Maybe a hybrid: a very short fat cylinder with an indented thinner outer ring for ease of picking up. The traditional stone shape, with one board contact point, is bad, especially when stones overlap on the board.
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Try the Chinese stones then.
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When I look these up they seem like ordinary glass stones. Can you find a close-up picture to show their shape?
There are nice pics in this thread (the looking through green) See @RubyMineshaft last post
These are the classic common ones, you can find some variants thicker or with a little bit different shape (my favourites: thicker and more “fat”, they were called modern shape by the seller at the factory.)
These stones are fully flat on a side. And yes it’s kind of glass (mix of powder cooked 1by1 at high temperature)
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Single convex Yunzi stones - just buy them from a reputable dealer that does lead testing as most Yunzi stones you find will in fact be contaminated with lead.
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Yunzi doesn’t have a precise norm or meaning, some pretend to hold centuries of tradition with high prices… In fact the only thing is that they are made in Yunnan and the black look green when looking through. But there are different companies each one proud of its own recipe.
Yunze became just like the name of Chinese stones in Western shops but I can’t say myself that only stones made in Yunnan are good to buy.
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Groin wrote:
If you want to train picking flat stones, use small coins (and even harder, on a grid printed on a paper)
Like I said, when I buy more, I will buy some which are easier to pick up! : ) I could “train” with what I have now! ; )
I think any bi-convex stone is easy to pick-up, even smaller ones.
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qnpnpmqppnp wrote:
I think any bi-convex stone is easy to pick-up, even smaller ones.
Maybe so, but after you’ve killed a couple of stones, removing them without disturbing the others is not “automatic”. This is not a big issue for me, because I only play online and just use my physical board for practice. But I don’t see why you would discuss the relative merits of various sized stones and omit discussing this detail. Probably if one is a young girl with small fingers it may be less of a matter than in some other circumstances. Another issue is one’s eyesight–a small board could make it pretty darn inconvenient for someone with astigmatism to follow a ladder. Cheers.
In tournaments rules or blitzing in a go club you can stop the clock to pick up group of prisoners, no worry.
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It’s interesting that size 30 is one of the top ranked but almost no one likes size 28. Overall though it seems that size 34 “wins” the most attractive / least offensive balance.
Thanks to everyone that voted!
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What stone size/stones is this?
Btw, looks like old 3-3 invasion on top-right from the camera.
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