Thoughts on the European Go Journal

Go Resources
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I thought since there’s been a couple of threads and posts about other Go journals and magazines, (Excerpts from the British Go Journal, Excerpts from Dutch Go Magazine, Excerpts from the AGA E-Journal, Sydney Go Journal Swiss Go Journal) to make a thread about the European Go Journal.

What is it and how to get it?

It's being written by Artem Kachanovskyi (2p) with artwork done by Kim Ouweleen (There'll be more people to credit but you can look into it yourselves :) )
  • Descriptive post written by Artem about the beginnings of the journal European Go Journal: New Project Starts
  • Subscription is run through Patreon, European Go Journal | creating a monthly journal about the game of go (baduk, weiqi) | Patreon and there’s posts there about the current, previous and upcoming issues as where as the prices.
  • There’s e-versions and printed versions with the e-versions emailed at the start of the next month that the issue refers to, e.g. the June issue is received in July so that it discusses the events of June. The printed version might take a little longer to receive given it needs to be posted (I don’t have the printed ones myself).

To quote from the European Go Federation Article

The digital edition consists of several files:

  • PDF file of the journal
  • archive with the games used in the journal (ZIP file with SGF files inside)
  • archive of pro games (ZIP file with SGF files inside)
  • PDF file with pro games (suitable for printing)

The first edition of the journal (February 2021) is free of charge (digital version), so you can check whether you like this kind of content or not:

and it links to the downloads on both the EGF webpage article and on the Patreon link in the About section if you want to check out the February issue.

Initially re the prices it said:

Here are the prices of subscription (per month):

  • digital edition: 5 €
  • printed edition: 15 € (delivery included in price)

but they also added a club subscription where on the Patreon it says

Digital edition which you can share with the members of your go club. Please adjust the pledge amount: multiply the price of this tier by the number of readers. For more details see the ‘About’ section below.

There is a nominal price on the Patron site but in the about section it says:

Here is an example of how the go club should subscribe to the journal. Let’s say, there is a teacher at the go club who wants to read the journal and to share it with four other members of the club. He subscribes on Patreon to the ‘Go Club License’ tier and adjusts the pledge amount: multiplies the price of the tier by the number of the readers. The price of the tier is 2.5 € but it might be displayed in a local currency on his side. The total number of the readers is five: him plus four other members of the go club. The teacher sets the pledge amount to 2.5 € x 5 = 12.5 €. When he receives the digital copy of the journal, he shares it with the other readers or prints a copy for each of them. For the team of the European Go Journal it doesn’t matter if the money he pays are collected from the readers or taken from the go club budget - it’s up to him. The teacher should make sure that the members of the go club with who he shares the files are aware that the files are for personal use only and not to be distributed further.

In the Patreon About section there’s also further links which I won’t repost here.

See the following links for more information:

  • Article about the journal on the EGF website
  • European Go Journal Facebook Group
  • European Go Journal Instagram Page
  • Statistics on the delivery time of print copy
  • Statistics on the number of subscribers

I might make some separate posts with comments about the specific editions, maybe at the very least just to reference their contents.

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My friend here in the USA had one of the printed editions and it looked very nice. I signed up to get it as well.

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February edition

I think it was quite a good idea to make the first issue free. It does give a good feel for that the format will be and what files you get with it etc.

Personally I'm a bit hit or miss about go book diagrams, in particular when it's to do with game reviews. You tend to get shown a large number of moves all in the one diagram, numbered, which on the one hand makes it great for replaying the game on a board or some sgf editor, but when trying to look at it and read it as is, I find it very difficult after a point.

The same is true with commentary diagrams in variations, and while I can to some extent visualise the stone order and try to ignore other stones until they appear later, it can be tough with 10-15 move sequences (e.g. Dia 2 variation on pg 8 is just about manageable for me).

With that said it’s great they include the sgf for the games, since that’s exactly where it can be tough to follow the diagrams.

Generally I think the commentary and interviews are interesting, so too is the Go news although it isn’t something that really sticks in my head for some reason. I’m not at the point where I’m remembering who’s winning what title and when :slight_smile:

In terms of the pro sgfs collection and pdf, I think it’s quite nice again to see both. When I was reading the February edition I didn’t get around to looking at the pro games, I mean I still haven’t, but it’s nice they’re there in both sgf form if one wants to analyse on a phone/computer etc and in diagram form for playing on a board.

The puzzles are pretty good too. The 15k and 10k ones were a little bit tricky, two I knew as I’d come across before elsewhere, but it’s good to find ones you’ve to think about. The 5kyu ones were pretty tough, and looking back now maybe I remember where to look to find the answers. After that the 3k, 1k , 3d and 5d puzzles are quite hard, lots of incorrect variations in the solutions, and ones labelled resistance.

The recommendations are nice

• I would recommend to go through all the problems.
• If some problems are too easy – check if you can solve them correctly from the first sight.
• If some problems are too hard – try to use your intuition.
• You can find the solutions on the next page.

Table of Contents

I'll post the table of contents below, especially since this one is freely available. More generally I'm not sure. I could check with Artem, assuming I keep making posts about it. Of course one can't share the files, but I feel like sharing the table of contents isn't sharing too much and does give an insight into it.
February TOC

Contents

Preface … 1
European Go News … 3
Round 5 of the Pandanet Go European Team Championship … 3
Announcement Highlights of EGFs Special General Meeting … 4
Ilya Shikshin Wins European Professional Online Go League … 5
Conclusion of the European Youth Go Team Championship 2020/2021… 6
Third Corona Cup Announced … 6
Game Review: European Professional Online Go League Final … 7
World Go News … 13
Iyama Yuta Leads 3 – 1 in the 45th Kisei Title Match… 13
South Korea Wins the 22nd Nongshim Cup… 14
Shin Minjun 9p Wins 25th LG Cup … 15
Game Review: 25th LG Cup Final… 16
Interview with Stanisław Frejlak 7d (Poland) … 27
Art & Photography … 35
Kim Ouweleen – The Ear Reddening Move, 2019 … 35
Camille Lévêque – Hope, 2020 … 36
Photo of Ukrainian Youth Player … 37
Let’s Study with AI: San-ren-sei… 38
Problems … 45
Tesuji of the Month… 49

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May I put this here?

Ranka Yearbook 1985–97

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March Edition

The first paid for edition I think definitely keeps up the quality from the free preview one in February. In the introduction it mentions about having ~100 people subscribed to it (I think it's about 175 at the moment judging by the patron page, but it could be more given there's now club licences).

It has a request for contributions which is still being warmly welcomed in the most recent editions,

• Share your experiences from a go tournament that you attended.
• Publish a story about a national championship or go event in your country.
• Send in your artwork or photography.
• Maybe you wrote a poem about go or instead a technical analysis of the 3-3 point? Let
me know.

although recently it might have become a bit more specific

  • Favorite Place to Go
  • The Journal Answers

There’s a summary on how the Countries are doing in the Pandanet European team championship, which I haven’t quite gotten into yet. I did start following Ireland’s games but of course we’re in the C league so nowhere near the top A league :slight_smile:

It mentions European tournaments like the Grand Prix and 3rd Corona Cup and looks at the game of Lukas Podpera vs Kim Youngsam. While I competed in that tournament I just didn’t find the time to watch all the big games. The game and the commentary were pretty interesting although when it said “From there on, nothing surprising happened in the endgame” and it starting showing the 50 moves in one diagram and then the last 84 in the next, I did just tune out. I’d need to open the sgf or put it on a board at that point, but I wasn’t that pushed to in this case.

There’s a nice World news section about the Senko Cups, the Korean Baduk league, the NHK cup, Kisei title and a nice section about the (upcoming at the time) World Amateur Championships. I think some of these things I probably heard a bit about through the forums anyway :slight_smile:

There’s a Game 5 review of Kisei Kono Rin vs Iyama Yuta, which had some interesting 3-4 sequences.

There’s a nice interview with Mateusz Surma which was a good read, about learning Go, becoming Pro and setting up a Go shop + school, with some bumps along the way.

There’s some Art and Photography and then a study of the Chinese Opening with AI, Katago this time. (Last time was Sanrensei with Leela, I’m not sure if I said that explicitly) I think it’s a nice resource to see a Pro’s opinion combined with a strong bot with a lot of playouts

Approximately 100.000 playouts were done for each move.

It’s likely each time I read it I won’t remember everything but it’s probably something to come back to now and again. It’s kind of the same for me with studying joseki/fuseki - I kind of have to be in the right mood for it.

There’s the start of a series on the 36 stratagems “Thirty-Six Stratagems. No. 1: Deceive the Heavens to Cross the Sea”. Then Alexander Dinerchtein picks out a bunch of Tesuji, from Ancient and modern sources.

There’s another nice set of puzzles (3x 15k, 10k, 2x 5k, 3k, 1k, 3d, 5d).

I don’t really have time to look through all the pro kifu myself, the sgfs or the diagrams, but it makes one think that maybe too many moves are being crammed into one digram when one sees underneath

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I think though in this case the Pro games (a separate pdf) are trying to be fit into 1 page with four diagrams, and this particular game had 352 moves. Also I think looking at the sgf there were three different ko’s so I suppose there’s probably no good way to avoid some of these annotations :slight_smile:

Pretty good issue I think, pretty reasonable price :slight_smile:

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352 moves almost runs out of stones!

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A presentation about the European Go Journal from the AGM of the European Go Federation.

Feel free to share it with your friends and in your go community to let the others know what is the European Go Journal.

from one of the Patreon updates

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Any way to have a pdf? No Google …

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April Edition

If anyone else is reading these editions I'm curious to hear what people think of them. I'm kind of half committed to just doing a few minor comments on the editions a) to keep raising awareness of the EGJ, and b) to commit myself to reading them :slight_smile:

Some more Go news regarding the cancellation of the European go congress 2021 in Ukraine and then some more updates on the Pandanet A league. Ukraine and Russia were tied for top with 13 points with one round to go at the time. There’s some notes about the 48th Paris tournament, the 49th Prague go tournament and the 3rd Corona Cup (Hey they had a picture of Kim Seongjin the winner from the Confucius Cup in Dublin, cool :slight_smile: ).

Lukas Podpera talks about his experience with organising the three Corona Cups. The initial organising seemed to be a bit of work even with previous experience, some things got better with further editions, some things like tonnes of questions didn’t change. There’s a comment about the first edition of the tournament re the need for videoing games, as apparently it’s too hard to prove from games alone if anyone or any moves were suspicious, at least if some players are registered below their level and improved etc. There’s sizable sections about all three individually, and a random except from the discord chat where Lukas is telling people to check the wallist, and I’m commenting about how I’m years away from seeing the top 20 (because I’m usually pages away from the first page in any wallists :stuck_out_tongue: ), - but woo I’m unintentionally in the journal!

There’s commentary on the Finnish Go Chamionship from Javier Savolainen 5d, and a commentary on the final game of the championship. There’s some more world news re Women’s Meijin, the Judan title, the Korean future stars tournament, Daejoo Cup and Maxim Cup. There’s news on the Tianyuan title and a game commentary for Game 3.

There’s an interview with Lorenz Trippel, the Secretary of the EGF, which was a nice little insight. There’s an art and photography section as usual with the cover art from Camille Leveque, and other nice pieces of art and photography.

This issue there’s study of the Mini-Chinese opening with 100k Katago playouts, and the 36 Stratagems by Day Junfu continues with “Besiege Wei to Rescue Zhao”, which has a nice bit of history to it and example game on where the strategy applies.

There’s a discussion of bent four in the corner Andreas Witte 5k in the different rulesets. Then Alexander Dinerchstein 3p continues with his tesuji series which has some nice positions from Pro games.

There’s 3x 15k, 10k, 2x 5k, 3k, 1k, 3d, 5d in the puzzles section :slight_smile:

I think it was another good issue, nice art and covers, photos, interviews and a bit of history with current news, and obviously Go games and puzzles :slight_smile:

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A couple of interesting things from the presentation under plans for development

  1. Integration with the EGF: free article from the journal on the EGF website once in while

  2. Website of the Journal:

  • Stage 1: online shop with past editions
  • Stage 2: moving subscription from Patreon to our own website
  • Stage 3: various features (discussion & feedback for each issue, auto-calculated statistics, etc.)

  1. Involving more contributors: go teachers, writers, artists

  2. Delivering the Journal to as large of an audience as possible

It sounds pretty interesting to see an online shop with the back issues. It is possible to purchase the back issues at the moment by contacting by email I believe.

Another interesting thing re the future

Kim Ouweleen reviews the Go journal covers so far and gives a sneak peak of the ones to come.

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The EGJ offers a shop where you can buy the back editions.

The BGJ provides theirs free…

Hmm. Well, at least they’re making them available.

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I made it as far as April with some comments/summary and looky here

The tesuji article from Alexander Dinerchtein available in the link :slight_smile:

Edit: Actually at the moment that’s just Tesuji No.1, there’s another four in the journal. I don’t know if it’ll be updated as of yet.

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I’m not sure whether to keep posting comments really now that Artem is posting nice updates on the upcoming issues.

However someone did bring in some old issues of a European Go Journal that I didn’t know existed

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This was a rather short lived go magazine.
It started in February 1995 and the last issue was (I think) from March 1997.

The editors were Matti Groot and Rob Kok.
There were some famous contributors, such as: James Davies, Guo Juan and Mathew Mcfadyen.

I think it cost about 20-25 DM per year (4 issues).
Pity it didn’t work out and stopped after 2 years.

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We had for a while GOMOON even before, not specifically described as a European go magazine but published in Europe with some European content (like covering European tournaments ) and written in English.
Edited by Peter D (Sorry i can’t remember the exact spelling of your name) in Holland.

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Go Moon was edited by Peter Dijkema.
First issue was released in the summer of 1988.
It continued till at least July 1993 (issue nr. 32), but possibly even longer.
Again with contributions of James Davies.

Schermafbeelding 2021-09-01 om 06.25.42
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(Front cover by Sylvia Weve)

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Hehe, that cover was about some nose tesuji… If i remember well.