Variant Tournament

martin3141 · January 10, 2025, 7:29pm

Instructions for the Govariants server

Create a game

To create a game you need to be logged-in. It’s possible to log-in as a guest without registering, but I recommend creating an account. If you have trouble with registering an account, please let me know.

On the starting page you can configure parameters for creating a new game. The variant baduk is preselected, which is right for this tournament.

Select the Pattern Rectangular with holes and copy-paste the following into the text input for the bitmap:

[
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,0,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,0,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,0,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,0,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3],
[0,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3],
[3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3]
]

Increase Komi to 7.5.
Select the Time Control mode Fischer with 900s Main Time (= 15 minutes), 10s Increment and uncheck the Max checkbox.

Your settings should look like this:

After clicking Create Game you will be navigated to the page for your new game. It should look like this:

Click “Take Seat” and you’re ready to play! The other player(s) can find the new game via the games list, or you can send them the link.

martin3141 · January 10, 2025, 7:46pm

Participants

Name	Rank
Atorrante	7k
benjito	8k
calebjdastrup	1k
doh	1d
DoubleU	10k
Feijoa	11k
Fuseki3	5d
Jon Ko	4k
martin3141	2d
Sadaharu	6d
Tschej	4k
Valens	2k

Note: Valens is a friend of mine, I don’t know if he has an account on the forum, but you can contact them on the OGS main site: valens

Pairings (Round 1)

Black	White
Sadaharu	Fuseki3
doh	martin3141
calebjdastrup	Valens
Jon Ko	Tschej
benjito	Atorrante
DoubleU	Feijoa

Please talk with the other player to schedule a time for the game (and mind possible time zone difference!). When the game is finished, the winner should please post a link to the game here.

martin3141 · January 17, 2025, 9:00pm

doh - martin3141

Jon_Ko · January 18, 2025, 5:51pm

JonKo vs Tschej

Valens11 · January 20, 2025, 6:15pm

calebjdastrup VS Valens

benjito · January 26, 2025, 5:39pm

benjito vs Atorrante

cc: @Atorrante

benjito · January 26, 2025, 11:56pm

Just noticed this… does govariants.com support such a feature? I thought the only balancing lever we have is komi

fuseki3 · January 27, 2025, 12:01am

In theory we can just pass as the White player until Black plays enough handicap stones either way, although were you asking whether there is a specific setting to make a handicap game ?

benjito · January 27, 2025, 12:09am

Oh right, duh

But yeah, a setting for handicap could be a nice-to-have too

martin3141 · January 27, 2025, 7:39am

Yeah I was thinking of white passing to enable blacks handicap placements.

Feijoa · January 30, 2025, 1:32am

So …did anyone notice what size the board is actually?

benjito · January 30, 2025, 1:40am

Lol not until now

martin3141 · January 30, 2025, 8:08am

oh oops, honest mistake
I hope it’s still interesting and fun to play on this board.

Is this the game DoubleU - Feijoa? https://www.govariants.com/game/679498382ab3e26385b32e66

If so, I want to point out that the score calculated by the website is not necessarily what counts as the result. If both players agree about the life / death -status of groups, then accordingly I can count the game manually.
The algorithm counts the board as if all stones are alive.

Feijoa · January 30, 2025, 8:23am

Yes, we just took a break before confirming the score and will post it soon!

And yes, it was extremely interesting!

Feijoa · January 31, 2025, 7:37am

Okay, we finished counting.

DoubleU vs. Feijoa W+23.5

More thoughts:

I saw in the games posted so far that everyone was trying to avoid the holes, just as you might avoid the 1st line. But I thought the holes could actually be good places to play, especially at the corners, where you get the usual four liberties, and two of them are somewhat protected by the hole.

For example, at move 55:

If Black tries to attack at the X, White can ~~ladder the attacking stone to the lower-left~~ immediately atari the attacking stone. Eventually around there I took a lot of corners, and my group lived:

On the other hand, Black ended up pushing very far into “my” lower-left territory so maybe I would have been better off just blocking more cleanly instead of doing that weird invasion.

The only hole I couldn’t figure out how to use was the little one in the lower-left corner. I did spend a lot of time thinking about whether I could usefully invade here:

But I couldn’t work out a viable plan.

So what does everyone think, should we play near the holes or are there reasons to avoid them?

martin3141 · January 31, 2025, 8:01am

The short answer is, I think you want to play close to the holes, but not too close. Similar to how it’s good to play close to the corners and edges, but not too close.

A hole can make it difficult to connect through, for example for a group that’s on the run.

On the other hand, if your stones are close to the hole, it might help you defend against an otherwise problematic cutting point, and thus allow you to play bigger jumps etc.

Jon_Ko · January 31, 2025, 8:38am

I don’t see the ladder.

Feijoa · January 31, 2025, 2:57pm

Me either now…hm. What was I remembering?

martin3141 · February 7, 2025, 8:00pm

@Sadaharu @fuseki3 have you scheduled a date for your game? The tournament is waiting for you.

benjito · February 8, 2025, 4:19am

Yes I found the hole corners to be quite strong as well! It’s almost like they gain a bit of power because the side points lack liberties

A key point in our game was a fight around the bottom center hole. The black group’s two space jump was more resilient than a normal jump and black ended up winning that fight.