Welcome to GoBase.org, which was established as Go, An Addictive Game in October 1994 (a brief historical overview is available). On these pages you'll find a lot of information on the game of Go (Go is the western word for the game, in China the game is called wei ch'i, in Korea baduk). Of course, the Go rules are explained (in 8 languages), but you can also read about the history of Go, read stories and anecdotes related to Go, study the indepth study material, study baduk academy material in the problem section, connect to one of the online Go servers (reference: IGS clients) or retrieve information on Go and computers. You're really advised to browse around and see which topics are of special interest to you.
Changes and additions in the tournament section of this site (see below) are monitored daily. This enables you to keep track of any newly arrived material.

A word of advice: before you start to investigate these pages you're advised to prepare your WWW browser to receive go games. You will encounter many of them on these pages and by taking two minutes to tell your browser about it will enable you to browse the games using one of your favorite SGF browsers.

Another point of attention is the image cache of your browser. Please take a few minutes to optimize it. You will do yourself, other visitors of the website and the web in general a great favor, no kidding.

Experienced Go players will most likely be interested in the coverage of the Professional Go Scene in Japan, Korea, China and International. All major pro tournaments are closely monitored and usually you will be able to find the results and game records of the current and most recent tournaments.

Over the years hundreds of tournaments, featuring thousands of professional Go games have thus been included. These pages and games can be browsed or studied using any of the tools described below:

Browsing

Various indices are provided which enable you to browse through the information on professional players, tournaments, games and Go jargon:

Tournaments

An overview of the professional Go tournaments. For each tournament an overview is available. Detailed information and games might be available. The last edition of tournaments can be monitored via the Go, An Addictive Game page. In general, changes and additions to this site can be monitored using the What's New page.

Players

A nearly complete listing of biographies for professional Go players in Japan, China, Korea and Taiwan. For most players additional statistical information is available. Players which have games in the database are marked in the index. A game listing for each player can be generated.

Game Search

You can search for games by specifying game properties like the name of the players, date, place, event and more.

The Internet Go Dictionary

The Intergo dictionary contains hundreds of technical Go terms explained in various languages. Currently, 11 languages are supported.

The GoBase Japanese Dictionary

The Japanese dictionary contains reverse indices of Japanese characters to players or Go jargon. Currently the database contains the categories players, tournaments and technical terms.

Studying

Various tools are provided which use the professional game collection to help you to study the game of Go:

The GoBase Repository Service

It's your personal corner within gobase.org and allows you to upload, organize and analyze your games using the knowledge extracted by Go database program GoBase from 153455 professional games (195754824 positions) accessible to you from this site. Alternatively, using the empty board (Java) you can create any search pattern you like. A tutorial explains the details in 5 min.

The GoBase Joseki Dictionary

The Joseki Dictionary contains an index of the most common joseki occuring in professional and amateur Go games. Each joseki in the index can be used to query the professional Go game collection. The Go database program GoBase (which performs the search) returns a list of games featuring the selected pattern and a variation tree with the continuations from the initial position.

The GoBase Fuseki Dictionary

The Fuseki Dictionary is constructed similarly to the joseki dictionary. Searches can be performed on a large collection of predefined fuseki patterns.

Go Articles

Interesting articles on various aspects of the game of Go. For example, the special series by Pieter Mioch and Charles Matthews. Especially recommended is the article by Miyamoto Naoki on an unconventional fuseki strategy.

Go Problems

Learning Go and solving Go problems go hand in hand. The more basic problems you can solve the higher the level of your Go. This section collects Go problems which will help you to become stronger.

The Go Game Gallery

The Go Game Gallery contains outstanding Go games organised by various themes. The categories include Brilliant Moments, Furikawari, and Fighting Ko for example.

Commented Go Games

I used to regularly replay professional games on the Internet Go Server while trying to explain what's going on in the game. This section is a collection of these games.

We're sorry to have to include the following points but experience over the years have indicated that it is necessary to point them out to some Internet users.

Copyright

All pages, articles and services are copyright by Jan van der Steen unless explicitely stated otherwise.

Public domain?

None of the material on this site (including the game records!) is in the public domain unless explicitely stated otherwise. The game records are offered for study purposes and as such you're welcome to download a reasonable amount (100 games/month is considered reasonable).

Mirroring

As you might understand by now it is strictly forbidden to mirror any part of this site. We monitor and register mirror actions and individual users or whole networks will lost their privilege to access these pages when policies are violated.

If you do wish to use (parts of) the material published on GoBase.org contact us and we surely can work something out.

Go Game Records

A final notice on game records. There is a lot of confusion about copyright on game records but the confusion only exists in the minds of those who never really worked on large game collections. Such collections can only exist because of the tremendous efforts invested to find and enter the go games, normalize the name of players and other game information and categorize these games in such a way that one is able to access them conveniently. So, while you're allowed to access the games, you're not allowed to mirror, publish or reproduce them in any way.

HTML dialect

A detailed discussion on the coding and design issues of GoBase.org is available. Here it suffices to say that the HTML used to code these pages is mostly compliant with HTML-4.0 Transitional.

Style Sheets

All pages on this site use style sheets (CSS) to specify the desired formatting. The use of style sheets should make these pages suitable for browsing with alternative browsers like lynx. Most pages on this site share the same style sheet (subpage.css) thus trying to optimize the use of client-side caching facilities to minimize network traffic.

JavaScript

Turning on JavaScript is recommended since that will enable you to replay games using the online replay facility.

You have JavaScript turned on if you see an icon displayed in the left hand side margin.

Usually alternatives are offered to download the game record which enables you to replay them with an SGF viewer of your choice.

Java

Java is recommended when using the repository service to store and study games. JavaScript facilities with comparable functionality are provided though so not having Java will not restrict you in any way.

Frames

Only some pages on this site use FRAME's. This holds for example for the players' (Biography Browser Page) where frames make it more convenient to access the provided information.

Browsers

The HTML and JavaScript cross-platform and browser compatibility is constantly monitored and guaranteed for the following browser versions: Netscape-6 (Mozilla), Microsoft Explorer version 5.x and 6.x and Opera. As mentioned before, no information will be lost if you don't have Java, so you can turn it off.

Navigating

The header of most pages on GoBase.org looks as shown. Selecting the board will bring you to the logical index of the current subject while some extra navigation buttons are available in the top-right hand side of the screen, in this case: prev, index and next. Besides, a language switch is offered, allowing you to switch the language by selecting the appropriate flag.

On old-style pages you will find a small go board in the top-right hand side of the page which usually brings you back to the main page of the current topic. Continuously selecting this board brings you back to the main index.