06-30

John Tromp from the Netherlands shows that from the 3^169 possible colorings of a 13x13 board 8.66% of those positions are legal, which corresponds to the amazing number of: 3724979230 7686396442 2949047670 2451767424 9157948208 7175332547 9955097059 5875237705 (80 digits).

Denis Feldman from France shows this number consists of two primes: 744995846 1537279288 4589809534 0490353484 9831589641 7435066509 5991019411 9175047541 and 5 which is pronounced Go in Japanese. Coincidence? I think so...

John did the computing by writing a C-program based on a program by Gunnar Farnebäck. It ran for 8 hours, using 12GB of memory. 

 06-28

Challenger Takao Shinji wins the 5th game and becomes the 60th Honinbo by beating Cho U in an extremely close endgame. The match was covered live on IGS-PandaNet. 

 06-27

Title holder Cho U seals the 79th move right in the middle of an ongoing attack in the 5th game of the 60th Honinbo title match against Takao Shinji. The match continues the 28th of June and is covered live on IGS-PandaNet. 

 06-21

Cho U survives the first kado-ban (lose and it's over) game. Challenger Takao Shinji was unable to create a substantial attack against the weak groups of his opponent, mainly due to skilful defense of the title holder. The match continues the 27th of June and is covered live on IGS-PandaNet. 

 06-20

Lee ChangHo sets some things straight in the 2nd game of the 39th WangWi title match against young Ok DukJin, 2p. Next game is scheduled next month, the 8th of July. 

 06-20

Challenger Takao Shinji seals the 83rd move in the 4th game of the 60th Honinbo title match against Cho U. The match continues the 21th of June and is covered live on IGS-PandaNet. 

 06-17

Cho U defends the honor of two countries (Taiwan and Japan) by taking the 17th Asia Cup. He beat Cho HanSung in the final by 2.5 point, the same margin as in his other two victories in this tournament. 

 06-10

Do we have a new rising star in Korea? Young Ok DukJin fights his way through the preliminaries and then wins the first game in the title match against Lee ChangHo for the 39th WangWi. 

 06-09

By winning the 3rd game in a row Takao Shinji makes title holder Cho U facing kado-ban (one more loss will lose the match). Winning the 4th game will be the hardest one, will Takao be cool enough? The match continues the 20th of June and will be covered live on IGS-PandaNet.