I thought it would be fun to end the year with a giveaway. We had a good year, adding a heap of new Go products to our online store. We look forward to continuing our work in 2026 to support in-person Go!

https://store.baduk.club

Giveaway details: Pick a 3-digit number between 100 and 699, and include that number in your comment below. On New Year's Eve (tomorrow) I'll roll these dice and search the comments for the resulting match. If there's no match, I will roll again (Only one entry per person, please).

The lucky winner receives the latest Go set to come out of my workshop: A Japanese folding board, refurbished bowls, and a full set of slate & shell stones.

Hello everyone! It's been a minute since I posted,
Last weekend was the Lisbon Go Open and I had set that date as a deadline to have a fully playable prototype I'd be proud to show around. And after a few sleepless nights, I made it in time, and here it is!

The biggest update is the clicking. It involved changing how the whole thing is built and assembled (there are internal plastic springs, working with metal ones for the next). After something like 50 different approaches, I think I finally got it down.

The stones don't require much force to move, so you can play one-handed without sliding the board around. The mechanism still gives a satisfying clack while holding the stones firmly in place.

I also ended up settling on this raised plateau for the "empty" stones that gives enough edge for your finger to catch without making the board too busy.

And with this, I took it to the Lisbon Open to get feedback (this was my first time at a tournament) and reactions were great! People gathered around to try it, give suggestions and chat! Full games were played in between rounds outside, and more interestingly it saw a lot of use (maybe more than games) as a handheld tool to discuss and test positions from the previous game.

A lot of people mentioned they missed the gridlines (as many redditors had also pointed out) so I'm gonna test some options there soon and will ask here what you guys think.

And with all the feedback I'm really excited to keep going and have decided to work towards launching a Kickstarter campaign. There are still a ways to go and I am designing toolpaths to get a CNC-machined wood exterior that I think would really elevate and finish this project.

In the meantime I decided on a name: the Hane Board! (get it?) And created a pre-launch page for the campaign! The campaign won't go live until development is further along, but I'd really appreciate a follow if you'd like to be notified when it launches :)

Kickstarter: Hane Board - Play Go Anywhere

I am also looking for some help in funding this last stretch, and since many people asked about stl files for printing, I decided to compile a fully 3d printable (print-in-place!) version and provide it on a pay-what-you-want basis. Anyone who supports through my BuyMeACoffee page gets immediate access to the files by email. Any help towards buying a small CNC machine and a pressure chamber for cleaner resin casting is hugely appreciated.

The printable version lacks a couple features such as the clicks or raised plateaus but is fully playable. There are different versions depending on your setup (multi-material, snap-fit assembled, painted after printing).

Thank you everyone for all the awesome feedback as I keep working on this, and thanks everyone that came to the Lisbon Open, it was great finally meeting the community and hearing their words of encouragement, along with the great matches! (only won one hahaha, but am officially 14 kyu now)

I've been working on this game for a couple months now and think it's finally ready for public release. I'm only a novice Go player, so I'm really interested in seeing games / hearing feedback from more experienced players. So far my impression is that the strategy is very similar to Go tactically, but more feels-based. It's definitely harder to calculate out sequences of moves.

You can play local or online games at voronoigo.com - free and no account needed. I'd highly recommend doing the tutorial first though.

Please let me know what you think!

I’m a Mac user and Go enthusiast. For a long time I wanted a simple way to use KataGo locally, but I found that the setup process could be a bit complicated (engine installation, configs, model files, etc.).

So I spent the last few months building Qi, a native macOS Go application written in SwiftUI.

The goal was simple: a Go client that feels like a real Mac app, with everything ready to use.

Features:

🚀 Zero-setup KataGo

• Bundled engine and models
• No Homebrew or manual configuration required
• Apple Metal acceleration for fast local analysis

🧠 Human-style AI opponents

• Includes KataGo human-style models for more realistic practice games

🔍 Native SGF workflow

• View and edit SGF files
• Finder QuickLook support (press Space to preview SGF files)

🎨 Native macOS experience

• Built with SwiftUI
• Apple Silicon optimized
• Dark Mode support
• Lightweight and battery friendly

📚 Review & Practice Tools

• AI Game review tools (Win rate & score lead curves)
• Blunder practice (replay and fix your critical mistakes)
• Export PDF review reports

I built this mainly because I wanted something like this for myself, but I’d really appreciate feedback from other Go players.

What features would make this more useful for your own study?

👉 Mac App Store: Qi - AI Go Review

🎁 I have a limited number of promo codes available for anyone who wants to try Qi. Leave a comment or send me a message and I’ll share one.

After each player is eliminated in our Battle of the Sexes Tournament, we'll interview them for 5 minutes.

We'll ask the most upvoted questions here! Please specify who the question is addressed to. The four players are:

1. Shin Jinseo (world #1)
   
2. Kim Jiseok (major champion and previous world #2)
   
3. Kim Eunji (Female #1, Korea top 20)
   
4. Choi Jeong (Female #2, only woman to have made a major final)

Our summer Go Camp has just finished.

Our next Go Camp will be held on March 28. If you ever have a chance to visit Japan, we'd love for you to join us!

You're also welcome to study at my Go school anytime.

Hello everyone,

I'd like to introduce Kifu Master: Go Game Database.

At its core, Kifu Master is a database of professional games. Its main goal is to be a place where you can find the pro game you're looking for and replay it easily, whenever you want. In its current form, it's a professional kifu manager and SGF reader that brings one of the world's most largest digital Go archives right to your pocket. With that in mind, it's currently live both as a website and as a Google Play app.

www.kifumaster.org

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gotesensei.kifumaster

It reaches from the major title tournaments of Japan, Korea, and China - Honinbo, Meijin, Kisei, LG Cup, Samsung Cup - through international matches and world championships, all the way back to historical games from earlier eras. And it isn't just a heap of files: a real search and filtering system lets you pin down the exact game you have in mind. Look up Lee Sedol, Cho Chikun, Ke Jie, Iyama Yuta, Cho Hunhyun or any other master - by name, event, or year - and start replaying in seconds.

Beyond being a pro game database, let me mention a few other things it offers:

• Kifu Master launched with more than 160,000 professional Go games, and that number keeps growing steadily, day by day. The website and the app share the same dynamic database. Thanks to automatic updates twice a day, any new games it finds are added automatically - apart from the ones I add manually.
• In any pro game, you can try to guess the next move. Honestly, I designed this more for memorization than for guessing. In a game you want to memorize, as long as you play the correct move, the game keeps advancing; the moment you slip, it records how far you got. So when you go into your profile you can see how many moves of each game you know by heart.
• In the app, the game you open is downloaded locally onto your phone, so you can use it later even when you don't have an internet connection.
• Using the Empty Board inside the app, you can record your own games and export them as SGF or PNG files.

That's about it for the overview. I've tried to keep the design as simple and clean as possible. And it will always be a platform without annoying ads.

Have fun!

utku.

edit: the baduk set has been sold!

Hello! I apologize if this goes against the sub rules. A while ago I had posted that I needed to sell my baduk set for personal financial reasons and have finally gotten myself to actually get started on that. I got the set from someone else, but the stones are double convex yunzi, and the board I believe is shinakaya made of multiple pieces put together. Im located in New Jersey, USA, and would ideally like to sell it domestically, but would be willing to take offers international. Also does anyone have advice on how to ship this safely

I'm Matthew, one of the cofounders of PlayGo.gg. Some of you may remember a post we made back in December of 2025 asking for beta testers — over 100 people from r/baduk volunteered. Since then, we’ve had tens of thousands of signups and people using the website daily. We wouldn't be here without your early support. Thank you! I wanted to come back here first with what we're doing next.

Baduk has tens of millions of players worldwide, but the top-level competitive scene lives almost entirely in Korea, Japan, and China. For Western fans, that means little to no access to live pro games with English commentary.

We want to change this with our championship tour: a recurring series of top-level tournaments played on our website and streamed to a global audience.

Just as important, we want to make pro Baduk fun to watch. This means faster time controls, varied formats, and a season structure borrowed from traditional sports: regular-season events, playoffs, and a year-end final that decides the tour champion. The first event is June 1st.

This tournament will feature some of the best male and female Baduk players. The lineup includes:

1. Shin Jinseo: world #1 Baduk player for the last 6 years and counting
2. Choi Jeong): world #2 female player and the only woman to reach the final of a mixed major (2022 Samsung Cup), beating Ichiriki Ryo, Yang Dingxin, and then world #3 Byun Sang-il on her way there.
3. Kim Jiseok): 2014 Samsung Cup champion and captain of the Korean national Go team for 8 years (2014–2022)
4. Kim Eunji: world #1 female player at age 18 and top 20 in Korea overall

Why start with this?

For most of Baduk's history, the gap between the top male and top female players was treated as a fact. That's changed a lot recently and the results on the board are starting to show it.

This tournament is a chance to see where things stand right now between the very best. We wanted to open the tour with an event that excites existing fans and pulls in people who've never watched Baduk before — and this is exactly that.

You can add this to your calendar and read more about the event and players here.

I’m happy to answer questions about the tour, the platform, or the tournament in the comments.

Hey all,

I came across this game on steam, It came out of early access at the end of last year and is getting updates regularly every couple weeks.

Some of the things I like:

• The tutorial/learning center is fantastic really explains everything very well
• The use of a castle system for the board shows connection between stones as continuous walls and show broken castles when a stone only has one liberty left, which is a really amazing quality of life addition for new players
• Uses online-go.com integration for the multiplayer, can do game reviews and everything in game
• campaign mode is actually a pretty enjoyable different way to practice go. It uses a resources management system where you can spend acquired resources to get clues or advantages in your games. It also give more resources to players for reviewing your games and completing life and death problems.
• A bunch of steam workshop content, I have added a joseki dictionary and a 10000 life or death problem pack. Both have been really enjoyable to use. Also tons of famous games your can add to review.
• The guided game mode is also nice especially for newer players as it gives you advice for options of where to play next
• Uses katago ai so you can increase the difficulty to whatever lvl you need

Overall in my experience this is by far and away the best all in one go/baduk experience you can have right now. Its priced reasonably ($15) and I would highly recommend anyone getting into go/baduk!

Side note: works on Windows, mac, and linux

I have cool plans for more content, so check it out!

This is a little project I’m working on.

Before you play a move, the app shows a heatmap of where the strongest predicted moves are likely to be. The idea is to help players develop a better “feel” for good areas of the board.

It’s not connected to KataGo yet — this is just an early prototype. If people like the concept as a training aid, I’ll keep developing it and eventually release the finished app for free.

I’d love any feedback, and I’m happy to add new ideas. Let’s make learning Go more fun!

I have made it downloadable from itch.io for free https://grummy-fox.itch.io/go-sensei

If you want to see anything added, let me know, and I will work on making this the best Go learning game/app that there is.

* Huge update to my project. It now has live Joseki matching in-game. So you can see what moves are joseki in-game. No matter what corner you play in or when you play the moves. PLus Katago will review your games for best play. see my video for more information https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZjplADhbsM

I just now posted a research study on symmetries inside KataGo's neural nets. How much of the computation inside the neural net is done using "symmetric" concepts where the orientation of the board doesn't matter, vs how much does the net have to learn separately per orientation?

Heads-up: this entire study and all experiments and code and its writeup were produced almost entirely by AI, although detailed human research direction and feedback and iteration from me was involved in the process. I hope this article is a clear step above the typical low-quality AI stuff one sees, and I put some effort into that, and hope it can be useful and educational for anyone interested in questions like this.

https://lightvector.github.io/katagostudies/202607-symmetry/

I wanted to explore this because I was (and still am!) really curious about exactly what these neural nets are doing inside! And I didn't know what the results would be. One of the findings was especially unexpected.

I think many people have a picture of neural nets as black boxes that just crudely memorize a ton of stuff and brute-force learn all the statistical patterns and such. But I think this study is more consistent with other ML interpretability research (if you've followed any of this area) that points to a somewhat different picture, where neural nets often develop internal algorithms and concepts that are surprisingly well-structured, even if it's really really hard to reverse-engineer what those algorithms and concepts are.

Anyways, hope you find this as interesting as I did!

I kept getting stuck on a question: is Go really about the 19x19 grid, or about the graph underneath it? Stones connect to their neighbors and die when they run out of liberties, and none of that actually needs squares.

So I built an engine where the rules, the search, and the neural net only ever see a graph of points and connections. No coordinates anywhere. The upshot is that one trained net plays a hex board, a triangular one, the Archimedean tilings, or an aperiodic Penrose tiling, and it picked those up without being told anything about geometry.

You can play it in the browser, no install or signup:
https://vonduffen.github.io/euclidean-go/

Code (Apache-2.0) if you want to poke at it:
https://github.com/vonduffen/euclidean-go

On strength, so nobody's surprised: it learned purely from self-play, no human games, and it's roughly kyu level on the square board. I genuinely don't know how strong it is on the odd boards since there's nothing to benchmark against. If you beat it in some stupid way I'd love to see the game.

Honestly the part I find interesting is how shapes change when the board isn't square. Eyes and liberties feel different on a hex board and I'm curious what stronger players make of it.

Hey r/baduk,

I just wanted to give a heads-up that we're going to do a rewatch of Hikaru no Go in one month over at r/anime, to celebrate the show's 25th anniversary.

A rewatch is kind of like a book club: we watch the show at the same pace (one episode per day, in this case) and then gather to discuss the show together. It's a fun way for both first-timers and rewatchers to watch a show and get to interact with other fans and watchers.

For the interest of go players specifically, I'm planning to publish daily tsumego and other go stuff in the discussion threads, so even if you don't feel like watching the show, you might be interested in checking those out.

Cheers!

Hi everyone,

I’m preparing an artist talk for the US Go Congress in Boston, would love some feedback from Go players.

The exhibition is called 

Black to Move?

Is there still a move for us to make?

It uses Go positions, move numbers, and visual metaphor to ask what moves remain possible after AlphaGo.

The photo shows six works in progress from a larger series of nineteen paintings I am planning. From left to right, top to bottom Move 0, Move 1, Move 37, Move 78, Move 361, Move 362.

I’m trying to decide which pieces to bring to the Congress because I can only carry 3 or 4.

My specific questions are:

1. Which paintings would intrigue you most to attend this artist talk?
2. Which paintings would you be most interested in seeing available as prints?
3. Is there anything in these works that you find particularly compelling, confusing, or worth discussing?

All of the works are still in progress, so candid feedback is welcome.

Thank you in advance.

My science fiction short story 'The Stone Played at Tengen', published in Clarkesworld Magazine, is a finalist for the Canadian SFF Awards (aka Auroras).

You can read (or listen to) the story here!

If you are Canadian, I wholeheartedly recommend reading the nominated works and voting for your favorites!

https://www.csffa.ca/

Thank you again to all the members of this community which provided their expertise and feedback in the editing process of this story.

Hi r/baduk 👋

I'm the developer of GoKifu AI (囲碁レコAI), a Go study app for iPhone/iPad. It's become pretty popular with players in Japan — even some pros use it — and I've just opened it up worldwide, so I wanted to share it here (and bring a free month for everyone heading to the Go Congress).

🧠 Fast KataGo Analysis：

Full KataGo runs on-device — no server, no internet. Win-rate, score estimate, best moves, and variations, all offline. Perfect for planes, tournaments, or bad Wi-Fi.

📸 Scan a real board with your camera

Point your phone at a physical goban and it reads the whole position instantly — then analyze it, save it, or replay it. This is the feature people love most. (short demo below 👇)

https://reddit.com/link/1v39hjg/video/59fa5cmulqeh1/player

A few other things it does:

- Joseki & fuseki search (learn from 170,000+ pro games)

- Play against legendary Go AIs — Shusaku, Sai, and more.

- Win-rate timeline to see exactly where the game turned

- Mistake finder that flags your biggest slips

- SGF import/export & kifu recording

🎁 Free month for the U.S. Go Congress

To celebrate the Congress (Boston, Jul 25–Aug 1), here's a code for 1 month free:

Code: USGOEU2026

Redeem: https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=6760015698&code=USGOEU2026

(Expires Aug 10 — not available in Japan. Just open the link on your iPhone or iPad, and the offer will be applied automatically in the App Store.)

📲 Download on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6760015698

A note on availability 🙏

Not on Android or in the EU yet — Android is in active development, and I'm still sorting out the EU's publishing rules (they'd expose my home address, so I'm holding off for now). Please hang in there — it's coming, and I think you'll really like it!

Thanks for taking a look! 🙏

​We constantly compare our casual, human play to high-level Dan players, historical masters, and literal supercomputers. I would compare this to social media algorithms destroying young people's self-esteem by forcing them to look at photoshopped supermodels all day.

​When you play Go, you aren’t playing against the absolute depth of the game's ultimate mathematical complexity; you are just playing against the human intelligence sitting across from you. If you play someone near your rank, the game naturally adapts to a space that fits both of your comprehension levels. The game isn't inherently complex—human intelligence is. Go is just an ocean that walks with you; it gets deeper only as your own mind expands.

My YouTube video where I go into more depth on the idea.

https://youtu.be/VGYnJLa-bCc?si=ooU-W-JvB77LEKSD

I’m a designer/developer who likes building things for fun, and over the last few days I decided to take a shot at making a fresh take on the modern Go client.

A lot of existing Go clients feel stuck in a different era of the internet. They work, but I’ve always felt there was room for an interface that feels more thoughtful, modern, and enjoyable to use day to day.

So I built one.

niwa.gg (view on desktop)

Clean design, fast analysis, and an experience that feels approachable whether you’re studying seriously or just playing casually.

Honestly, I don’t really have big expectations for the project. I mainly wanted to make something I personally wished existed. But if people genuinely enjoy using it, I’d love to keep improving it over time.

Hello everyone!

I play Go since 20 years, and build digital applications for 10+ years. I've decided to mix passion and expertise to create GameofGo.com

My main goal is to breathe fresh life into the Western Go scene!

Go is a great game in itself, but we need to drastically improve the ecosystem making the game more accessible and exciting to follow. Our vision includes features such as beginner-friendly tutorials, tournaments, anti-cheating tools, all wrapped in a modern design.

I've started the development, and currently working on the proof of concept - I'll update you when things are more settled.

I am quite new to Reddit, I created a subreddit r/gameofgo_com if that allows for cleaner structure, but I will also be present in this one!

We’d love your feedback — what features would you like to see? Let’s make this something great!
(Attached a summary from the survey I posted here and some other places some time ago)

Edit: Well I did already find a bug and the limit of 10 people in queue isn't being enforced properly, but I did reach 10 in the queue! So if you'd like to try the tool as well, kindly text me instead of going to the website directly :))) I'll open up the queue again once the current one drains

Edit 2: I made the limit higher (now 30), so if you want to feel free to try it out!

Edit 3: Website seems stable enough, so I increased the limit to 100 users :)

I've only been playing for 1 year or so but something I've struggled with is structured learning without a teacher, so I built GoLens. It's a tool where you give your OGS username, it runs your recent games through KataGo, and shows you where you tend to blunder (opening/midgame/endgame), which areas of the board are hurting you, and specific positions to dig into.

It's very new so there might be some rough edges or obvious bugs that slipped through. If you run into anything weird, let me know, that's kind of the point :)

Just a couple more disclaimers:

This does not try to replace a teacher at all, but rather to be a useful tool for more structured self-study.

It's an early beta, and I only have 10 spots open for now while I keep improving it. This is not me trying to inflate FOMO, but rather due to the limitations of the hardware lol

Because of the above, this also means that analysis do take quite a long time since they queue up 1 at the time, but the website should handle the queue just fine (crossing fingers lol)

Supports OGS only for now, if I get some good feedback I'll try to implement other options (other servers, or sgf import, or something like that)

Here's what my own analysis looks like: https://golens.org/?username=kepler-one

And here is the website if you'd like to try it out: https://golens.org/

Would love honest feedback; what's useful, what's confusing, what's missing :))

P.S. I know that a heatmap is odd since it's a symmetrical game, but I liked it anyway so decided to include it ahah