Based on 9 ratings. Author: David Fotland ISBN: NULL Tags |
Many Faces of Go, David Fotland“The Many Faces of Go” is the 2002 World Computer Go Champion, 1998 World Computer Go Champion, and ten time US Computer Go Champion. It is one of the strongest Computer Go opponents in the world, and has many other great features including an integrated IGS client so you can play on the internet. A sophisticated set of go problems and a Joseki tutor help you improve your game. Comments & ReviewsExcellent, though antiquated - Written by Riff Raff
![]() Having been sold commercially since 1988 by David Fotland, Many Faces of Go has by far the greatest longevity of current Go software packages. Its development has slowed in recent years though, with Many Faces of Go 11.0 released in June 2002. Version 10 was released almost five years prior to that. Regardless, it is a very complete package that offers:
Many Faces of Go was my primary SGF editor for a long time as it is very capable in that respect, but I have lately preferred the freeware MultiGo software. One area Many Faces of Go beats out all other packages I’ve tried though is in game scoring, where it shows remarkable ability for correctly marking live and dead groups without user input. Only rarely do I have to correct mistakes in its life and death evaluation for game scoring, which is very convenient. I also use the problem solving mode quite often. The only weakness I’ve noticed with this is that there is no way to go through all problems at a given difficulty level, sequentially or otherwise, if for example you’d like to start at the bottom and work your way up rather than letting it select problems for you from different difficulty levels. The “Computer Solves Problem” mode has also been highly useful for analyzing positions from games where I feel like there’s a possibility that a group can be forcefully killed (or made to live), but I’m having difficulty finding the sequence to do it. Many Faces of Go is a well crafted, mature software package that I have never had a single problem with, have used for many years, and can recommend to anyone. The price is $90 currently, and can be purchased directly from [ext] Smart Games or any of its distributors. Igowin, a 9×9 only version of Many Faces of Go, is also available as a free download (and demo of the full package). The only thing holding me back from a full recommendation is the fact that other software, notably SmartGo, has been developed in the interim and now surpasses Many Faces in many ways. It is similarly priced at $89, but features much more advanced pattern search and database features as well as a large database of professional games. Similar to "Many Faces of Go" |



