Color Go Server, or CGS, is an Internet Go server enabling you to play against other players, worldwide, in real time and directly from your browser. Its main purpose is to facilitate Go discovery and learning, by updating its design and by adding some tools making the rules easier to understand.
Why CGS ?
A Go board from a Sui dynasty (581–618 CE) tomb
Go is an fascinating game which has been played for almost 3000 years. This seniority is a mark of quality. Still, it is a difficult game for beginners to grasp, which prevents them from capturing its depth and beauty.
However, the basic rules are extremely easy and can be learned within 5 minutes... But the final goal, to control a bigger territory than his opponent, remains hard for beginners to visualize. This is why CGS’s purpose is to help new players learning the game rules in a more intuitive way.
Visuals
In a game of Go, each stone has a certain influence on the board. This is very hard for a beginner to visualize on a traditional board. CGS points out territories by highlighting this influence.
Atari
The beginners who just started to play have difficulties to see Atari. In order to help them, CGS will highlight this situation by reducing the size of stones that have only one liberty left.
Liberties
To help new players to avoid being in Atari, CGS offer an option to show the liberty count of each stones.
Themes
On CGS there is something for every taste! The player will be able to choose his preferred design among different themes while adjusting other parameters such as the intensity of the grid or the intensity of the influence...
Review
One of the most important action to do in order to progress in Go is having your games reviewed by a player stronger than you. Because the reviewer can highlight your mistakes and propose you better moves. CGS offer tools to review your games by yourself or by another player in real time. You can also request a game review by simply clicking a button. This will automatically request it in the global chat.
Automatch & Custom challenge
By default when the player clicks on the “Play” button. This will open the “Automatch” popup that show just a few choices. If the player wants to create a custom challenge, he can click on the settings icon of the “Automatch” popup.
Badges
By playing on CGS you will unlock sometimes new badges. They prove you made specific actions to obtain them. Like having played 50 ranked games. In your profile you will see all the badges you unlocked so far. Also you can highlight one of them. If so you and other players will see the badge next to your avatar.
Localization
One of the main goals of CGS is to be accessible around the world. This is why multiple languages are available thanks to the volunteers who helped translate CGS. If you want to help translating CGS, get more information on this page.
Chatting
Go is also a game of exchange. Players like to talk with each other to comment their moves or to discuss about Go news. On CGS, players will have the possibility to send private messages, create group conversations or talk on the public chats.
Load SGF files
On CGS you can load a SGF file from your computer to look at the evolution of the influence along the game. Maybe you will find out how to prevent your next opponent to build such a big Moyo!
And more to come...
There are still a lot of ideas to realize:
- Go variants
- Adventure mode
- Mentor and schools
- AI analysis