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Janice Kim Launches New Go Blog

Janice is back! American professional Janice Kim 3P (at right), the popular go author, lecturer at many U.S. Go Congresses and former American Go Journal columnist (“Life in B-League”), has just launched a go blog. The idea of the Learn To Play Go blog, hosted by Kim’s  Samarkand.Net website, “is that if AGA members want to have one of their games analyzed and would email it to me in sgf format -- along with any questions they have -- I will identify it in the grand scheme, incorporate it in a weekly go tutorial blog post, and cast both players as ‘spy vs. spy’ for complete anonymity,” Janice tells the E-Journal. Send your sgf game records – and questions – to jkim@samarkand.net and be sure to put "sgf file" in the subject line and include your AGA membership number.

“Perhaps you are familiar with logic puzzles involving hats,” Janice suggests in the first post, What Hat Are You Wearing?  “No? For example, imagine there are 10 prisoners and 10 hats. Each prisoner is assigned a random hat, either red or blue, but the number of each color hat is not known to the prisoners. The prisoners will be lined up single file where each can see the hats in front of him but not behind. Starting with the prisoner in the back of the line and moving forward, they must each, in turn, say only one word which must be ‘red’ or ‘blue’. If the word matches their hat color they are released, if not, they are killed on the spot. A friendly guard warns them of this test one hour beforehand and tells them that they can formulate a plan together to help them survive within the given parameters. How many prisoners could you guarantee to save? While I was thinking about hats, I thought about how it might relate to go, and outlined in broad strokes my new Hat Theory in the comments of the go game below.”