Download/HomepageTurboGO v.3.1 for Windows 95 is the only
GO-playing Windows shareware on the market! And it's quite good
at playing, especially on small 9x9 boards.
It doesn't have nor need a setup program: you just unzip and run
it. Until you'll register, you will not have the settings saved
and you may only use the first 3 of 5 playing levels. Starting
and quitting the program, as well as playing a new game pops up a
"Register/Evaluate" nag dialog, but it's just a click
away.
Written in Delphi (ported from DOS Turbo Pascal), it's reasonably
friendly and powerful. The author answered to my e-mail within 24
hours and suggested that its playforce might be about 10-kyu on
9x9 boards and 20-kyu or so on 19x19 ones. Since I only could use
level 3, not 5, and I use to play 'blitz' (10 sec./move) on 9x9
boards, I guess it's about 12-15 kyu on level-3 , thus 10 kyu on
level-5 sounds reasonable.
I tested it against Many Faces of GO, a well-known DOS program.
It loses by about 3 points playing black on a 9x9 board (level-3)
with MFG on level 4. Against the free stripped-down 9x9 version
named IGO, it wins by about 3 points (level-3) with IGO on its
maximum level (4). Well done!
TurboGo only knows Chinese scoring, although I'd opted for the
Japanese one -- but I wasn't asked for. It handles Smart Go
Format (.SGF) files, so you can see recorded games or save new
ones. You may also take back moves. The only things you cannot do
with it is problem solving or joseki learning, if you thought it
would be nice to.
The next version will hopefully have 3D stones an custom bitmap
background, the author promises. My taste found the brown default
background too dark, so I use a custom color of R,G,B =
255,200,0. It's more like wood like this.
If you like to play GO and you're working under Win95/NT, you
cannot have a better choice!
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