World
Game
Of
Sprouts
Association

Random Thoughts

I have simply been unable to keep up with the not-very-challenging challenges of my life and am thinking again that possibly we need a new club president. The WGOSA meme is a tiny but valuable addition to Earth’s noosphere and must not die! Or perhaps it has already done its work – I’m not sure which.

I am wondering now how sprouts stands as a competitive sport. I am fairly certain that the game is viable in face-to-face play. While I am entirely unclear whether Roman’s algorithms make it too easy for a knowledgeable person to play perfectly from standard opening positions, I believe that, even if so, there must be good ways to vary from these standard positions – a sprouts equivalent to FischerRandom chess. But where to we stand now in terms of correspondence play? Does the advent of the open source, extremely strong GLOP program change anything? I have been completely out of touch. Are email games being played these days?

Certainly there needs to be a 2007 World Championship. Ideas, suggestions and recommendations are needed!

Sprouts has become ever more esoteric. We need to replace/supplement our existing tutorials with up-to-date tutorials written with a high degree of clarity. A problem I have is that I am not current with the latest developments. I was once a top player, but now I am a comparative tyro. The needed tutorials would benefit me more than anyone else. But the real reason we need them, of course, is for newcomers who would like to reach elite-level proficiency quickly. (I believe that is still possible, but, again, I am not really sure.)

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