An interview with Markus Pollak

Markus Pollak , Austria (on photo) – creator of the http://www.gomatches.com/ Go Server

Markus

Tell us about your future plans, please. Do you plan to make GoMatches
more popular than DGS or OGS?

I’m planning to build up a community which beats OGS and DGS in size. GoMatches

shall be a platform to play GO for people who are playing the game just for fun
in their spare time. I want to win players for more intellectual games.

I am still new on GoMatches, but I like some features. For example on

GoMatches you can add your photo or avatar, but on DGS you cannot. Can you
tell us more about the unique features which we don’t have on other Go
servers

– At first I want to create a very intuitive, user-friendly and simple
website for spare-time amateur players.

– At second on the long term I want to refine the game and bring up new variants of GO.
Some ideas are Multi-GO (GO with multiple players on different boards) or 3d-GO.
The focus will always be on amateur players and long-term games.

– At last but not least I want to build a community of FRIENDLY open minded humans.

What is more useful for improving Go? Playing on real-time servers like
Tygem, WBaduk or KGS or on turn-based servers like DGS, OGS or GoMatches

I don’t know the truth of life and so I can’t answer this question. I think we are
talking about different target groups. Many amateur players don’t want to spend much time
on a game. They want to login for some minutes, make some moves and play several matches
parallely. Others simply don’t want to get stressed.

What do you think about the problem of using books and joseki/fuseki
databases while playing online? Can we say that it’s allowed only on
turn-based servers?

It’s okay to use any materials while playing online. GoMatches is a place for
just4fun players. The only function of our rating is to bring players with
similar skills together.

I know some players, who have very big difference (5+ ranks) in skill
between offline tournaments and Go servers. How do you explain it?

Online communities are not representative for offline communites and vice versa.

We are not yet living in a world where everybody is used to computers. Usually a rating is
(independent of the algorithm) only a relative comparison with other players. So it’s no
wonders that the ratings will differ.

I never saw any turn based servers in Asian countries (China, Korea,
Japan). On Korean servers I see lot of 10sec per move games. Can we say that
only US and European players like to think that much?

No, we can’t say this in general. It’s much more a different kind of organization.
Both groups don’t want to spend too much time but they have different ways
of handling this problem. If you want to complete things you’ve started immediately
a 10sec match will be optimal. On the other hand if you want to play matches
from a more strategic point of view, turn-based games will be your choice.