MyGoGrinder

Download

You can download the latest version of MyGoGrinder from the MyGoGrinder project page.
The source files for the program are in the .jar file.
Version 2.4 of the program is being prepared.

JsekiTsumego

New work on another program, which I found interesting: JsekiTsumego by Ross Werner. His last published version was JsekiTsumego 0.2 and then he stopped the development (apparently) - that was in 2009. I dug it out and found it being buggy (somewhat alpha). Several hours of studying the code brought some results: JsekiTsumego 0.5.0 (not anymore regularly crashing - I hope no crash at all).

Jseki Tsumego is mainly thought for go player novices: it presents basic problems about life and death, which don't have complicated defense moves. The question is always: what is the best result, the player to move can get? The program and problems don't handle Ko for getting a Seki or Ko for more points against a Seki or similar. Also not built in are endgame questions.

Jseki Tsumego uses flashcards (Leitner system / Spaced Repetition Algorithm) to present the problems. In contrast to usual tsumego programs the pupil is not asked to put a stone, but shall determine the status of an enclosed group: alive, dead, unsettled, ko, seki. Available are 10 categories with 29 internal files and 564 questions ("cards").

You can create and load additional sgf, but these need to stick to rules:

SGF-GameName should be set and the same as the file name (or similar): GN[Bent 4 in the corner] (this helps finding a wrong file).
SGF-GameComment must be set to "black inside" or "white inside" (in the code: e.g. GC[white inside]). If you omit this or use other wording, the program complains and assumes "black inside" (sorry, I didn't yet repair this).
The program assumes, that the player with his stones "inside" plays the first move (a pass move to adjust this is allowed). If the file doesn't fulfill this, the program shows wrong text for White/Black to play and the expected status doesn't fit to the player to move.
Every "node" (move, and also the setup) MUST have an SGF-Comment with the status for this situation and the player to move (example: C[unsettled]).
Allowed are: unsettled, dead, alive, black ko, white ko, sente seki, gote seki. Still no additional text is allowed.
Alive assumes life with points for the player inside. The player inside only needs to answer the opponents moves without mistakes.

Correcting problem files can be done with mostly any SGF editor: Drago (godrago.net/), MultiGo (ruijiang.com/multigo/), CGoban 1 (a Linux program, sf.net/p/cgoban1/), CGoban 3 (a Java program, gokgs.com) and Sen:te (for Mac, sente.ch/software/goban3/).

The default category is currently "Beginner1", but this can easily be adjusted when selecting a category (menu "Selection", "Change selection" and then button "Add category ..."): set the check mark for default.
The categories are:Beginner(1, 2, 3), Advanced(1, 2, 3), Master, Grandmaster, Ko, Tesuji. cmd.exe, console

There are still mistakes possible in the code and also in the sgf files (in the program). If you think, the expected answer doesn't fit to the shown situation, it is possible, that I made a mistake. Use an SGF-editor to play through the variants. A bug shows it's origin in a console. Start JsekiTsumego there with PATH/TO/YOUR/java.exe -jar JsekiTsumego.jar (don't use javaw.exe, as you will not see error messages there).

Requirements

MyGoGrinder needs Java 1.5 or higher to run.
JsekiTsumego wants Java 1.7 or higher. You can get Java at oracle.com