Wbaduk, Cyberoro's new English server

Wbaduk, or world baduk service is Cyberoro's new English site, available at http://wbaduk.com. I think this initiative from the Korean makers of Cyberoro is very nice, and useful for every western goplayer, so I decided to put a little guide about the new site here.

First of all I have to say that the design is much better , the page is easier to look through and similar to the Korean version. They probably didn't just make it because foreigners were nagging them to let them play on orobaduk server, but actually worked with it and seems like they are also trying their best to maintain it. 

The news section is updated every second or third day. Somebody on the site was criticizing the organizers about putting on so few news, but there are much more information then I was expecting. Of course it would be even better if they would hire some westerners to write news about western Go-life, but maybe later. What I don't really like in this section however is that you don't have a direct path to see the sgfs the news concern. It would be pretty easy to solve that, and very useful, too.

In the second section, you can read some basic information about Korean Amateur Baduk Association (KABA). There's not much to say about this, if you are interested, read :P

About baduk obviously have a lot of information on baduk. Apart from some basic stuff, you can read about Korean baduk's history, and find plenty of information from your favourite Korean pros or international matches.

The gibo or kifu part will probably be one of the most popular sections of this homepage. The only negative thing with the embedded sgf viewer is that even though you can print the game record, so far I didn't find a way to save it.

The lecture part has some interesting (pro and ama) lessons on different topics for different strength players (from 25 k to around 5d). I think the strength is a little overrated, but the strongest section can be useful to anybody from 5k I guess. I hope they will keep on updating this section regularly.

Test room is definitely my favourite. You can challenge yourself in differnet parts of the game: pattern, opening, haengma, tesuji, endgame, middle game, life&death, judgement in 100, 300, 500, or even 1000 blocks! If you are logged in, the site keeps track of your progress - at leat I believe so.

Community has various options, there is a free forum, and baduk clinic: a place where you can ask your questions about certain moves. At the moment it's quite inconvenient to answer somebody's question, and look through all the other answers, so I think it should be further developed. Looking forward seeing how the photo album will improve: so far there are only pictures uploaded by the admin, but anybody can share.

Last but not least, in wbaduk section you can download the client, check the rating list, or learn about the system itself. I don't think the client improved in anything worth mentioning, if we don't take into consideration that there is a wbaduk room now. If they would finally start the betting (they have it on the Korean server) I think it would attract a lot of goplayers.

I hope many of you will have fun visiting this site regularly.