Havannah play outside of little golem

For a long time now, I've idly wondered to what extent Havannah is played elsewhere. I know there have been sets sold commercially, and I know that there are a few other game sites that implement it. But are there over the board events/clubs, and what proportion of the total is LG?

For what it's worth, I've played many games on a paper board I printed along with small Go pieces.

We got some assembled links at mindsports, but the page may not be up to date. Personally I'm happy that the game appears to have some resistance against disappearing :)

A bot playing on paper with a printed board? Seems legit..

Heh, in this case "I" means Timo, the author of Castro. Castro mainly plays on here. I play the occasional game against Castro through HavannahGui. That said, the vast majority of Castro's games have been in self-play in a custom written tournament script, with ~3M games logged there.

It is worth noting that Tony sells Havannah boards at http://www.hexboard.com/havannah_atoll.htm . If you want my printed board (sizes 5 and 8), it's one of the last pages of my thesis: http://havannah.ewalds.ca/

My curiosity was really about the level of play here on LG. Are there really strong players ding out there who don't play here?

I suspect that LG is the top level of play.

LG is definitively the top level of play for Hex, would be strange if it wasn't for Havannah.

I think it is an interesting topic for several games. Obviously, LG isn't top for Chess Shogi and Go. What about Twixt? Or Dots and Boxes? I know that Yahoo had a dots and boxes community (maybe based on the 4x4 size?)

@Thnikkaman: Where do top players play chess, Shogi, and Go?

Harald: I, too, believe that LG represents the top level of play for Hex. However, I'm not sure enough to state that it "definitely" is so. I mean, there COULD be hex communities out there which we don't know about, that doesn't play here. Does anyone else know about strong Hex communities elsewhere? Or Havannah, or Dots communities, for that matter?

z: They play in large, live, international tournaments. The top "live" players, at least. I don't know about top "correspondence chess" players, which is probably what LG players should compare themselves to. But then, there's the issue of computer assistance - what is allowed and what is not, both here and in other tournaments. I know little about this subject, but I suspect others here know more. Ray? Anyone else? How would you say top LG players compare to top correspondence chess players?

It's dangerous to assume that the LG community is the "top" community in games. It's easily illustrated by how fast JeanHebert has climbed up to a very solid second place on the "LG Monster Rating" in relatively little time. Sure, he's definitely not a "nobody" when it comes to games, but when he can do it, I assume others could do it, too.

For live chess, FICS (Free Internet Chess Server) is the place where the best players can be found. A lot of top GMs are playing there. For correspondance chess, I think the biggest website might be chess.com, but I am totally not sure about that.

For go, the biggest real-time server are KGS and the korean TygemBaduk. For correspondance, OGS is probably the biggest.

For shogi, the top server is SC24 (Shogi Club 24).