Go / Wéiqí / Baduk is like the ocean, simple to understand near the shore, but unknowable and somewhat scary in it’s greatest depths.
Games on a 9x9 board are faster and may help during early learning.
Tsumego are small contained Go puzzles, where there is one ideal solution to be found. (Gobandroid or similar)
There is a massive amount of knowledge at this website:
https://senseis.xmp.net/?StartingPoints
(All available under the Open Content Licence)
It is a humbling game. I know nothing about Go.
I’m here with my GO board game wondering why everyone has a block of wood and pebbles…
I think it’s neat that it was supposedly the hardest board game to get AI to understand and play effectively.
It wasn’t until 2015 that the top Go player lost to an Ai while chess lost in 1997. It’s wild how big that gap is when you think about how much tech had to improve to make it possible.
It’s an order of magnitude more complex than Chess, which I am just ok at, so kudos!
And didn’t people still find holes in the Go AI’s algorithm and proceed to dunk on it afterward?
Iirc someone figured out that if you didn’t make it obvious that you were encircling the AI, it wouldn’t take any preventative measures.
This is actually more impressive about AI. People used to think Go AI wouldn’t be able to beat a human player until like 2050. I certainly thought that when I learned it in like 2010. Back then the strongest AI was like 1 Dan (amateur) at most. (9 Dan is the highest rank and professional 9 Dan which you need to play professional games to get to are much stronger than an amateur 9 Dan which is like 9 Dan from an online website. Also the games rankings go from 30 kyu which is the lowest rank to 1 kyu which is the highest “amateur ranking”. After 1 kyu is the Dan ranks ranging from 1 to 9)
Newbies are often afraid or insulted to use “handicap” pieces, but the few free pieces given to a lower-rank player are actually quite effective at adjusting the balance with unevenly ranked players. It’s not a huge advantage and doesn’t fundamentally change the play of the game.
Using different sizes of board is also neat. I’m very fond of a short game using only a 9x9 board. Plays a lot faster, but trades strategy for a more tactical game.
Newbies are often afraid or insulted to use “handicap” pieces
I made this mistake! I started learning Go years and years ago, and it turned out the company where I was working at that time had a former 7-dan amateur player. When he found out I was learning he offered to play me, which I eagerly accepted. I didn’t know this at the time, but 7-dan amatuer is the highest Go ranking one can achieve in Japan without playing professionally (there are separate 1-dan through 9-dan ranks for pros). For our first game, he offered to give me the full 9-stone handicap since I was just starting out. I thought that sounded excessive and suggested a 6-stone handicap instead, so that’s what we did. He fucking destroyed me that game. It was not even remotely close. For the rematch, I humbly accepted the full 9-stone handicap.
Did those extra three stones make enough of a difference?
Well, he still won that second game but the outcome wasn’t as lopsided. It definitely made the game more interesting for both of us.
No offense, but the extra stones just made it so he could go easy on you. When I started go, the new player challenge was to end a 9 stone handicap game against the resident 3-dan with a “positive” score. [0]
[0] most official scoring methods either ignore captured stones, or count them as positive points for the player who captured them. However, when scoring by hand, it is easier to count them as negative points for the person who lost them; so thats what we did.
I personally don’t like the experience of playing with more than 3-4 handicap stones. For the weaker player, every move it’s like “What is my opponent up to now? I am still ahead, I should just play safe.” and for the stronger player it’s like “How can I force my opponent to make mistakes?”. These thoughts are sometimes part of an even game but not as frequently.
Great game, much like chess I have no one in real life to play it with and I lose interest quickly in playing random internet strangers, so it’s been quite awhile since I’ve touched it.
I think a thing that made a huge impact for me was finding a program full of life and death puzzles. It really helped to drill in what a “dead group” looks like, and helped me judge when to abandon a part of the board or continue fighting for control there. Unfortunately that was 15 years ago and I no longer remember the name of that program.
Otherwise I always found the idea behind influence on the board to be very powerful, if difficult to define. I always noticed that good players tend to start by putting pieces all around the board, generally hovering on the third or fourth line away from the edge. Even if they wont fight for those spots later, just that small presence is enough to disrupt how their opponent will play and gives an edge in defending or attacking that area later. I’m a novice player who hasn’t played in a decade so maybe its not great advice, but spread out early! I think it really helps. It makes it a lot easier to claim territory and also just push into your opponents, and hopefully they eat up a lot of space trying to defend that.
I used to play a lot in college. KGS was very popular and fun to hang around. Hikaru no Go anime is really good. Also there is a documentary about Lee Sedol vs Alphago games. Check them out. It’s best to play in person so check out local clubs and tournaments. r/baduk subreddit is fairly active.
There is an incredible book called The Master of Go by Yasunari Kawabata, a Nobel-winning Japanese author. It’s based on the true story of a master-level Go game that took six months.
I know that doesn’t sound very interesting, but trust me. It really is.
These were the group at college with the collective smell playing Magic: The Gathering. I suppose mild autism, or what used to be called Aspergers. Never disliked them, but they were certainly different. I’m likely somewhere on the spectrum, and not just because “it’s a spectrum”, but it didn’t quite manifest like that for me.
Are you saying they were oddballs who happened to play magic, or oddballs because they played magic?
I’m not sure how it could flow from the cards to the people, but I suppose they are magic. And there was usually a gathering. So anything is possible.
I wanted to learn how to play after watching a few dozen episodes of Hikaru no Go, but it’s such an obtuse game. Chess I can understand, but Go has a level of strategy that my mind just can’t grasp.
+1 for Hikaru no Go
Bought a Go set and brought to chess club; that went well lol
Read the Janice Kim books from her Learn to Play Go series and played some online
In the end stopped playing from lack of local players; now I play various other board games instead
Have you found the manga Hikaru no Go?
I haven’t found the manga but it was made into an Anime that’s on Hulu right now. I was thinking of watching it when I’m bored some day.
Gosh. Chess breaks my brain enough. I think I tried to tangle with Go for a bit after watching a doc about it but it was just too much for my feeble brain.
I’ve been following a series of tutorials by Go Magic. They have a YouTube channel! The videos are extremely well produced and explain things super well!
Edit: I grabbed a link
Why is that game named Five in Japanese if they have more than five pieces?
it is the number of people to ever have won the game
What app should I download (on Android) if I want to try Go? There are a lot of them, and I have no idea where most of the playerbase is.
I was hoping someone would comment on this actually. Every android app I’ve tried has been riddled with ads to the point of being impossible to play.
If someone has a good one PLEASE let us both know!
Yes please! This was the obstacle that kept me from trying it a couple of weeks ago. Ideally I’d love to find the equivalent to chess.com (or lichess), but for Go.
Maybe one day I’ll get fed up and make one myself
I used to use gobandroid off f-droid, but these days I use crazystone: I like its ai for casual play (and I usually only play casual!). It does seem to have a deep love for talking home with no explanation when it starts up though, so on Lineage I just disable its internet permission.
Online-go is good but I haven’t really gotten into playing against strangers on the internet: I feel I should take it more seriously when I’m against a real person!
Wish I had people offline to play with sometimes though.
Lose your first several games quickly.
My main opponent right now is my boyfriend (who is also learning the game with me). Nothing we’ve done has been particularly quick in any sense.
That was the advice given to me from my teacher so just passing it along :) I think it means all the options can be overwhelming, so don’t overthink it and just play without hope of winning. You’ll soon get a feel for what good moves are.
He also lent me a book that helped, so consider doing some reading. I wish I remembered the book’s name. There is also this site: https://senseis.xmp.net/
Y’all should also play against other opponents/AI. Intermediate level opponents will help you to grow.
It’s an amazing game. Glad y’all found it :)
Cheeki Breaki?
