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 Post subject: Making Go digestible?
Post #1 Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2015 12:57 pm 
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Does anyone have any advice on how to approach learning Go? I am a complete beginner, and I don't know anyone who plays the game. I have high interest in the game, but a full 19x19 board is very intimidating. Some of the main things I am looking for are a). a general strategy for gaining territory and limiting my opponents' because what I have read so far that are considered basics, like ladders and life and death exercises, are presumably useful, but they do not make the game any more approachable: I still do not have a general idea of what to do in an actual game, b). resources for learning Go's terminology: even in this beginners' forum section, I see phrases that I do not know, c.) resources for learning how to play Go better for complete beginners, and finally, d). advice about what to study and in what order, etc.

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Post #2 Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2015 1:19 pm 
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Hi Frisacra,

Welcome.

You ask good questions -- the same questions that others have been asking for many years. Some of them are easier to answer (like, where to look up a glossary of the jargon). Some of them are more difficult to answer, or even controversial, and people have heated debates over them! (1) :)

After you have learned the most basic rules about Go,
you may enjoy The Second Book of Go by Richard Bozulich.

I would also suggest you finish your first 100 games as soon as your time allows you to. (All board sizes are OK, but the smaller boards like 9x9, 13x13, etc. will let you finish more games in less time. Humans or robot opponents are OK. Yes, at the beginning, 19x19 can be very intimidating -- common experience. So, mix them all up. )

As more and more people reply to your questions here, you may notice more and more divergent (or even contradictory) answers. ( See (1) above. Too many cooks spoil the broth, and all that good stuff. ) :) Welcome to Go.


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Post #3 Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2015 1:19 pm 
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Look up Go terminology here http://senseis.xmp.net
Learn how to play here http://www.playgo.to/iwtg/en/
Play against a computer (Windows only) http://www.smart-games.com/igowin.html
Play against humans here https://online-go.com/
Watch lectures here https://www.youtube.com/user/nicksibicky

If a full board is intimidating, play a while on 9x9 and 13x13.

Quote:
I still do not have a general idea of what to do in an actual game


It's all relative. There's a 5-dan on Reddit who claims they have no positional judgement whatsoever. For now, don't worry about high-level things like strategy. Play as many games as you can. Post your games on OGS or on here for reviews.

As a beginner, you'll be improving faster than at any other point. So enjoy it while it lasts!

You may find Graded Go Problems For Beginners helpful.

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Post #4 Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2015 1:16 am 
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Hi Frisacra and welcome to the forum,

If you have just learnt the rules, chances are that you still have trouble seeing basic things like atari, etc. I would therefore suggest quickly playing a a few dozens of games on a 9*9 board so that you may get accustomed to how the stones "behave"*. Strategy and thinking about territory is not the priority right now.

*Just to give one example of what I mean by "how the stones behave". I've taught the games to quite a few people over more than 10 years and I think I've hardly ever seen someone who had just learnt the rules and could see that there was not much point in playing at 1. This sequence always crops up in beginners' games and even after I comment on it, it always takes them a few games to recognize the position and stop playing 1.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code
[go]$$
$$ ----------------
$$ | . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . .
$$ | . 1 O O O . .
$$ | . O X X X . .
$$ | . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . .
$$[/go]


For the record white 6 takes the three black stones,
Click Here To Show Diagram Code
[go]$$
$$ ----------------
$$ | . . . . . . .
$$ | 4 2 . . . . .
$$ | 3 1 O O O . .
$$ | 5 O X X X . .
$$ | 6 . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . .
$$[/go]


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 Post subject: Re: Making Go digestible?
Post #5 Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2015 2:18 am 
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Hi Frisacra.
Welcome to the Go Community.
If you don't mind, I'll just copy/paste what I wrote to Sylsion/Marek in his thread 'Food fro brain' because like you he just learnt the rules of the game and wanted to know what to do next.
(You'll notice some of my advices were already expressed by others above)
Here we go:

_ First of all, since you just learnt the rules of the game you should first gain some experience 'quickly'.
'Quickly' means that you should play as many games as possible on the shortest amount of time, without thinking more than a few seconds each move. Why? because when you don't have any experience, you don't know what to think about and end up thinking about EVERY possible moves like a chess program except you're just a human and since you can play almost everywhere on a Go board there are too many possibilities for you to think about... AT FIRST.
The thing is, when you have some experience, you think about just a few moves that 'seem' worth thinking. And you can only do that with experience or knowledge (which is a kind of 'borrowed' experience). But before you read any book, I think you should play a hundred games or so before in order for the reading not to be too abstract.
There's a Go Proverb: 'Lose Your First 50 Games As Quickly As Possible'. You can read more about it at Sensei's Library (which has plenty of studying materials by the way).
_ Second: Don't play your first games on a 19x19 Go board but on a smaller one like 9x9. Why? Because a game on 19x19 is very very long and since you'll make mistakes almost EVERY moves, you won't learn anything from them at the end because they were too many of them. On the other hand, when you play on a small board, your mistakes are fewer and become more obvious and understandable so you can benefit from them being exposed by your opponent and try not to repeat them next time. Which leads to my third point:
_ Play against stronger opponents who will punish your every mistakes properly. The thing is, when you play a beginner like you, you can win regardless of your mistakes which will incite you to repeat them again and again. Whereas if your mistake is punished once, twice or three times in a row, you'll think: 'Wow! This really was a bad play! I'll never do it again'.
Because Go is a game where the winner is usually the one who made the less mistakes (of course some mistakes are bigger than other, but regardless, I think it's a good rule of thumb).
Now, since it can be hard to find a stronger opponent willing to play on a small board against you, you're lucky because here is a very good FREE Go playing program: Leela lite. You can play 'rated games' on a 9x9 board against the program which is incredibly strong for a beginner, but you begin with handicap stones (9?) which give you a very big advantage. As you beat the computer your rank will gradually improve and you'll have less and less handicap stones so it'll be harder and harder to play. With this you can learn how to play proper tactics before approaching strategy on a bigger board size.
_ While gaining experience by playing games is fun, you can also do so by solving Go problems. At this stage Life and Death problems suited for your level would be the more relevant choice. You can find them at GoChild website organized by strength and subject. It's very different than play games but since you said you wanted 'food for brain' this could be the perfect place for you. Give it a try anyway.
_ After playing a hundred games or so with Leela, which would have given you some experience and cleared the biggest beginner's mistakes from your play, then you should try playing on a big board for fun on such Go server as KGS and OGS, but still quick games at first to gain some experience on this scale before beginning to really 'think'.
_ Finally, once you have some tactical and strategical experience gained on your own, I think the time will be ripe for you to start to read theoretical and exercise books and such. My first recommendation would be the first volume of Cho Hun-hyeon's Lectures on Go Techniques. I read many many Go books but this one really increased my level by a fair amount (from around 18 kyu to something like 11 kyu if I remember correctly) and is like learning the ABC: first letters, then syllables, then words (the sentences would be on the sequel). After that there are many other books that will be useful depending on what specific area of your play you'll want to work on, but no need to rush: we'll talk about that when you're ready for it. ;-)
Anyway, those would be my recommendations, and I hope it'll be useful to you.
Good luck.

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 Post subject: Re: Making Go digestible?
Post #6 Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2015 2:57 am 
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I'm just going to throw something out there: it depends on what you are interested in.

If you are interested in exploring a fascinating game, do whatever you enjoy. Play games, do problems, read books start endless discussions here on L19 etc. There is an immense amount of resources freely available, or for a small fee in books. Recommendations abound.

If you are interested in becoming a strong player, after you have learned the rules and played your 100 games, get a teacher (best) or start playing with much stronger players as often as possible (second best) asap, otherwise you will most probably quickly develop bad habits that are difficult to unlearn.

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Post #7 Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2015 4:34 am 
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In order to make go digestable: don't think of Go as a game of territory but as a game of survival of stones.

This is the key understanding behind Minue's great article "Haengma tutorial for beginners"

http://senseis.xmp.net/?HaengmaTutorialForBeginners

No further spoiling the broth from this cook.


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Post #8 Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2015 5:53 am 
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Just learn the rules. Ignore everything else. Play 9x9 games against a weak bot until you beat it easyly. It will became easy to see basic 20k capture tactics. Then you start playing a bigger board. Just playing a lot of games you will progress steadly to 12k then stall. Then by doing tsumego you will progress to 6k and stall again. That's where I am, don't know how to improve now.

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Post #9 Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2015 1:47 pm 
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Hello Frisaca,
First: welcome.
Second: apart from all the earlier suggestions, I suggest you primarily enjoy and keep enjoying the game of go and the company of go players.
I find it difficult to give you suggestions additional to the ones above, but allow me to make some comments.

I think there is no such thing (as far as I know) as a general strategy. In this regard: learn the difference between territory and influence.
I also think the concept of big/large moves and urgent moves is important. Make big/large moves, unless an urgent move comes up. To identify urgent moves, you have to have a fair understanding of life and death, or perhaps better: the possibility to make your stones live, or the risk of dying.
You know life takes two eyes, but in an earlier stage, you will want to identify either the chance of life of a group of your stones on their own, or a way to connect to your other, live stones. To be certain to live in an early stage, you need space, a certain area. Some say you need an area of at least 20 points to be sure you can live later.

Perhaps the 19x19 board scares you off a bit. I think 19x19 is also for beginners. Don't be scared. 9x9 has its own merit, but if you play too much 9x9, you will not learn the more territory/strategy approach needed for 19x19.
By the way: GoQuest is a addictive, fun little app to play 9x9.

I like proverbs. See Sensei Library. For beginners, I think the saying 'don't attach when attacking' is noteworthy.

A stronger player than me suggested I play moves in this priority:
1- make your own stones stronger
2- make your own groups stronger
3- make opponent's stones weaker (by threatening/approaching)
4- make opponent's grouups weaker
Perhaps it is also helpful for you to keep this in mind.

I end with the beginning: enjoy the game and the company.


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Post #10 Posted: Fri Aug 28, 2015 6:48 am 
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Knotwilg wrote:
In order to make go digestable: don't think of Go as a game of territory but as a game of survival of stones.

This is the key understanding behind Minue's great article "Haengma tutorial for beginners"

http://senseis.xmp.net/?HaengmaTutorialForBeginners

No further spoiling the broth from this cook.


I re-read this tutorial yesterday, and I must say that despite it being directed at beginners, it is an excellent resource for stronger players as well. If you often find yourself flailing about, playing moves some non-go part of your brain keeps telling you that you ought to (but, but, but... it looked so scary!!!), this might be just the right dosage of fundamentals to renew your faith in them. Although hardly anyone will find anything new here (unless you've never thought of go as a game of survival of stones), the author presents these basic concepts of haengma clear and forcefully, so if you have been wondering how to review your fundamentals, this is a fine place to start.

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Post #11 Posted: Sat Aug 29, 2015 10:02 pm 
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Hey, y'all. Thank you guys for the advice! I seem to have synthesized that playing many games is good, and on that note, I have GoPro on my iPhone, and it starts out with 9x9; you progress to 11x11, then 13x13, then 19x19. And I am fine with that progression, and I've seen progress playing 9x9 (where the AI is the most competent). I also already own A Complete Introduction to Go for some basic reading. And when I was saying strategy, I just meant guiding ideas for playing and choosing what moves to make. Sybob's list of priorities was very helpful for giving me a "strategy." Thank you for that; it has helped me quite a lot. I'm going to look at the Haengma article very soon. Don't think I'm looking for anything very high level yet :P.

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Post #12 Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2015 3:39 pm 
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Things I'd say to a complete beginner would be:

1) Don't think too long and hard about moves, it's important to not make completely random moves, but to understand why moves are bad, they have to be made. Mistakes are your friends, they're stepping stones to getting stronger, and you'll never stop making them, so it's better to just get used to them.

2) Your opponent isn't your opponent. You're fighting yourself, the other player is simply like a doctor making a diagnosis, he or she points out your weaknesses so they can be fixed.

Have fun out there! :blackeye: :rambo:

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Post #13 Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2015 9:40 am 
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EdLee wrote:
After you have learned the most basic rules about Go,
you may enjoy The Second Book of Go by Richard Bozulich.


This really helped me when I was exactly where you (the OP) are, and not really sure how to think about approaching the whole game.

Although I am only now at the point where some of the concepts in the "Capturing Races" chapter are actually becoming important - the rest of the book is very well judged.

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Post #14 Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2015 12:46 pm 
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Some great advice on this page perhaps I should copy it and post it on my fridge!

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Post #15 Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2015 3:30 am 
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I recommend searching for a local game evening on the homepage of your association (or on meetup.com or similar).

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Post #16 Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2015 4:48 am 
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I'm also a go newbie.

I have started with the Janice Kim series and am currently into book 2.

I have just ordered a physical set but, I play 9X9 and 13X13 games against 'weak' engines to try to practice what I'm reading.

To be honest, in 9X9, you don't see the tactics and structures that are described in ( the books I'm reading ) but in 13X13 they DO come up. You, sorry, I often don't see the chances as i'm not reading the game so well.

But I reckon I'm slowly getting better.

This despite me playing chess, shogi (and a few variants) and i thought the latter was tough.
I guess it was but after learning the pieces, moves, drops, promotions etc, you add strategy a little at a time until you formulate a game plan.

I find go, drops you straight in the strategy and tactics zone from the first stone and I don't mind admitting, at times, I have struggled with it's concepts.

However, every now and then, by choosing ONE simple path and not flitting from book to book, trying to attack 19X19 games, even looking at joseki (unlike shogi where you rely on it from the off pretty much), I'm making what I feel is steady, but still weak progress. However, the mass of black and white is starting to make sense and, I wake up dreaming about the damn game so something somewhere is sinking in.

So, my advice is KIS, Keep it Simple.

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