as an absolute beginner is one server preferable to the other for someone like me? i'm looking to play some games against similar opponents. thanks in advance for your imput.

daniel

I've not used IGS, but there are usually some new people on KGS to play with - check out the 'KGS Teaching Ladder' and 'Beginner Room' for potential opponents .

In my experience, IGS is a distant third in terms of user-friendliness and ease of finding games. KGS and WBaduk are your best choices, in that order.

For a new player, it is hands down KGS.

From what I've heard, wbaduk has a lot of sandbaggers in the DDK (double-digit kyu) level, so KGS is probably your best bet.

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Yeah, that's exactly why I said for a new player, it's hands down KGS.

I'm not sure, there are all sandbaggers. when most of your rank have the same (much higher) strength, it takes a lot of time to rise up ..

KGS gives you more options on what you can do. There's more chatting in English, there are free and paid lessons you can attend, there are bots of various strength you can play, and the automatch options make more sense than on IGS.

I think for beginners, the KGS rating also adjusts faster than on IGS.

Sandbaggers are everywhere, so I wouldn't use that as a differentiator.

It may matter to you what time of day you want to play if you want to it be easy to find a game. IGS and WBaduk have more players in Asia, so it's harder to find a game there at certain times of day. KGS has more US and European players. For example, if someone in the US Pacific time zone wants to get in a quick game at noon, add 16 hours for Japan and Korea time, and that's 4 AM. (And 3 AM in China.) So attendance on asian servers will be at a low. On other hand, that's 8PM in the UK, so you can catch a lot of European players logged in after dinner.

KGS is generally considered more friendly for beginners, but that doesn't mean the other servers should not be considered at all. For example, if you can read an asian language, than live professional games with commentary are much easier to find on the asian servers. And of course, some asian servers have betting. IMHO, go is addictive enough without adding the gambling factor, but it's worth mentioning.

As if you don't need to hear another KGS fan, you can set up games with different rulesets and timing systems. You can even play turn-based by using No Time Limit.

I think IGS is quite bad for beginners, and inferior to KGS in most ways after about 10k, though it does have some advantages.

KGS has a reasonably large, active, english speaking community to help beginners. It also has plenty of beginners who are quite easy to find, compared to IGS whose rating system is almost meaningless until about 10k - when playing there in their BC (lowest ranked) class, my opponents ranged from complete beginners to people several stones stronger than my own KGS ~18k.

I played my first few tens of online games on IGS. It didn't actively hurt me, but after switching to KGS as soon as I could (proxy issues), I think KGS is a much better server. IGS' main advantage is in having lots of players of all levels automatching all the time, so it's easy to get a reasonably fast game without faffing around creating game requests or hoping KGS automatch has people near to ones level. This is, of course, down to personal preference.

As a beginner, I've found KGS pretty friendly and stable... then again, I can't access IGS