Life In 19x19

Hi,

My name is Galen and I've just joined your forum. I love Go and I play Go everyday (well at least I try to!). I hope I can get to know everyone on this forum and that I will be accepted. I don't know my skill level but if I can send you a list of my moves in a game against an opponent my level then I think we can figure it out. I plan to be an active member on this forum and will try to get on and post often. I play internet Go, but I've never actually held an actual stone, (which is something I've always wanted to do!). I'm so obsessed with Go I actually dream about it, and I end up practicing in my sleep! Anyways I'm really looking forward to my time on this forum!

Galen

Welcome to the forums.

Howdy, and welcome! Where online do you normally play go? Most places will give you a ballpark rank estimate. Glad to have you around, you're certainly not alone in the go obsession. =D

Chew Terr wrote: Where online do you normally play go? Most places will give you a ballpark rank estimate.

I usually play on Yahoo Games and that is amazing that the computers nowadays can do that! So it'll establish an actual kyu-dan rank for me? Thanks for telling me, but I don't think Yahoo has that as a feature. Do you know any sites that do?

galen wrote:

Chew Terr wrote: Where online do you normally play go? Most places will give you a ballpark rank estimate.

I usually play on Yahoo Games and that is amazing that the computers nowadays can do that! So it'll establish an actual kyu-dan rank for me? Thanks for telling me, but I don't think Yahoo has that as a feature. Do you know any sites that do?

Welcome welcome!

And I think we all just shuddered at Yahoo! games...

I would highly recommend http://www.gokgs.com

It's an awesome game server dedicated to Go and has a lot of people playing on it all the time. They are (usually) very friendly, and it is a great community. It's also where most of the people on this forum play.

I use KGS for real-time games and OGS for turn-based games. The creators of both are on this forum, which is a nifty bit of 'man, it's a small world' trivia. Different servers (or countries) may rate you a bit different, but they're generally fairly close. Certainly close enough to get your first tentative rating. If you join KGS, there is a 'godiscussions' room that this forum uses.
edit: I'm too slow

Chew Terr wrote:I use KGS for real-time games and OGS for turn-based games. The creators of both are on this forum, which is a nifty bit of 'man, it's a small world' trivia. Different servers (or countries) may rate you a bit different, but they're generally fairly close. Certainly close enough to get your first tentative rating. If you join KGS, there is a 'godiscussions' room that this forum uses.
edit: I'm too slow

Had to type fast, thought you might be on it already.

Here's the link for OGS: http://www.online-go.com/
Another great option if you're looking for some thing you can extend over multiple days.

Welcome to the forums.

For how long have you been playing go? You mentioned that you dream about go. I had this when I was around 15 kyu. The dreams came about three to four months after I had started playing go, and have disappeared a few weeks later. Since then I've never dreamt again about go...

karaklis wrote:Welcome to the forums.

For how long have you been playing go? You mentioned that you dream about go. I had this when I was around 15 kyu. The dreams came about three to four months after I had started playing go, and have disappeared a few weeks later. Since then I've never dreamt again about go...

From time to time I still have nightmares of dying groups, wrong played josekis and go stones talking to me

karaklis wrote: The dreams came about three to four months after I had started playing go, and have disappeared a few weeks later. Since then I've never dreamt again about go...

I often dream about Go, I think that's only normal if you're really into it, after all most of your dreams are about what you recently experienced. I don't have too absurd dreams, though. Usually a (weird) game position playing onward by itself before my eyes.
I don't think this has anything to do with your rank.
A few years ago at a saturday morning before a tournament Hwang In-Seong 7d gave us a tsumego to think about. He claimed that he woke up in the early morning and the first thing he had on his mind was this (new) tsumego position.

If I have a dream about go, it's always completely abstract. It's not about players or a tournament or anything. I can't even recall having a dream about any of my go friends in a non-go context. Which is surprising, because my main meat-space rival is Canadian, and I have lots of dreams about Canadians and Canada.

Any dreams about go are just visualizations of positions. Usually they're nonsense positions that don't even make sense topologically.

Welcome to the forums. As you've already seen its not gonna be a problem fo your to be accepted in this forum.

I cant remember if I had dreams about Go...but I still have Go daydreams in classes amd at work. (Thinking up tsumego, reviewing tesuji, reading ladders.)

hi welcome

Welcome.

And to be balanced, another very popular real-time go server is IGS. I play on KGS almost exclusively, but I admit I prefer the aesthetics of some of the IGS clients. Also, an alternative "turn-based" server is DGS (Dragon Go Server). (As an aside, I never really got the "turn based" thing, as all go is turn-based, but it means there is usually only a few moves a day.)