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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
It is entirely unlike Go the programming language in that it is, in fact, a strategic board game, However, it may be possible to write a simple progam in ternary-encoded binary with the game pieces and board.
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.
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.
That's the great thing tho, the rules are very simple, anyone can pick up how to play. Then the strategy has so many layers that people can devote a lifetime of study to it, and it can become quite a psychological battle of wills between the two players in a way. But you can enjoy it right from the beginning without all that. And the handicap system means a game between players of very different skill can still be fun.
Man I need to get back into playing go!
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.
You know, I always associated dirty, smelly degenerates with magic until I started playing - (I validated that by being the dirty smelly degenerate 😉) it was interesting finding out that potentially due to the high cost of the decks, a good part of the playerbase actually really had their shit together. We're talking engineers, pediatricians, lawyers etc. who could afford to throw $500 down on cardboard. Enough folks were married that my wife started calling the place "husband daycare"
Of course the smelly smell still made an appearance, I was able to determine if a particular person was in the local game store (LGS) by smell alone, the moment I walked into the store.
Just go to online-go.com in your preferred browser. It works great on mobile. There's a large collection of puzzles to do. Those are user submitted, which means the quality varies, but some people have put together some pretty good sets that work as tutorials for beginners.
OGS is the most popular server outside of Asia, and has a nice social side with chat rooms and... clubs? I don't remember their name for it, but you can join groups for finding teaching games, groups for people in your geographic region, etc.
I don't log on often these days, but I love teaching new players. Feel free to add me as a friend there (and maybe dm me here so I know to look). My name there is nomadfarmer.
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.
I used to use KGS, but that was mostly on the computer, though I know they also have an Android app. That was several years ago, though. My friend who still plays does so mostly on Pandanet via Android.
Those are both for multiplayer, of course. For single player, a while back I used Gridmaster along with a build of LeelaZero, and there are various apps that offer Go problems, including one my friend likes, but I have forgotten what he told me it was. I think it might be Tsumego Pro, but I'll have to ask him again next time we talk.
Edit: Dragon Go Server probably deserves a mention as well. That's a site for, basically, postal games via email, and can be accessed entirely via a web interface. It's not as popular as the sites with faster time controls, but it's kinda nice for playing a leisurely game with a busy friend.
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.
I use "Sente - Online Go" and really like it. It shows as early access but I haven't found any issues with it. It connects to the OGS server so you can play against bots of varying difficulty or normal online matches.
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!
Oooooh I'm so jealous, I cannot convince my man to play with me. It's nice to learn with someone at the same level as you.
Edit: The adage I was told was "To learn go, lose your first hundred games" with the modern addition of "quickly". For what it's worth, I lost my first 57 games on OGS. It is a good way to learn.
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 called Igo and it was invented in Korea. It has less unique pieces than compared to chess, yet is more complex than chess by a higher order of magnitude.
I mean, if you're going to say that the name isn't "go" (which is certainly a common English term for the game) AND that it was invented in Korea, then surely the name should be Baduk, the Korean term for it. Igo is the Japanese name. (and for what it's worth, weiqi is the Chinese term.) Admittedly English-speakers mostly use Japanese terms for the game, like "atari," "joseki," "hane," etc., but that's more a historical accident than anything else.
The origin of the name given to the game "baduk" is controversial because no one can prove where it came from, and also the words "bat" and "dok" mean "flat stone" and is not a name, but rather a description.
The claim that it was invented in China is actually from baseless speculation from a flawed study published back in 1993 from a Chinese university tied to a government propaganda campaign and regurgitated in an essay posted in 2004 that someone cited on Wikipedia in 2014.