Fig. 1. A typical scene from a game of Go


If anyone's actually interested I'll bother making a real effort into the OP. In the meantime, here's 4 links

http://playgo.to/iwtg/en/
http://senseis.xmp.net/
http://gokgs.com
http://online-go.com

I AM SOMEWHERE NEAR 4K SO NO, I CANNOT TEACH WELL BUT I CAN TRY

what does it take to be good at go

Railey2 wrote:

what does it take to be good at go

Play lots of games then get them reviewed by someone who's better than you.

This would work until you're like ~15k to start. You don't need to read anything much or do any problems. Then maybe at this point you'd want to watch some videos, do some easy tsumego, read an easy to understand book or two but actual studying besides playing games probably doesn't become as necessary until sdk and even then some people get up to strong sdk without doing much besides playing games. Not my thing though.

Ideally everyday you'd:

Do problems (Tesuji, L&D, Opening)
Read some theory out of a book
Watch internet lectures
Play a game or two
Get the game reviewed

At least for me I never started doing tsumego until around 12k and I've finished Cho's elementary 4 times (900 problems in it), intermediate around once (700 ish problems), and various other random L&D from the Gokyo Shumyo or the internet. I've also done get strong at tesuji around 4 times too. 501 opening problems I'm going through for the second time, and 501 tesuji problems ( A really hard book), I'm going through a page a day and I seem to be getting better at it.

I also Have graded go problems for dan players in the opening 1d to 7d which I've been going through because the opening is my thing. This will be my second time through it.

I also do the capturing stones and opening/middle game tesuji from the 5k to 3d graded go problems for dan players tesuji. The Tesuji that appear in joseki are too hard for me because I have no fucking clue.

Even when I was a ddk at rank 18k I still watched lectures from Nick Sibicky/Battousai when I ate because they gave me something to watch, and I think I got my first set of books somewhere near the 15k rank.

Oh hey, my grandgrandmother has a set for that: a playfield and a bunch of marbles (they're ceramic, though) and sh stuff. It's a pity that I never actually bothered to learn to play this.

Khelly wrote:

Railey2 wrote:

what does it take to be good at go

Play lots of games then get them reviewed by someone who's better than you.

This would work until you're like ~15k to start. You don't need to read anything much or do any problems. Then maybe at this point you'd want to watch some videos, do some easy tsumego, read an easy to understand book or two but actual studying besides playing games probably doesn't become as necessary until sdk and even then some people get up to strong sdk without doing much besides playing games. Not my thing though.

Ideally everyday you'd:

Do problems (Tesuji, L&D, Opening)
Read some theory out of a book
Watch internet lectures
Play a game or two
Get the game reviewed

so not that different from chess. Does it also rely heavily on openings? Is it important to think ahead ~15 moves or is that impossible from the get go? How important is creativity?

Railey2 wrote:

so not that different from chess. Does it also rely heavily on openings? Is it important to think ahead ~15 moves or is that impossible from the get go? How important is creativity?

The opening is my most favourite part of the game. It's where people have actual styles of how they play - it's where you can see trends in professional play and evolution over time - it's where the board is empty and you mostly have to resort to your creativity to make the best moves. But the unfortunate reality is that the middle game attacking/defending/fighting take precedence over the opening. It's really really easy to make a blunder or two in the middle game that costs you the entire game, especially for kyu players. In comparison, blunders in the opening only offer slight, or sometimes a bit more than slight, disadvantages to the player that erred. I still like the opening though.

I think for the most part amateur strong kyus and 1 dans only read ahead maybe 8-10 moves at a time when they have to. I know at least for me that I just play on feeling for the most part because I don't like to get myself involved in complicated fights and yet I'm still ~4kyu. Here's a situation from one of my games that I should have and am well capable of reading, but I didn't bother to do so. The game became really fucking complicated as a result from my inability to read that I could capture these stones. Hell, it wasn't an inability to read, it wasn't even an attempt.




White has just played the marked stone. Black has two groups that are not alive and white has one, but if black can capture white then black can connect his groups and is in no danger. I can actaully do this here in the following sequence. White is captured in this 20 moves sequence and there's nothing he can do to force his way to escape.




It's not hard to read because the sequence is essentially forced. It might not seem like it to the beginning player, but all of white's moves are necessary or else black captures white within the next move. It's unbranching - the depth is not hard to read. Breadth is what's so much harder when you haven't a clue of where to start.

so, would you say that spacial intelligence is very important for mastering go?

Go isn't a smart man's game - it's an experienced man's game.



Provided all your experience isn't useless shite not for the purpose of improving

In regards to space, you can win without reading but two moves if you play from fundamentals and shape: Or just from gut feeling - it won't be as good an that's why I'm still barely 4k because I don't try to read like I should.

Side note I don't feel like using the edit button for because it's way past the time and point of that post:

If you don't think you can read, here are 3 possibilities:

1) You're actually severely mentally handicapped in which case how are you even talking to me in the first place?

2) You're convincing yourself of not being able to read

3) You are actually reading and visualising the stones on the board, but you're assuming that other/stronger people are doing it somehow differently and what you're doing isn't correct

Its a good thing you have a username recognized in the community otherwise id immediately dismiss this thread

Reditum wrote:

Its a good thing you have a username recognized in the community otherwise id immediately dismiss this thread

I recognise CDFA faster than Reditum

my name is staying as Reditum for a while bby

The only time I've considered changing it back to CDFA is if I somehow make it into QAT (or whatever the staff equivelant of that is, if there's system changes)

Reditum wrote:

my name is staying as Reditum for a while bby

The only time I've considered changing it back to CDFA is if I somehow make it into QAT (or whatever the staff equivelant of that is, if there's system changes)

Please don't ever do that

why not

I wish this documentary would come the fuck out already. No updates since January



Haha they included 8 and 9 dan in that scroll thingy

Check out Hikaru no Go if the trailers aren't your cup of tea

Oinari-sama wrote:

Check out Hikaru no Go if the trailers aren't your cup of tea

I NEE THIS DOCUMENTARY