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Go Game Guru – Learn all about the board game Go

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Re: Go Game Guru – Learn all about the board game Go

#71

Post by jdietrich »

niij wrote: post #68
JeremyBanks wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pyramid systems involve exponential (or at least superlinear) growth which was not implied by the parent post.

Why was the top player there all along? In a financial "pyramid scheme" it is because money streams to the top. In a teaching ladder, what malicious incentive does the person at the top have to where leaving would cause the whole system to collapse? Most likely, the other players at the top would be happy to take on the role as top player in the league and would continue to self-teach to maintain their place.

Exactly. A teaching ladder is simply a cooperative effort to share skills. No money changes hands and there is no benefit to being at the top of the ladder other than kudos.

Re: Go Game Guru – Learn all about the board game Go

#72

Post by gnidan »

theseatoms wrote: post #42
romaniv wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For instance the computer may ignore a capture to play elsewhere and it can be hard to work out why. I think the biggest insight I had about Go when I was learning to play it is that the game commences on the entire board at once. At the beginning I was over-concentrating on a single "active" region. In reality, abandoning some "battle" and adding stones to an "unrelated" region is a perfectly sensible strategy as l…

I've had the same experience. It's easy to get drawn into petty skirmishes and ignore the larger play for territory. A good rule of thumb = don't needlessly increase the margin of your victory for any particular part of the board

Something that Michael Redmond 9P said a few times during the AlphaGo match was about how there comes a point in any sequence where the next move is of dramatically lower value than the previous.

Re: Go Game Guru – Learn all about the board game Go

#73

Post by badminton1 »

Learning:

- I personally like this guide: http://playgo.to/iwtg/en/

- If you use Windows or Mac, there's a very good software called SmartGo. On Linux you might want to try "Kigo", from KDE.

- Eidogo.com and Josekipedia.com are good for learning joseki.

- For Android there's a really good app for exercises called "Magic Baduk Go".

Some mini review of different servers:

- online-go.com (OGS) is excellent, but is very new and not as active as other servers. Still recommended.

- KGS if you are western is the thing. There are usually bots that are 24 kyu that you can play against if you are new to the game.

- IGS might be good as well.

- Tygem and WBaduk are very hostile to new players because of the high number of sandbaggers (dans that pretend to be 18 kyu). You can get it running on Windows or Wine.

Books:

- "In the beginning", "38 basic joseki" and "attack and defense" are probably the best books for starting on go. SmartGo has them, and this will save you the effort of reading complex diagrams. Instead you can have interactive embedded go boards.

Equipment and playing offline:

- If you don't want to commit to buy equipment, drop by a go club and try the game. Usually people there are very friendly to newcomers.

- If you just want to commit to the real thing you can look for go boards and stones on Amazon. My personal favourite stones are the "Yangstone go stones", korean made durable glass stones. Other stones like Yunzi can be really fragile and shatter. Stones are the most important thing to start.

- You can start off a printable 9x9 board for practicing, then play on 13x13 then 19x19. Starting directly on 19x19 is a bit difficult.

Watching professional go games:

- You can subscribe to Baduk TV, or watch their Youtube channel for free: https://www.youtube.com/user/onbaduktv

- You can see latest game records (kifu) uploaded to gokifu.com

Lessons:

- Some people on KGS offer lessons. While this can be a bit expensive and they might be hard to find, it's a possibility. I did this for a couple of years and I went from 20 kyu to around 5 kyu.

Re: Go Game Guru – Learn all about the board game Go

#74

Post by Jach »

ideonexus wrote: post #69
Jach wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They recently upgraded their engine to a stronger one, so are you still at 3? Also the full app is available for free on Amazon Underground, I use that for playing 19x19 games. The big lacking feature of the app for me is that it doesn't let you save your game as an SGF. At least https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mco.prj.app.bw... lets you do that.

I just got the notice about the upgrade. I'm probably going to do worse at 3 now since my wins there were tenuous. Go has been an easy game for me to learn, but a very difficult game for me to get any good at. I just don't know how to think about it the way I think about chess.

Yeah, I haven't upgraded my copy from Amazon since I'm still working on beating it at level 5. Still pretty weak. I've gone through the first two Janice Kim books which I think made me stronger, but I still don't handle fights very well. Finally starting to take tsumego practice more seriously, so I'm cautiously optimistic about a noticeable skill bump over the next couple months. I think my prior Chess experience helps with raw reading ability (and even just the concept of reading) but I read way too optimistically in Go, and just don't read enough in longer 19x19 games.

Re: Go Game Guru – Learn all about the board game Go

#75

Post by lbhnact »

It's been a joy to watch all of the excitement around Lee Sedol and AlphaGo's incredible machine performance translate into increasing interest in Go, rather than a disappointed turn away from another domain that we seem to be preempted from. Maybe this speaks to something deeply encouraging about the definition of actual human intelligence.

It's sure makes me feel better about all the time I've spent playing Go during the workday these past few weeks, anyway.

Re: Go Game Guru – Learn all about the board game Go

#76

Post by MichaelGG »

hyperpape wrote: post #46
swannodette wrote: post #36

For the English speaking Go community, GoGameGuru is without question the most reliable online resource for great commentary on the most important matches between the world's top players (and of course more recently AlphaGo vs. Lee Sedol). They also do translations of the best content from Korea's BadukTV - lessons, game commentary, famous problem sets, and more. GoGameGuru is a treasure trove, no question. That said…

This is a great post. I do think it should mention OGS (online-go.com) as an alternative to KGS. Some people may really not like installing a Java app for KGS.

I'd also mention the turn-based (async) Go system, Dragon Go Server: http://www.dragongoserver.net/

Many people find the more relaxed environment useful for playing human games. You don't need to commit to a block of uninterrupted time, and you can take your time and play out ideas. There's a great Android client: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mco.prj.app.bw... and DGS plugin: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mco.prj.srv.bw...

Re: Go Game Guru – Learn all about the board game Go

#77

Post by MichaelGG »

romaniv wrote: post #49

While we're here, does anyone know a good Go app for Android? A lot of them look like spyware, judging by permissions.

I like Hactar for a simple AI opponent: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.gowrite.ha...

For general use as well as GNU Go and DGS: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mco.prj.app.bw...

For Go problems, Tsumego Pro: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.lrstudios....

Re: Go Game Guru – Learn all about the board game Go

#78

Post by tveita »

chrisherring wrote: post #7

I've started playing Go against a computer (SmartGo iOS on a 9x9 board) but I find the hard part is determining where you're making mistakes, what is a better move, why the computer did what it did etc. For instance the computer may ignore a capture to play elsewhere and it can be hard to work out why. I learnt to play Chess when I was young so I can't make a fair comparison but it feels like Chess is much easier to…

I've had a similar problem. I would like to develop an intuition for the game by exploring different variations, "if I do this, the opponent does this, but if I do this, the opponent does this instead", but last I looked I couldn't find a client with a good interface for exploring the game tree that way with a computer opponent.

I know playing against humans is better, but a computer opponent has the patience to watch me try hundreds of moves that they know are dumb, or let me cheat to test "what if" scenarios.

A variation explorer with a "What would GNU Go do?" button feels like it would be good for this.

One thing that has helped me is Tsumego problems, which cover local life-and-death situations. They usually include responses by the opponent to help you see why a move is bad.

Re: Go Game Guru – Learn all about the board game Go

#79

Post by blubb-fish »

jdietrich wrote: post #71
niij wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why was the top player there all along? In a financial "pyramid scheme" it is because money streams to the top. In a teaching ladder, what malicious incentive does the person at the top have to where leaving would cause the whole system to collapse? Most likely, the other players at the top would be happy to take on the role as top player in the league and would continue to self-teach to maintain their place.

Exactly. A teaching ladder is simply a cooperative effort to share skills. No money changes hands and there is no benefit to being at the top of the ladder other than kudos.

was just kidding ... LOL

Re: Go Game Guru – Learn all about the board game Go

#80

Post by gohrt »

jonbarker wrote: post #67
panglott wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took up Go about six months ago, after many false starts over the years. The secret for me was to stop playing computers and start playing humans online (I like online-go.com). Computers at lower difficulty settings make a combination of very strong moves and very weird moves, which are difficult for beginners to interpret. And the game is just a lot more fun when playing against people of similar skill level or a…

The 12k bots on pandanet are good for learning how to make large groups live against a relatively good opponent, large group deaths are usually the most damaging thing to a beginner's results.

Large group death meaning that the opponent invades before you have created eyes among your large-looking territory?
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