Will I like go if I don’t like chess? Chess seems too one dimensional for me if that makes sense.
Learn to play Go
21–30 of 159 posts
Re: Learn to play Go
#22I love Go and have played it a lot in person, but I always struggle to get games online, even on OGS. Feels like the online community is very small compared to chess (which is now my boardgame of choice, basically for this reason). Has this changed? Are there better sites now where a beginner can find matches without waiting half an hour or more?
There are more people on kgs and on fox go server
I wouldn't say so for KGS, especially for beginners. OGS is the go-to for western servers nowadays.
Fox, without a doubt. I recommend Weiqihubb for a quick-access app to asian servers on all platforms, with puzzles (https://walruswq.com/WeiqiHub).
Re: Learn to play Go
#23Unfortunately, the early moves in the game ("Joseki") are the most important. They are also the most difficult to learn. It is essential to study these tactics in this website... if only because they are the only "ground truth" known about Go. But for rapid improvement, the only real way forward is to play lots and lots of games to learn how the early game flows. Direction of play, which side of the board is most imp…
Nitpick: The early moves in the game are called fuseki. Joseki refers to well-studied local patterns of moves and they appear through the middle game, not just in the early game. A couple of things I love about go is that you don't need to memorize fuseki, and that applying joseki correctly is as much a matter of judgment as it is of memory. (I am a 1 dan go player but haven't played much in the last 15 years.)
He could be thinking of shogi (though the kanji is 定跡 where joseki from go is 定石), where joseki refers to the well studied ways to play the opening of the game.
Re: Learn to play Go
#24Will I like go if I don’t like chess? Chess seems too one dimensional for me if that makes sense.
Only one way to find out.
If you dislike chess because you don't like abstract total information strategy board games you will not like go. If you dislike chess because
- it has too many rules,
- the board is too smalll,
- the pieces move around too much, or
- it doesn't involve adversarial, collaborative construction,
or any of the other things that make go different from chess, you have a chance of liking go.
Re: Learn to play Go
#25Unfortunately, the early moves in the game ("Joseki") are the most important. They are also the most difficult to learn. It is essential to study these tactics in this website... if only because they are the only "ground truth" known about Go. But for rapid improvement, the only real way forward is to play lots and lots of games to learn how the early game flows. Direction of play, which side of the board is most imp…
Highly disagree.
Fuseki (opening) doesn't matter much for most players. AI confirmed that a wide variety of openings, even weird ones far removed from the usual credo, work very well. At worst you may lose a couple points in doing so, but unless you play at a high level that's negligible and will never be the reason you lost.
Joseki (corner sequences) is also not that important, and certainly not something any beginner should spend time on. In fact, a common Go proverb is to "learn Joseki and lose two stones" (get weaker). We often see beginners learning Joseki, getting confused when their opponent doesn't follow the sequence they have in mind and ultimately blundering their corner. Or they ask "how to punish that?", without realizing that many moves are good even if they are not Joseki, and there's nothing to punish.
Re: Learn to play Go
#26Will I like go if I don’t like chess? Chess seems too one dimensional for me if that makes sense.
Only one way to find out. If you dislike chess because you don't like abstract total information strategy board games you will not like go. If you dislike chess because - it has too many rules, - the board is too smalll, - the pieces move around too much, or - it doesn't involve adversarial, collaborative construction, or any of the other things that make go different from chess, you have a chance of liking go.
> If you dislike chess because you don't like abstract total information strategy board games you will not like go
I think that's why I don't like chess. It seems to me that a winning strategy would be to think as far ahead as possible by enumerating all the permutations. A few heuristics exist however.
Re: Learn to play Go
#27Unfortunately, the early moves in the game ("Joseki") are the most important. They are also the most difficult to learn. It is essential to study these tactics in this website... if only because they are the only "ground truth" known about Go. But for rapid improvement, the only real way forward is to play lots and lots of games to learn how the early game flows. Direction of play, which side of the board is most imp…
Far from it, there is no need to learn any joseki before dan level. It's even counterproductive often enough ("Learn joseki, lose two stones") before the player can study why each move is joseki and whole-board implications. A lot of it makes little sense before beginning to understand thickness and influence. A 1-dan should have strong enough tactics to play reasonable corner exchanges without any joseki knowledge, and won't be losing many games because of that.
Re: Learn to play Go
#28I think is the best Go tutorial to learn the rules: https://www.learn-go.net
Re: Learn to play Go
#29I became interested in learning Go recently after watching the magnificent AlphaGo movie [1] which is free on YouTube. I highly recommend giving it a watch if you haven't already. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXuK6gekU1Y
Wow, that was incredible. I cried when Lee Sedol won game 4. And his and Fan Hui's philosophical takes were remarkable.
Re: Learn to play Go
#30Just idly clicking through until I got to “Ko”. I had no idea Go was stateful!