[HN Gopher] Learn to play Go
___________________________________________________________________
Learn to play Go
Author : kqr
Score : 349 points
Date : 2025-09-27 23:50 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (online-go.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (online-go.com)
| sagaro wrote:
| This is pretty well made. The progression is good and there are
| no distractions. And best part it doesn't force you to create an
| account.
| nearting wrote:
| Yes, but without an account, at least on mobile, you can't
| change any settings besides light/dark mode and language, which
| is pretty annoying.
| nakedrobot2 wrote:
| honestly i find it confusing. it tells me to make a move, but
| i don't know if i'm playing black or white. sometimes when i
| click on a point, it puts the opposite color on a different
| point.
| amcoy37 wrote:
| The opposite color appearing on a different point is the
| computer playing the response to your move.
| suds05 wrote:
| Keeps you engaged.
| brooke2k wrote:
| By chance I used this just a few weeks ago when I started
| learning to play Go. It's a pretty good resource!
|
| Personally, my favorite tutorial I went through was The
| Interactive Way to Go (https://way-to-go.gitlab.io)
|
| Also notable is Sensei's Library (https://senseis.xmp.net) which
| is a very old and unbelievably thorough wiki on everything Go.
| It's a cool place to browse even if you don't play.
| zovirl wrote:
| Sensei's Library is a gem from the non-commercial web! It
| reminds me of the C2 wiki (https://wiki.c2.com) but for Go
| instead of software engineering.
| frenchtoast8 wrote:
| I recently learned Go for the first time and I have played almost
| 50 games of 9x9 on Online Go Server so far. I'm finding it a lot
| of fun but it has been very humbling.
|
| I learned chess in 7th or 8th grade and was easily able to get to
| about 700 Elo on chess.com after barely learning the rules, which
| is about the 60th percentile on the site. I only play a couple
| games a year now but can still hold my own against 1200 Elo
| opponents, which is in the 90th percentile.
|
| I feel like I have put in just as much effort into learning Go. I
| bought a book and have been doing exercises. But I'm still in the
| 0.1 percentile on the site! (Yes, that's not a typo.)
|
| I'm sticking with it because it's fun and that's all that
| matters. But I definitely have a lot to learn.
| igor47 wrote:
| The skill that transfers from chess to go is reading -- "if I
| play here, my opponent is likely to play there, and then I
| will..."
| Zacharias030 wrote:
| why is this downvoted?
| jibal wrote:
| The average FIDE elo is 1550; chess.com's average of 1200 elo
| is much lower because it has many beginner players, including
| children. The gap between those is huge--much larger than the
| numbers may suggest. At chess.com 1200 elo people still have
| terrible board vision and routinely drop pieces; by the time
| one reaches FIDE 1550 elo that is no longer true and people are
| starting to plot out complex tactics requiring accurate
| visualization several moves ahead.
|
| According to the elo formula, a 700 elo player is expected to
| "hold their own"--draw or win--against a 1200 elo player 1 in
| 19 games (so they will lose 18 of 19 games), and against a 1550
| elo player 1 in 134 games (so they will lose 133 out of 134
| games). A 1200 elo player is expected to "hold their own"
| against a 1550 elo player about 1 in 18 games (they will lose
| 17 out of 18 games). However, the chess.com and FIDE elos are
| from very different pools--1200 elo at chess.com is probably
| equivalent to about 600-800 elo FIDE.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The average FIDE elo is 1550; chess.com's average of 1200
| elo is much lower because it has many beginner players,
| including children.
|
| Why would that lower the average elo? Elo is a conserved
| quantity: for you to gain points, your opponent must lose
| that many points, and vice versa.
|
| So there are two obvious facts about the average rating:
|
| 1. In a closed system, the average rating can never change,
| not up or down, not by any infinitesimal fraction of a point.
|
| 2. In an open system, the average rating can change, but for
| it to go down would require players with an _above-average
| rating_ to leave the system.
|
| In the much more common scenario where beginners come in,
| lose a bunch of games, and then leave, the average rating
| will go up over time.
| jibal wrote:
| > Why would that lower the average elo?
|
| Because the average chess.com player is considerably weaker
| than the average FIDE player.
|
| > In the much more common scenario where beginners come in,
| lose a bunch of games, and then leave, the average rating
| will go up over time.
|
| Weak players come into the chess.com pool faster than they
| leave.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Weak players come into the chess.com pool faster than
| they leave.
|
| By definition, someone entering the pool enters with the
| average elo (for a closed system). The rate of entry and
| exit doesn't affect the direction of average (open
| system) elo. (It does affect the rate of divergence; the
| faster entry is, the longer it will take for the open
| average to diverge from the closed average.) What matters
| to the direction is the elo players have when they leave,
| not how long they take to leave.
|
| Consider what happens if people enter with 1000 elo at a
| rate of 10 per day, and leave with 800 elo at a rate of 3
| per day:
| +-----+---------+-----------+-------------+ | day
| | players | total elo | average elo |
| +-----+---------+-----------+-------------+ | 0
| | 0 | 0 | 0.0 |
| +-----+---------+-----------+-------------+ | 1
| | 10 | 10000 | 1000.0 |
| +-----+---------+-----------+-------------+ | 2
| | 17 | 17600 | 1035.3 |
| +-----+---------+-----------+-------------+ | 5
| | 38 | 40400 | 1063.2 |
| +-----+---------+-----------+-------------+ | 10
| | 73 | 78400 | 1074.0 |
| +-----+---------+-----------+-------------+ | 20
| | 143 | 154400 | 1079.7 |
| +-----+---------+-----------+-------------+
|
| > Because the average chess.com player is considerably
| weaker than the average FIDE player.
|
| This... is nonsense. That has nothing to do with the
| average elo.
|
| The situation you describe is mathematically impossible.
| Please consider that before you repeat the claim.
| somenameforme wrote:
| The percentile stuff on chess.com has something funky going on
| with it. Lichess and Chess.com ratings are comparable (not the
| same, but at least ballpark comparable) and the median elo on
| lichess is about 1500. [1]
|
| 700 elo on chess.com is completely normal for a new player who
| knows the rules, but not much more. I have a good sized sample
| to back this up based on coaching classes of complete beginners
| and getting them to setup a class specific account.
|
| Chess.com seems to have 1.3 million players with 100 ELO which
| is their hard cap minimum, so that is literally the same, if
| not worse, as a random move generator. So there has to be some
| weird bias there.
|
| [1] - https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/rapid
| DevDesmond wrote:
| I know that UI!
|
| https://lichess.org/learn
| dragontamer wrote:
| Unfortunately, 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 important and other such
| details.
|
| Seems like a reasonably good tutorial in terms of layout. But
| just pointing out: joseki and direction of play is "more
| important" in terms of winning. Its just damn near impossible to
| teach so maybe its best for beginners to ignore this incredibly
| important (and difficult) subject.
|
| ---------
|
| To put it in perhaps more concrete terms: playing a "tactic"
| position may net you +10 points across a sequence of 5 moves or
| so. (IE: One well placed tactical move, and ~4 followup moves may
| capture 5 enemy stones + 5 territory simultaneously from your
| opponent). However, every single early-game move is worth nearly
| +20 points of territory if played correctly. I'm serious.
|
| That's why when you watch top-level Go play, there's a lot of
| "teleporting" across the 19x19 board, searching for the most
| important positions. And there is also very, very loose play and
| possible sacrifices / aji. (Maybe its not a true sacrifice, but
| you'd be willing to sacrifice if the opponent over-extends).
| tarvaina wrote:
| 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.)
| charcircuit wrote:
| He could be thinking of shogi (though the kanji is Ding Ji
| where joseki from go is Ding Shi ), where joseki refers to
| the well studied ways to play the opening of the game.
| Zacharias030 wrote:
| I don't share that sentiment.
|
| Yes, at some point when people are somewhat able to take a
| decent lead home the fuseki becomes important. Before that,
| beginners really need to understand how to ,,move" their
| stones, how to defend and connect their groups and how to cut
| and capture.
|
| If you see a strong player win against a weak player with a
| large handicap it always goes down the same way: the strong
| player places stones all over the board such that eventually
| many many skirmishes appear all over the board and then she is
| patient to take small advantage after small advantage,
| manifesting groups and territories out of what looks like thin
| air to the other player.
|
| At a somewhat higher amateur level and above the fuseki again
| loses importance and the distinguishing factor is fighting
| skills and judgement, fuseki and prep just becomes table
| stakes.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > Before that, beginners really need to understand how to
| ,,move" their stones, how to defend and connect their groups
| and how to cut and capture
|
| Agreed. Now check the tutorial series.
|
| There's no movement. There's no connecting of groups. It is
| ENTIRELY cutting and capture, and life-and-death puzzles.
|
| -----------
|
| https://online-go.com/learn-to-play-go/bl1-stretch/2
|
| Look at this puzzle. WTF is this?
|
| The "stretch" ("correct move" according to this tutorial)
| seems wholly inappropriate compared to 1-point jump, horse-
| move, diagonal move .... or hell just running in the other
| direction (to the right, escaping towards the center).
|
| To know the appropriate move requires knowing what is going
| on around the whole board (and not just what's going on
| locally).
|
| ----------
|
| https://online-go.com/learn-to-play-go/bl1-stretch/6
|
| Or this one is perhaps more egregious. This is simply the
| wrong direction of play entirely. 20+ point mistake to play
| the "correct" move here. The correct move is a 2-point jump
| (or greater) along the 3rd or 4th row northbound.
| zahlman wrote:
| > Look at this puzzle. WTF is this?
|
| > The "stretch" ("correct move" according to this tutorial)
| seems wholly inappropriate compared to 1-point jump, horse-
| move, diagonal move .... or hell just running in the other
| direction (to the right, escaping towards the center).
|
| The stretch is good shape here. I can't even tell which
| keima[0] you have in mind but that makes no sense here. A
| diagonal also just looks strange, unless you mean hane,
| which lets opponent cross-cut and will end with losing that
| stone. Similarly, a 1-point jump (I assume you mean upward)
| lets opponent wedge in and will end in gote, and running to
| the right (I assume you mean another 1-point jump) allows
| opponent to push you around.
|
| The stretch is important here because it prevents
| opponent's hane, which is very severe. It also threatens to
| turn and block opponent's expansion decisively, so it may
| be sente depending on the rest of the board. In general it
| will make sense to push twice here, then make a one-point
| jump.
|
| > Or this one is perhaps more egregious. This is simply the
| wrong direction of play entirely. 20+ point mistake to play
| the "correct" move here. The correct move is a 2-point jump
| (or greater) along the 3rd or 4th row northbound.
|
| Per AI, on an empty board, the stretch is about 1 point
| worse than those jumps (establishing a base); a one-point
| jump in the same direction of the stretch is about as good
| as making a base; and best is tenuki. There is simply no
| urgency to settle those stones without anything else in the
| area. But stretching or jumping damages Black's shape and
| limits further expansion of that group. The point is simply
| to prevent Black's hane there.
|
| Regardless, when they say "correct move", this is not
| supposed to be about what would be best overall to play in
| the position. It is supposed to be about a) recognizing the
| shape and its purpose and b) doing it in a sensible
| direction. And you really have to learn that sort of thing
| by example and by physically laying it out, because trying
| to give the rules for choosing a direction to stretch is
| harder.
|
| [0] By the way, I'll spot you that Western teachers usually
| do use English for ikken tobi and kosumi; but "horse-move"
| is cringe. Most Western players who actually talk about the
| game will probably know "keima", but you can at least say
| "knight move".
| dragontamer wrote:
| Well, I appreciate the discussion in any case. I'll
| review the position more.
|
| But this kind of discussion is missing from the tutorial
| in any regards. This is where I believe I'm stuck in the
| ~9kyu level and feel like its been mostly about this
| middle-game movement / direction of play stuff since
| 15kyu or so.
| zahlman wrote:
| > This is where I believe I'm stuck in the ~9kyu level
| and feel like its been mostly about this middle-game
| movement / direction of play stuff since 15kyu or so.
|
| Sure. But you put in the effort to get that far. You
| can't just put everything in the beginner tutorial.
| They'll get confused. And there's only so far you can go
| with one-size-fits-all lessons, without feedback from the
| student.
| kqr wrote:
| I disagree. For very high level play, yes, opening theory
| matters. For beginners, rote "reading", i.e. playing out moves
| in one's head, matters much more.
|
| This is an unintuitive aspect of go because it is different
| from virtually every other strategy game. In most strategy
| games, "macro" (large scale logistics) is what determines
| winners at all levels of play, and then at higher levels where
| logistics skills are similar, small-scale tactics start to
| discriminate winner from loser. In low-level go, you'll find
| "micro" (small-scale battle tactics) determine the outcome of
| most games.
|
| This is because of the "teleporting" you mention. When the
| opponent can materialise units and start a battle anywhere they
| want -- including inside your base -- small-scale tactics
| becomes important. (I once read the analogy that "if you were
| able to drop a siege tank into the opponent's main base at the
| start of the game, micro would end up determining low level
| StarCraft games too" -- only players that excel at local
| tactics would survive to see the end game with any base worth
| mentioning.)
|
| For each hour of training, exercises in reading and local
| tactics is what will improve your rating the most. At least for
| the 20 or so first grades. Someone who is good at reading will
| obliterate all positions of someone who only knows the more
| subtle aspects.
| KK7NIL wrote:
| > This is an unintuitive aspect of go because it is different
| from virtually every other strategy game.
|
| No, it isn't. As a decent chess and go player I can tell you
| that they're both just tactics until you approach the
| master/dan level. And what is strategy if not just a longer
| form of tactical play?
|
| At the end of the day, strategic play is just play that sets
| up tactics later on.
|
| Or, to quote Fischer: "Tactics flow from a superior position"
| kqr wrote:
| The Fischer quote sounds like the opposite of what you're
| saying, i.e. it's a suggestion to prioritise macro over
| micro: "from good logistics, tactics will sort itself out".
| dmurray wrote:
| You could read it both ways. I would say tactical
| _opportunities_ flow from a better position. If you 're a
| good enough player that exploiting your tactical
| opportunities is automatic - and this doesn't apply even
| to most grandmasters - then you can afford to spend all
| your energies on creating those opportunities. If you're
| not good enough, creating strategically better positions
| is of limited value.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > No, it isn't. As a decent chess and go player I can tell
| you that they're both just tactics until you approach the
| master/dan level. And what is strategy if not just a longer
| form of tactical play?
|
| You cannot tenuki in Chess.
|
| In Go, especially at the 15kyu to 10kyu double-digit dan
| level, the opponents are full of opening and middle-game
| mistakes. The best response is often to ignore your
| opponent and play the most powerful move elsewhere on the
| board.
|
| Knowing when to tenuki (ie: ignore the last move, play
| elsewhere) is a HUGE point in Go strategy. Its
| exceptionally difficult to play sente / forcing moves.
| Playing a sente vs gote sequence is what separates the
| 1-dan (experts maybe 1800+ Elo equivalent players) from the
| rest of us mere mortals. But recgonizing that the last move
| was gote (non-forcing) is maybe a 10kyu / 1200-Elo kind of
| thing.
|
| -------
|
| Chess is almost all tactics. Go on the other hand, is
| Strategic, as the concept of sente/gote/tenuki allows you
| to validly ignore the opponent's plan and work out your own
| plan.
|
| You still need a solid tactical basis in Go. You cannot
| just run away from the opponent forever. But you might be
| surprised at how "valid" tenuki moves are.
|
| ------
|
| For me, the growth from 15kyu (maybe 1200 elo in Chess) to
| 9kyu was a strong focus on sente, gote, tenuki, strategy,
| joseki, direction of play, strong vs weak. All "strategic"
| play that often sacrifices local tactics for greater point
| gains elsewhere.
|
| Indeed, "weak" play in Go (ex: a 2-point jump) is WEAKER in
| terms of tactics. You are explicitly making an area weaker
| and easier to kill in exchange for moving faster on the
| board. A 2-point jump will ALWAYS be the worse tactical
| choice than a 1-point jump or solid connection.
|
| This isn't like in Chess where a sacrifice immediately
| becomes apparent either. It can take 50+ moves before a
| position is played out and the difference between strong-
| connected play vs a 2-point jump shows up.
|
| In any case, even 20kyu beginners can improve their games
| if they play 2-point jumps (or other weak / loose patterns)
| appropriately. Yeah you need the basics of tactics there
| otherwise the 20kyu player just loses all their stones at
| all. But protecting your stones / strong play is actually
| very very weak and will trap you as a beginner. You MUST
| play faster (but weaker) connections if you want to break
| through double-digit-kyu. Players just get too strong by
| 9kyu or 8kyu to rely on tactics alone.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > For beginners, rote "reading", i.e. playing out moves in
| one's head, matters much more.
|
| In Go, I think everyone feels like they're a "beginner" for
| years.
|
| In my experience, absolute beginners (30kyu or weaker) should
| study tactics. You have nothing else to study after all and
| need a baseline. But even by 20kyu or 15kyu, you _WILL_ stall
| out and be unable to continue if you're unable to recognize
| when a 2-point jump, horse move, running on the 4th line vs
| 3rd line is appropriate.
|
| And you probably should be studying joseki theory in any
| case, because you need to start the game with _SOME_ move.
| And then you need to connect your opening theory with
| different, strategic level moves somehow.
|
| ----------
|
| Is it not strange to you that there's a 50+ set tutorials
| with not a single one discussing the 1-point jump, horse
| move, or 2-point jump, or diagonal move?
|
| This set of tutorials gets to Tiger Mouth (they call it a
| "hanging connection, section 3.11) before it gets to diagonal
| moves (ie: never).
|
| There's no discussion on the appropriateness to sacrifice
| stones to gain momentum or territory. Etc. etc. This is
| perhaps more of a 10kyu level concept. But seriously, some of
| this stuff (ex: 2-point jump vs horse move) is simple enough
| for a 25kyu beginner.
| brumar wrote:
| This is very different to my experience and I am wondering why.
| Maybe because I come from chess and can't help myself to
| compare it with this frame of reference. Anyway I felt that my
| progress up to 5k was largely driven by a better understanding
| of principles of plays than tactical training. As a thought
| experiment, I feel that its possible to adopt a very risk
| averse style that negates tactical complexities to the expense
| of many points on the board and still largely win against
| weaker players. It's not my experience with chess. If you suck
| at tactics, your elo sucks too.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > Anyway I felt that my progress up to 5k was largely driven
| by a better understanding of principles of plays than
| tactical training.
|
| Well yeah. But look at these tutorials. They're all local
| tactics. Nothing on early game or middle game strategy.
|
| Despite dozens of tactical positions, I don't think a single
| one of these holds a one-point jump, two-point jump, horse
| move, diagonal move, 4-row move, 3-row move or similar
| pattern.
|
| I'd say this stuff gets extremely important around 15kyu,
| where your tactical knowledge is passable (maybe not great,
| but passable). It becomes more important to move around the
| board with 2-point jumps, recognize sente vs gote and tenuki
| vs weak gote moves from your opponent.
|
| Tactical knowledge will only get you maybe to 20kyu or 15kyu
| at the best IMO. Then you're forced to learn "squishy" and
| "opinionated" discussions that no one really knows how to
| teach. There's patterns (ie: 2-point jump or horse-move), but
| its not like there's any ground truth to knowing when these
| moves are appropriate.
|
| ----------
|
| I guess people's point here is that if you choose a 2-point
| jump as a strategic connection when a horse-move was more
| appropriate, you might lose 1 or 2 points. But both of these
| moves are likely worth 5, 10, 15, or more points.
|
| The more important bit is knowing when to play strong and
| connected (often because each move is strongly sente / has
| momentum and forces an opponent's response), vs when a
| sequence is gote and the opponent (or yourself) should
| consider a move elsewhere (ex: possibly start an invasion).
| qnpnp wrote:
| 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.
| dragontamer wrote:
| These tutorials don't even teach horse-move, 1-point jump or
| similar movements though.
|
| With so much emphasis on cut and strong play, anyone
| completing this set of tutorials is going to be an absurdly
| strong tactician and then lose 20 points as the opponent
| horse-moves around the board.
|
| Surely you've played the beginner who favors tactics and
| capture at the expense of easily captured territory? Given
| this set of tutorials, do you think any beginner will
| understand sente, gote and tenuki? And even if a beginner
| somehow understood it, what basis of play will they have?
| There's literally no tutorial or discussion on walls,
| influence, 2-point jump, 1-point jump, strong vs fast play
| (etc. etc.)
| qnpnp wrote:
| Sorry if I'm missing something but are you responding to
| the right comment? Your answer doesn't seem related to what
| I said.
|
| I'm also not sure how that relates to your earlier point
| about "Joseki", which I was disputing (like many others).
| dragontamer wrote:
| This is a discussion about the linked tutorials, is it
| not?
|
| Look at the tutorials. Do you not see the lack of
| strategic discussion? Its evident from the outline.
|
| There's no strategy here. There's no Joseki theory.
| There's no movement tutorial. There's no middle game,
| direction of play or other such tutorial.
|
| ---------------
|
| Like read the tutorials I'm trying to describe. They're
| full of sound tactical advice but any beginner who only
| uses this set of tutorials will have difficulty on the
| strategic aspects of their game. I think Joseki theory
| would help them very much (as well as many other kinds of
| tutorials or discussion).
|
| There's nothing wrong with one online tutorial to focus
| on tactics. But its also important that any reader
| (especially the beginners who come into this discussion)
| realize what they're missing. Joseki is perhaps the most
| obvious missing element from this set of tutorials.
|
| IE: Every beginner coming in here won't know what to do
| for their first move of a real game even if they complete
| this set of tactical tutorials.
|
| ------
|
| What's your idea of the readers coming into here? My
| mental model is that this is Hacker News, and that very,
| very casual beginners on the order of ~30kyu are going to
| start reading these tutorials and maybe start playing Go.
|
| I think my advice from the first post is helpful to them.
| If you complete this set of tutorials, definitely study
| something like Joseki (or other ignored topics).
|
| --------
|
| Go isn't a game like chess. In Go, 80% of your pieces
| will often survive into the endgame. You don't need
| "strong" tactics because in the vast majority of cases,
| you can survive. The difference between "strong" tactics
| vs "weak" tactics is only a few stones or points of
| territory.
|
| In contrast, the difference between playing in the
| correct direction of play and not is easily worth 20+
| point moves, as you capture large swaths of territory.
| Maybe you as a ~single-digit-kyu or low-dan player have
| forgotten these kinds of mistakes. But I assure you that
| double-digit kyu / beginners will make these mistakes all
| the time.
| makeset wrote:
| 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.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Opening theory might be somehwat counter-productive. But
| surely SOMEWHERE in this tutorial the 1-point jump, horse-
| move, and 2-point jump need to be discussed.
| kawzeg wrote:
| I think your valuing of moves is flawed. Yes, during the fuseki
| the best move may be worth 20 points. But there are often many
| moves that may be worth 19 or 18 points. So, playing perfectly
| only gains a few points compared to playing acceptable moves.
| In comparison, tactical situations often have a crucial move
| that wins many points - in low-level play swings of over a
| hundred points are not uncommon. There, missing the crucial
| move can lose the entire game, no matter how perfect the
| opening was played.
| dragontamer wrote:
| And does this set of tutorials give any idea of "best" or
| even "acceptable" moves?
|
| There's no discussion of 2-point jump, 1-point jump, horse-
| move, diagonal move, loose play or connected/strong play in
| this set of tutorials. Or the value of 4th row (center-
| oriented influence play) vs 3rd row (edge-oriented
| territorial play). I'm not seeing any discussion on invasions
| or defense of invasions.
|
| -------
|
| I'm like 9kyu. I'm no expert. But I'm certainly at the level
| where tactical geniuses beat me in many positions, but I just
| wreck a lot of n00bs in the opening, and hold out until the
| ending.
|
| The good news about opening theory or middle-game theory is
| that if the opponent is playing tenuki (ie: they ignore your
| most recent move and play somewhere else on the board),
| you're probably focused on the incorrect area.
|
| On the other hand, if you're up vs a weaker player, YOU need
| to be the one playing tenuki. Its surprising how awful
| players are at double-digit kyu is at this. You will only see
| tenuki opportunities if you have superior opening/middle game
| skills than your opponent.
| tasuki wrote:
| > Unfortunately, the early moves in the game ("Joseki") are the
| most important. They are also the most difficult to learn.
|
| Nah, they aren't the most important (you can do without), not
| are the usual ones particularly difficult to learn.
|
| Source: I'm a European 4 Dan.
|
| (To expand on this: if you're a beginner, joseki don't matter.
| When you become a strong player (several of my friends are
| professional players), joseki is something you can usually come
| up with, or you come up with a similarly good non-joseki move,
| which is also ok. Practically, the game is usually decided in
| middle game fighting.)
| dragontamer wrote:
| Could you look at a few examples from the example tutorials
| under discussion?
|
| https://online-go.com/learn-to-play-go/bl1-stretch/6
|
| https://online-go.com/learn-to-play-go/bl1-stretch/9
|
| I'm saying that this "correct move" is a middle-game error.
| Maybe its my 9kyu brain being bad here, but there's nothing
| about this tutorial (and many others like it in this tutorial
| series) that strikes me as a strategic error.
|
| And I certainly think that nobi is a bad concept to teach if
| the tutorial hasn't covered diagonal moves, horse moves,
| 1-point jump and the like. Its not that "nobi" or "stretch"
| is a bad thing to teach, but its just one option in a sea of
| valid middle-game options.
|
| ------------
|
| If the tutorial is going into things like this, it really
| should be going into at least the basic 3-4 Joseki and why
| various moves are considered good.
| tasuki wrote:
| Agreed, no point in learning these nobi in the tutorial.
|
| The first one is indeed probably just a little bit worse
| than a jump.
|
| The second one, I'd extend too: it strengthens white and
| black has to come back to live. You could think about the
| hane instead, but at worst black can play the cuts and come
| back to live at 2-2.
| hyperpape wrote:
| > To put it in perhaps more concrete terms: playing a "tactic"
| position may net you +10 points across a sequence of 5 moves or
| so. (IE: One well placed tactical move, and ~4 followup moves
| may capture 5 enemy stones + 5 territory simultaneously from
| your opponent). However, every single early-game move is worth
| nearly +20 points of territory if played correctly. I'm
| serious.
|
| I'm baffled by this comment. Both professional commentary and
| AI evaluation confirm that most joseki mistakes are very small,
| often on the order of 1-2 points, because the temperature is
| low. There are specific joseki that turn into fights (e.g.
| Taisha), and it is possible to lose 10-20 points in those, but
| first of all, it's typically possible to play conservatively
| and avoid those joseki, second, most errors in them are
| smaller, and third, mid-game fights end up being even bigger
| (an error in a capturing race can be an almost unlimited number
| of points, having 40 points at stake is common).
|
| I'm curious what level you are? As a 4kyu (European), I can
| confidently say joseki is less important than reading up to my
| level. I believe stronger players say the same well into the
| amateur dan level.
| dragontamer wrote:
| I'm about 9 Kyu, at least back when I was practicing and
| reading every day.
|
| I'd say that at 9 Kyu level, my main gains were playing and
| abusing Tenuki. Refusing to respond to the opponent's (weak)
| early game moves and instead playing significantly stronger
| elsewhere on the board.
|
| If the opponent were stronger than me, I'd pay attention when
| they ignored my moves. Its actually very difficult IMO to
| play sente every time as a double-digit kyu (or even high-
| single digit kyu). Recognizing that the last move wasn't
| forcing and that playing elsewhere is a surprising way to get
| ahead.
|
| Vs stronger opponents who can tell when the board is sente,
| gote, appropriate to Tenuki, and is able to count up Ko
| threats... well yeah. I lose. But there's significant skill
| in this part of the game and NOTHING in this set of tutorials
| that teaches it.
| zahlman wrote:
| > Unfortunately, the early moves in the game ("Joseki") are the
| most important. They are also the most difficult to learn....
| 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 important
| and other such details.
|
| > To put it in perhaps more concrete terms: playing a "tactic"
| position may net you +10 points across a sequence of 5 moves or
| so. (IE: One well placed tactical move, and ~4 followup moves
| may capture 5 enemy stones + 5 territory simultaneously from
| your opponent). However, every single early-game move is worth
| nearly +20 points of territory if played correctly. I'm
| serious.
|
| Sorry, but this is complete nonsense. "Play lots and lots of
| games" is the only part I can get behind. I have seen tons of
| people get well past the beginner stages entirely self-taught
| and with a focus on fighting because that's the easiest thing
| to self-teach. A few basic joseki sequences go quite far
| (especially now that AI analysis has done such promotional work
| for early 3-3 invasions) and people who try to figure out the
| rest by intuition generally make smaller mistakes than those
| who can't read out squeeze sequences or don't understand semeai
| theory. Of course joseki are important to know, but emphasis on
| them often leads to a false confidence in having mastered the
| opening for students who aren't thinking about direction of
| play or other fuseki issues.
|
| If a tactical sequence appears to net you 10 points against an
| opponent who is playing correctly, _you basically already had_
| those points. (Well, half of the points for most capturing
| sequences, since they 'll usually end in gote; but then you
| have to consider the opportunity cost of tenuki.) This is as
| true for capturing sequences as it is for invasions and
| reductions. Which is why students are counseled to be very
| conservative in counting frameworks; they are not territory.
|
| If a tactical sequence actually does net 10 points because of
| your opponent's misplay, that doesn't mean that your moves were
| only worth 10 points, or even that each move was only worth 10
| points. It means that your moves were worth 10 points _more
| than the opponent 's were_. Similarly, correct early-game moves
| may be worth a lot of points (compared to passing, the
| reference value), but _most incorrect moves are worth almost as
| much_. Even things that are marked as clear mistakes in a
| joseki textbook, with clear refutations, might only cost one or
| two points (although, yes, they _can be_ catastrophic; and of
| course pros do have to worry about every point). So this is
| very much an apples and oranges comparison to the "value of
| moves in the opening".
|
| But also, that value is about 13, definitely not "nearly 20".
| We know this because even now that we have ferociously strong
| AI players (who inherently make moves with a higher average
| value), they still accept a komi of 6.5. And if you ask them to
| evaluate the first few moves and let some of them be passes and
| see the change in the score, you'll rarely see 20-point swings
| in any opening, but you can trivially create such positions
| (and much larger swings) in middle-game fighting.
|
| > That's why when you watch top-level Go play, there's a lot of
| "teleporting" across the 19x19 board, searching for the most
| important positions. And there is also very, very loose play
| and possible sacrifices / aji. (Maybe its not a true sacrifice,
| but you'd be willing to sacrifice if the opponent over-
| extends).
|
| Sure, but 10 kyus can do a reasonable facsimile of this as
| well. They just have bad timing, or make bad choices about
| sacrifices, or have wrong ideas about how to use the aji.
| joeyrideout wrote:
| I 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
| jibal wrote:
| Wow, that was incredible. I cried when Lee Sedol won game 4.
| And his and Fan Hui's philosophical takes were remarkable.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| Watching the human programmers become _dumbfounded_ as AlphaGo
| invented novel Go-playing strategies... is what I remember most
| from having watched this a few years ago (right before GPT3.5
| /ChatGPT debuted). The algorithm makes [victorious] wildcard
| moves which no human player would even contemplate [stupid
| moves become masterplays].
|
| When 9D-master Sudol attributes human qualities to _the beauty
| of his AI opponent 's creativity_ upon formulating certain
| moves... is definitely eye-opening. Hubris replaced.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Nah.
|
| I think with the rise of KataGo, its becoming clear that
| AlphaGo's "dumbfounded" strategies were instead incredibly
| strong tactical play with hilarious levels of blindness with
| regards to ladders.
|
| It feels like modern AIs (like KataGo, which are hundreds of
| times better than AlphaGo) are getting closer to what humans
| consider appropriate strategic play.
|
| Go players must be humble because if the opponent is stronger
| then the opponent wins. But Go AI Programmers don't
| necessarily have to be. Go AI programmers look for the
| weaknesses, lean upon them and yes, prove that
| AlphaGo/AlphaZero never learned ladders. Ever. Or other such
| concepts of strongly forcing moves (ex: loose ladders).
|
| That's one of KataGo's biggest innovations. Explicitly
| programming a ladder solver so that simple ladders can indeed
| be factored in by the neural net.
|
| ----------
|
| I do wonder how Lee Sodul will react if we told him that the
| superhuman AI he played could not see ladders... and had
| other such key weaknesses.
| jhbadger wrote:
| >I do wonder how Lee Sodul will react if we told him that
| the superhuman AI he played could not see ladders... and
| had other such key weaknesses.
|
| I wonder what Kasparov thinks of the fact that he was
| beaten by such a primitive chess program as Deep Blue's!
| dragontamer wrote:
| Ladders are a thing so easy that its literally in this
| beginner series of tutorials. Its a thing that 30kyu
| beginners learn and master.
|
| Its very strange to me that AlphaGo / AlphaZero was
| unable to ever learn ladders. It shows that the way
| humans learn and AIs learn is quite different (or at
| least, MCTS + Neural Net machines learn differently).
|
| Yes, Go is a strategic game of patterns and perhaps we
| humans overemphasized the ladder. Nonetheless, its a
| concept that humans can see and calculate with reasonable
| speeds that the (earlier) AI was unable to do (and now
| we've built stronger AIs that can prove this weakness).
|
| ---------
|
| This 100% makes the 2016-era discussions about the
| "strategic brilliance" of AlphaGo come up into question.
| Now that KataGo is superior (ie: MCTS+NeuralNets +
| dedicated Ladder Solver), we need to double-check all
| those "strategically brilliant" moves with the newer AI
| and see if a ladder messed with them.
|
| Etc. etc.
|
| The things AlphaGo sees aren't necessarily useful to us
| humans, nor are they useful to modern AI-levels of Go.
| They're just... that. Trapped in 2016. There should not
| be any great mystery assigned to the 2016 era game, aside
| from it being a pivotal moment for AIs.
|
| The game itself is now suspect, now that we know all of
| AlphaGo's flaws. As Go players, we have better things to
| study.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| >we need to double-check all those "strategically
| brilliant" moves with the newer AI
|
| Thanks for this detailed response/thought. As a
| layperson, cannot wait for the documentary on KataGo
| (AlphaGo II).
| pixelpoet wrote:
| Love to see the objectively better Go on HN now and then too ;)
| bubblyworld wrote:
| I 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?
| Axnyff wrote:
| There are more people on kgs and on fox go server
| bubblyworld wrote:
| Thanks, I'll check those out.
| qnpnp wrote:
| 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).
| lucketone wrote:
| Do your settings allow for handicapped games? This increases
| pool of potential opponents.
| bubblyworld wrote:
| My personal preference is to play non-handicapped games, but
| that's a good point, thanks.
| swannodette wrote:
| It's easier to get games on Pandanet https://pandanet-
| igs.com/communities/pandanet and Fox Weiqi
| https://www.foxwq.com. You can run Fox on OS X w/ Parallels or
| Crossover. It supposedly possible with Wine but I could never
| get it to work.
| simianwords wrote:
| Will I like go if I don't like chess? Chess seems too one
| dimensional for me if that makes sense.
| kqr wrote:
| 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.
| simianwords wrote:
| > 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.
| Ruarl wrote:
| The neat thing about Go is that, whilst the winning
| strategy is exactly to think ahead and enumerate all
| possible positions, to do so is impossible. (Even the
| superhuman AI fudge it. They can just read farther ahead
| than humans.)
|
| So to do well you have to learn how to support your reading
| ahead with heuristics and a feel for the game.
|
| A famous amateur player and advocate for the game once went
| through all the game records of Go Seigen in order to
| digitize them. This means having to pore over hand-written
| diagrams looking for the next number in the sequence of
| moves. Obviously this is easier if you can guess where to
| look. But, if you guess them all correctly, then you are
| playing just as well as the old master! After spending a
| good few months on the task, he was a significantly better
| player!
| simianwords wrote:
| Nice. As systems become more and more complicated (like
| real world itself) it is no longer feasible to enumerate
| all permutations but rather get a feel for the patterns -
| an intuition. A skilled intuiter (?) would know the
| subtle ways in which patterns emerge.
| somenameforme wrote:
| FWIW this isn't a path to success in chess, at least not
| for a human. There's something like 31 average moves per
| position in chess. So calculating just 5 moves deep would
| be 31^10 or about 820 billion positions. In fact even just
| 2 moves deep would be 31^4 = about a million positions. I'm
| a relatively strong player and ballparking my speed by
| playing through the famous Morphy opera house game in my
| mind - I'm hitting around 2-3 positions per second, in a
| game I know intimately.
|
| Progress in chess (and I assume Go) is about training your
| subconscious so that your mind naturally pushes you in the
| right direction with minimal effort. Think about something
| like writing. When you're writing something you aren't
| really thinking through each word in your vocabulary,
| comparing them, and picking one - it all just kind of flows
| without you even trying. The same thing happens with chess
| mastery.
|
| This is why some people say you're not "really" playing
| chess before a rather high rating. Less experienced players
| will struggle to simply not leave material hanging. Then as
| they improve that will no longer be an issue but then
| they'll still struggle to avoid simple tactical ideas. But
| once you move comfortably beyond that phase, the game
| becomes much more about the things people want it to be
| about - strategy, plans, big picture stuff that's lots of
| fun. It's one of the way the game draws you in - it gets
| more and more addictive, and rewarding, the better you
| become at it!
| zahlman wrote:
| > If you dislike chess because you don't like abstract
| total information strategy board games you will not like go
|
| If you think this is equivalent to the description in GP
| then you are quite simply incorrect.
|
| If you think it's just the actual reason you personally
| don't like chess, then I'm not sure why you asked in the
| first place; of course go is an "abstract total information
| strategy board game".
|
| Yes, in principle such a game has such an algorithm for
| perfect play. In practice, computers cannot and do not do
| that for chess (although they make a reasonable
| approximation) and approach go quite differently (in much
| the same way that earlier attempts at computer chess did,
| before Deep Blue's much more brute-force approach proved
| effective given enough computing power). Getting AI for go
| to its current superhuman level involved _multiple_
| complete revolutions in how the systems were programmed.
|
| Even Connect Four wasn't strongly solved until 1995, and
| checkers is only weakly solved and that not until 2007
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solved_game).
| okkdev wrote:
| I don't like chess, but like go. Go feels way more free form.
| In chess it feels like every move has been played already and
| has a name. I feel like I need to study up on all of it. In go
| there's so many possibilities, I just play something
| interesting and see where it takes me. Honestly just give it a
| go. :)
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| I like go and don't like chess, for the simple reason that
| getting good at chess requires a lot of memorization, while
| getting good at go doesn't. Having lots of openings and
| positions memorized to know the best moves automatically is not
| something that I personally find fun.
|
| In go there are some sequences of "standard" moves (joseki) but
| it's highly controversial whether memorizing them even helps at
| all, see another thread in this same comments section.
| mrob wrote:
| Chess has memorization; go has counting. Go endgames
| especially require a lot of counting. I don't think either
| skill is particularly fun.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Opening knowledge in chess is almost entirely unnecessary
| below a rather high level, perhaps 2200+.
|
| The reason less experienced players get obsessed with
| openings is because they make regular tactical mistakes in
| the opening, and then blame lack of opening knowledge, as
| opposed to their lack of tactical ability. In other words
| they try to memorize their way out of tactical mistakes,
| which is impossible. At that point, after it inevitably fails
| to work, they claim they've plateaued, lack the IQ, maybe the
| memory, maybe are too old, or whatever other excuse.
|
| This is made even worse by the fact that opening knowledge is
| ostensibly easy to improve whereas tactical vision seems very
| difficult to improve. In reality it's the exact opposite.
| Exact opening lines will fade from your mind rapidly (though
| general ideas will stay with you forever - but that's another
| topic), whereas grinding tactics might not 'feel' like you've
| learned anything, but overtime will permanently train your
| intuition to where it needs to be to start seeing major
| gains.
|
| On top of all of this - one could simply play 'freestyle'
| chess (the starting pieces locations are randomized) and
| suddenly there is 0 opening theory. But you'll find that your
| freestyle rating is going to be strongly proportional to your
| 'normal' chess rating!
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| I think it's imprecise to say that opening knowledge is
| unnecessary. What is unnecessary is opening _theory_ , or
| more specifically, rote memorisation of opening lines.
|
| This is different from opening _understanding_.
| Understanding the importance of tempo, development,
| controlling the centre, the different pawn structures,
| middle games and endgames that result from different
| openings, the plans and motifs typical in various opening
| complexes. Any late beginner to intermediate player needs
| to pick and study an opening. The problem is that instead
| of studying the opening, players try to memorise lines
| without improving their understanding of the resulting
| middlegames, and the plans they should be playing for.
| Then, when their opponent diverges from the main
| lines(which in my experience happens in 99% of games
| between players below 2000, because it 's very rare that
| both players have memorised the same long line), they don't
| know what to do.
|
| I'm a 1900 FIDE player, I have an opening repertoire of
| sorts. For instance I play the modern benoni with black. An
| extremely theoretical opening, and yet I have only a small
| handful of longer lines actually memorised, because they're
| simply too complex for me to figure out over the board(e.g
| the b5 lines against Bd3 h3 Nf3 setups). But what I have
| studied extensively is the strategic landscape of the
| benoni, games by strong players in the opening, etc. And I
| have years of experience playing the opening. I know what
| kind of exchanges typically favour me, or my opponent, what
| pawn breaks each player should be trying for. And all of
| that _knowledge_ is crucial for me to get anything out of
| the opening. I have beaten players tactically much stronger
| than me in this opening simply because my understanding of
| this specific opening was better than theirs.
|
| Tactical ability is obviously important, but it's
| definitely not everything.
| qnpnp wrote:
| I think is the best Go tutorial to learn the rules:
| https://www.learn-go.net
| marcosscriven wrote:
| Just idly clicking through until I got to "Ko". I had no idea Go
| was stateful!
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| It's not supposed to be stateful. The ko rule is only there to
| block infinite loops.
| marcosscriven wrote:
| What I mean is you can't just look at a board and know the ko
| "state" - but yes I'm sure in practice it's not that
| important.
|
| Just my engineering brain picking up on it.
| Liquid_Fire wrote:
| Chess also has this "problem" thanks to rules like castling
| and en passant capture.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| >> What I mean is you can't just look at a board and know
| the ko "state" - but yes I'm sure in practice it's not
| that important.
|
| > Chess also has this "problem" thanks to rules like
| castling and en passant capture.
|
| Chess is intended to be stateful. If you forget whether a
| castle has occurred (and then the king walked back to its
| starting position, and a rook repositioned into the
| corner) or not, chess players will note that you've
| messed up the game. The castling rule is there to stop
| you from castling more than once.
|
| Go is not intended to be stateful, and if you forget that
| a particular board layout may have come up in the past,
| go players will not note that you've messed up the game.
| It doesn't matter. The ko rule isn't there to stop you
| from repeating a board twice. It's there to stop you from
| having to repeat a board layout an infinite number of
| times, because things like the need for food and sleep
| would interfere with the game.
|
| Wrt the implementation concern, this distinction means,
| for example, that you must always track the castling
| state regardless of whether a player asks for it, whereas
| you're fine not bothering to track the history of a go
| board _unless_ a player asks for it. You can just say
| "if you want to invoke ko, press this button, and we'll
| remember that board layout, and if it's already been
| flagged, the game will draw". That isn't done, but it
| could be done.
| szopa wrote:
| I first learned to play Go back in university, but never got very
| good (it was competing with learning how to program). Many years
| later, shortly after the war in Ukraine started, I was looking
| for an activity to share with my 8-year-old son. Life was chaotic
| then: everyone was anxious, we were hosting a refugee lady, and I
| could see the stress taking a toll on him. I wanted something
| where it would be clear we shouldn't be disturbed - and Go fit
| perfectly. We started playing, and it was fun. One of the great
| things about Go is its elegant handicap system, which makes it
| possible for players at very different levels to still enjoy a
| fair, challenging game.
|
| Since then, we've been going to the local Go club in Warsaw, and
| it's become our main hobby. We play each other almost daily,
| travel to tournaments (sometimes abroad), and even spend our
| vacations at Go summer camp.
|
| The camp is actually a magical event. It takes place at a
| campsite in the middle of the Kaszuby Lake District. The
| conditions are spartan - you either live in a tent or a five-
| person cabin, and hot water is scarce. But the crowd that gathers
| there is incredible. Over breakfast you might get an impromptu
| intro to lambda calculus, in the evening you might end up in a
| deep philosophical conversation, or hear travel stories from far-
| off places, or suddenly learn way more about knitting than you
| thought possible. When we first went, it felt like discovering
| our long-lost family.
|
| The Go community is much smaller than chess, but also far more
| tight-knit and welcoming. I've heard chess can be more cutthroat,
| while in Go there's this unspoken understanding that if you drive
| people away, you'll have no one left to play with.
|
| When I travel, I like to drop in on local Go clubs. It's always
| been a great experience - I especially enjoyed visiting the San
| Francisco Go Club in Japantown.
|
| I play almost exclusively over the board. I prefer long,
| thoughtful games, and I can't really focus the same way on a
| screen.
|
| Oh, and the anime about Go, Hikaru no Go, is really good (you
| should watch it even if you don't care about the game).
| vintermann wrote:
| That anime is one of my favorites. The main characters are
| pretty anime-ish, all anime protagonists from that time look
| more or less the same, but the older adults (apparently Go is a
| bit of an old person's game in Japan) are drawn in a more
| naturalistic style with a lot of character.
|
| > in Go there's this unspoken understanding that if you drive
| people away, you'll have no one left to play with.
|
| Definitively not in online Go. I ran into some people who
| clearly thought racist trash-talk was a way to reduce the
| competition.
| jhbadger wrote:
| >apparently Go is a bit of an old person's game in Japan
|
| Yes. Part of the reason Yumi Hotta's manga (which the anime
| was based on) was written was to get younger people into the
| game, and it is credited in part for reviving the popularity
| of the game in Japan. Traditional board games like Go and
| Shogi have faced a lot of competition from video games over
| the past few decades.
| Helithumper wrote:
| Can confirm. Visited a Go Salon once. It makes a retirement
| home look young. Wouldn't be surprised if average age was
| 80+.
| gbuk2013 wrote:
| > Oh, and the anime about Go, Hikaru no Go, is really good (you
| should watch it even if you don't care about the game).
|
| I really enjoyed the Chinese drama adaptation of this - more so
| than the original anime somehow.
|
| https://mydramalist.com/45437-qi-hun
| okkdev wrote:
| Hikaru no Go manga is super good too. Aged very well as well.
| Manga/Anime from that time usually has some problematic
| stereotypes/scenes.
| aapoalas wrote:
| Heh, HnG definitely does think all Koreans have slits for
| eyes.
| szopa wrote:
| Apparently in manga and anime regular characters are often
| drawn as if they were European-ish (so, some of them are
| going to have blue eyes or blond hair, not common in
| Japan). This convention is in part historical (matching
| American comic books that inspired manga), and in part to
| make the characters more characteristic and easier to
| distinguish from each other. But in HnG this applies only
| to Japanese characters - people from abroad are drawn in a
| more naturalistic and stereotypical way. Koreans and
| Chinese will look actually like Asians, and Americans and
| Europeans will be an even more exaggerated version of
| themselves. I guess it's a very different sensitivity than
| what's common in the US right now.
| Izkata wrote:
| IIRC that was mostly the adults, or older teenagers, who
| don't get a lot of screen time so their designs are
| simplified?
|
| It kind of follows a general trope in manga/anime where
| characters' eyes are smaller or thinner to indicate
| age/seriousness/maturity/intellectualism. The Korean kids
| tended to have the same kinds of eyes as the Japanese kids,
| like Hikaru's main Korean rival (forget his name) having
| almost exactly the same trapezoidal design as Akira.
| Hikaru's eyes also change into this later in the series,
| changing from his original carefree wide-eyed design.
| Izkata wrote:
| Also, the manga goes a bit longer past the end of the anime.
| tasuki wrote:
| > [...] spend our vacations at Go summer camp. The camp is
| actually a magical event.
|
| I look forward to it the whole year. I've been going there for
| the past 20 years and been the main organizer the last 10
| years. The magic happens by itself though.
| szopa wrote:
| Thank you for herding all the cats! :)
|
| Some other interesting aspects of the camp:
|
| The event's currency are Losie, which you get by taking part
| in classes and winning tournament games. By the end of each
| week there's an auction where you bid for prizes. You can use
| your Losie from previous years, but Tasuki implements an
| inflationary monetary policy to keep old-timers from becoming
| too rich (every year Losie rewards get doubled).
|
| Some people have been coming from abroad for many years, and
| at some point just figured out it makes sense to learn Polish
| (not the easiest of languages).
| iberator wrote:
| There is no such thing as Kaszuby Lake District wtf
| jkkola wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashubian_Lake_District
| aosmith wrote:
| Go is a great game, my wife and I always have a drive-by game
| going, we use 1 lid and swap it after we place a stone.
| frumiousirc wrote:
| > we use 1 lid and swap it after we place a stone.
|
| What does "lid" mean here?
| happimess wrote:
| I suspect that each player has a bowl of stones, and they
| have 1 lid that covers those bowls. After taking a turn, the
| player puts the lid over their own bowl so that the other
| player can easily see that its their turn.
|
| "Drive by" game, to me, sounds like they've got the board set
| up somewhere in the house, and make moves over the course of
| a day (days?), rather than sitting across from each other and
| having dedicated time for the game.
| kqr wrote:
| I suspect they have two containers for pieces, and they put
| the one container lid on the container with their colour when
| they have played, revealing the other's pieces and indicating
| it is their turn to play.
|
| It took me a bit to decode also.
| ggm wrote:
| Across years of play, the only game of go I won, was a win by
| default at inter university go in the UK when my opponent didn't
| show up.
|
| I even lost the game I played with my son, teaching him the
| moves.
|
| It's a great game.
| s1110 wrote:
| To learn the basics of Go you have to lose your first 100 games
| ggm wrote:
| I shouldn't have stopped at 98.
|
| truly, the thing I love about Go is two things. Firstly, the
| handicap system means you can play a good game between
| neophytes and high-dan players, it's mutual. Secondly, its
| built on such simple foundations. No horsey-horsey-moves.
|
| Thirdly, even innumerate people who can't count to 3 can play
| it. You're playing a game substantively unchanged from
| _before chess_
| fho wrote:
| I've been playing Go with my spouses brother for a while. He had
| a lot of free time to studyGo back then, I didn't. I couldn't get
| a single win out of him, still I enjoyed every single game.
|
| We rarely play anymore, I should invite him over sometime :-)
| alan-crowe wrote:
| I'm on the other side of this, meeting a friend two or three
| times a month to play Go and giving him a three stone handicap
| on a 13 by 13 board.
|
| Sometimes I play a move with a huge, but hidden threat behind
| it. If he plays elsewhere instead of answering locally, I get
| to play a clever sequence and capture some stones. I could just
| wait for the blunder and win. Instead I give a quick lesson in
| tactics: here is my plan, if you want to play elsewhere, your
| move needs to have an even bigger threat behind it.
|
| He is learning, and now I face my clever moves being player
| against me. This makes it harder for me to win (it is about
| 50:50 with the handicap), but also more fun for me to play.
|
| You could ask your spouses brother for a "teaching game" or a
| larger handicap, or a bit of both.
| heeton wrote:
| Nice to see other go players here! Here are some go resources I
| like that I haven't seen mentioned yet.
|
| 1. https://gomagic.org/ , it has free and paid content, and I
| learned a lot here.
|
| 2. The European go journal. A nice print publication, I've not
| lived in or near the Asian countries with a stronger go history
| so I've enjoyed getting printed problems and go news.
|
| 3. The "so you want to play go" book series by Jonathon Hop. I
| like his writing style.
| ChaoPrayaWave wrote:
| My daughter has recently become obsessed with Go and now beats me
| half the time. I think that's good because Go helps her slow down
| and think before she acts.
| tux3 wrote:
| I lesson I have yet to learn (along with everyone on the Fox go
| server, presumably)
| tomaskafka wrote:
| I apologize to hijack this a bit, but do you know of similarly
| accessible resources about chess? So far the stuff I found online
| is either nerdy or explaining the basic moves to the children.
| rplnt wrote:
| Not really an answer, as I only tried it once, but there's a
| Chess course on Duolingo now. You can skip the very basic
| lessons and then it seemed to focus on positioning in openings.
| preek wrote:
| This is very similar for Chess: https://lichess.org/learn
|
| Source: I am playing both Go on OGS and chess on Lichess.
| somenameforme wrote:
| If you mean for the stuff after you know the basic rules of the
| game, I'd _highly_ recommend Daniel Naroditsky 's 'speed runs.'
| [1] Basically he starts at an extremely low rating and works
| his way up in an intentionally instructive/systematic way,
| often playing the same openings and what not.
|
| It's extremely instructive for players at all levels.
|
| [1] - https://www.youtube.com/@DanielNaroditskyGM/playlists
| drillbit wrote:
| I learnt to play Go about 15 years ago, in university--never to a
| particularly high level, but it was a satisfying experience
| nonetheless. Much like learning to play a musical instrument, it
| teaches perseverance, discipline, and self-restraint while also
| letting you have fun. Back then there were many fewer online
| resources in English for learning Go. These days there's also
| professional-level commentary in English (Michael Redmond's
| youtube channel is particularly good).
|
| There was an older guy running the local club at the university,
| a strong player who had a passion for teaching the game. This is
| in a small town in quite a remote area. I later heard he had
| learnt Go in the 1970s, first by reading books, then by meeting
| Japanese fishing crews who had come to the harbour to play. We're
| still friends today.
|
| Go has many proverbs which act as rules of thumb for playing well
| (e.g. 'hane at the head of two stones'). IMO an underrated one is
| 'make friends playing Go'. As great as resources like the link
| are, I still prefer to play in person, over a board, for this
| reason.
| aapoalas wrote:
| I'm a big fan of local proverbs / vernacular in go, enough to
| ask about them on Reddit quite a few years ago:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/7fgru4/local_go_vern...
|
| Maybe you'll find them useful or fun :)
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Go is a wonderful game. My older brother bought a Go set when I
| was a little kid and we played together. Now, 65 years later I
| need to give him a 9 stone handicap (I cheated by taking lessons
| from a South Korean Go Master and studying several books), but
| thanks to the wonderful handicap system, games can still be fun
| even when players have very different skill levels.
|
| I randomly tried a few exercises on the linked web site - nicely
| done!
|
| Off topic, but I wrote a commercial Go playing program in the
| late 1970s. This was a great hobby.
| zenlot wrote:
| Out of interest which language you used for that?
| SchwKatze wrote:
| One thing that stood out when I tried to learn and play Go was
| the tempo.
|
| I'm a chess guy, and I like to play blitz with 5+0 and bullet
| (format equivalent to tik tok) so games tend to be frenetic, but
| it's quite rare to find a Go game on those formats, they tend to
| have 40+ min in time. And honestly, this is a big W for Go.
| swannodette wrote:
| Blitz format is reasonably popular on KGS (once you get to a
| certain level) usually 10+0. Blitz is harder to find on
| Pandanet - but you can easily blitz on Fox.
| zahlman wrote:
| Zero increment blitz go is a terrible idea IMX; people will
| just play nonsense moves after the game should be ended, and
| calling a moderator takes time. Go lacks the absolute nature
| of checkmate.
| zovirl wrote:
| http://online-go.com has an interesting anti-stalling
| feature: If you pass several times it checks with KataGo.
| If KataGo is 99% sure you will win, either player can click
| a button to accept that result and end the game.
| Razengan wrote:
| Hikaru no Go was my gateway drug into Go
|
| and a great anime in its own right
| thrance wrote:
| I heavily dislike the auto-generated translations. They sound
| weird and make the website look cheap. I would rather you
| provided no translations and maybe let those less comfortable
| with English among us use their browser's auto-translate feature.
| Also, I'm sure there are several volunteers out there who would
| gladly translate this amazing resource for free.
| zahlman wrote:
| > Also, I'm sure there are several volunteers out there who
| would gladly translate this amazing resource for free.
|
| The site is doing this exactly because those volunteers haven't
| shown up. Be the change you want to see in the world.
| thrance wrote:
| I'm not that into go. And I still think forcing AI slop on
| people is untasteful, doubly so when it is that unnecessary.
| superkuh wrote:
| This is nice, it's okay, but things like this have really
| decreased in quality and utility since Flash went away and the
| partial replacement of javascript took over. The old online-go
| "Learn Go" implemented in flash much, much better and more
| intuitive and interactive than this.
| beej71 wrote:
| I was introduced to this game over 30 years ago. And since then
| I've been studying and playing on and off. And today I can safely
| say... I'm still horrible at it. :)
|
| But, damn, this is a _beautiful_ game. It 's fun and there's no
| upper limit to the challenge. The way the game ends (by agreement
| that there are no further moves of benefit to either player) is
| amazing, as are the handicap rules (which make it so players of
| differing (to a point) strengths can still play all-out against
| one another).
|
| The boards and pieces are works of art in themselves, and the
| game is steeped in tradition.
|
| That said, the boards and stones can be expensive, so lots of
| people DIY which is also fun. There's a web page out there that
| talks about making boards with MDF and Sharpies. And you can buy
| melamine stones relatively cheaply, though if you can find glass
| or ceramic stones for a little more, they're much nicer.
|
| When we were starving students in junior college and first
| learned about the game, we went out on a country road and
| gathered all the relatively small, round stones we could from the
| shoulder. Then we went to my parents' garage and found cans of
| black and white spray paint to paint the stones, and some
| leftover wood paneling that we cut in a square and lined with a
| magic marker.
|
| The set was, arguably, offensively ugly. But I still have it in
| my closet.
| noman-land wrote:
| Honestly my first thought was wanting to see the board and
| stones.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| This is a great resource. I've been wanting to learn Go (beyond
| the basics) and teach it to my child.
| ilikehurdles wrote:
| I enjoyed learning at first but I found the course overall
| really, really tedious. I stopped during the 12 back to back quiz
| questions asking how many liberties there are on a board. Clearly
| by the 6th iteration I knew how to count. It could likely be
| condensed.
| mirthturtle wrote:
| I love Go! Been streaming it on Twitch for the last five years or
| so (https://twitch.tv/mirthturtle), lately as a "Go airline" (MS
| Flight Simulator & Go simultaneously). There is an engaged
| community in the Twitch category, if you are looking for Go
| friends, but still, nowhere near as large as Chess.
| nxpnsv wrote:
| My son and I just did the first collection of lessons. The
| Swedish translation isn't perfect, but he understood and enjoyed
| it immensely. Well done, I might have to buy a board now :)
| kouru225 wrote:
| This has some serious bugs.
|
| I just tried to play 2.16 is the group alive. It told me I was
| wrong for saying black was alive when it clearly had two eyes.
|
| Then I tried 2.17 and it showed me a screen of a black formation
| that has two eyes, but then says "White to play. Make two eyes."
| This is clearly the wrong prompt for this board. Not only is the
| color wrong, but the formation already has two eyes so I don't
| know what you want me to do here.
| amcoy37 wrote:
| Hmm, both 2.16 and 2.17 worked for me. Which of the 6 puzzles
| in each chapter didn't work for you?
| kouru225 wrote:
| In 2.16:
|
| 3 says I'm wrong for saying its alive. It's clearly alive.
| It's a big black formation with one eye in the corner and one
| eye at the bottom
|
| 4 Says I'm wrong for saying its alive. It's clearly alive.
| It's a big black formation with two eyes diagonal from each
| other, one on the edge.
|
| In 2.17:
|
| 2 shows me a black formation with two eyes already made and
| says "white to play. Make two eyes."
|
| 3 is doable but it also says "white to play" while showing a
| black formation.
|
| 4 shows me a black formation with two eyes already made and
| says "white to play. Make two eyes."
|
| 5 shows me a black formation with two eyes already made and
| says "white to play. Make two eyes."
|
| 6 shows me a black formation with two eyes already made and
| says "white to play. Make two eyes."
|
| FYI I'm using firefox
| kevlened wrote:
| The lessons are correct, but may be more obvious with
| better definitions.
|
| "Alive" pieces remain permanent throughout the game. In
| both 2.16 examples, white can capture black by filling the
| gaps.
|
| "Eyes" only have one space each and are fully surrounded by
| a single color. In both 2.16 examples. there are no eyes.
| Look at 2.17 with this new definition to see where the gaps
| are not yet eyes.
|
| 2.17 (3) is asking you to place a white piece within the
| black formation. This renders correctly for me in firefox.
| Izkata wrote:
| Just an additional clarification in case the other reply
| doesn't help: Your phrasing of "shows me a black formation"
| doesn't make sense unless it is rendering the page wrong
| for you. All the problems you've listed show both white and
| black stones on the board.
|
| For example:
|
| > In 2.16:
|
| > 3 says I'm wrong for saying its alive. It's clearly
| alive. It's a big black formation with one eye in the
| corner and one eye at the bottom
|
| Should look like: | | w w w w w
| | b b b b w | w b w ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
|
| (I'm also using Firefox and it's rendering correctly for
| me)
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-09-28 23:01 UTC)