Go/Baduk

[NacroxNicke 11]

Has anybody heard about it? Go? Baduk? ...

It's a Chinese board game, an abstract strategy game, that consists on playing on a 19x19 board with black and white stones, and you need to surround either points or your opponent. It has been played for like 3000 or 4000 years, and has been spread through Asia but not in the West.

It's incredible easy to learn, it has very few rules, even children can understand rules and start playing, but it requires almost two or three lifes to master. I really mean it, if you start playing it now, you will surely play it until you are a old bearded guy and even then you will still have things to learn about it.

The strategy of the game is very complex, and that's what most players gets in love with, there is a constant flow of balance between slow and fast, thick and thin, heavy or light, weak or strong positions, and every game develops in a different way.

The thing about the game, it's that it's very deep, there are a lot of concepts and proverbs that can be used in the real life. In the game itself you can just negotiate parts of the board with your opponent, and make exchanges, like abandoning a part of your groups to control certain part of the board, it's a very personal feeling.

The Asians are so serious about this game, that they even have schools where you can start learning to become a Pro in the future. They have a manga about the game too, it's called Hikaru no Go if you want to read it.

Well I will just put some videos about the game, and a page where you can find the rules explained, you can play it online in a Go server called KGS (it's the most famous of the West, the other one is Tygem but that is filled with Koreans, Chinese and Japanese players that will kick your ass without even explaining what is going on after the game). Although, I find playing in person a lot more fun, so if you live in UK or USA and there is a go club near your house, go for it and try it, it's a lot more fun.

A tutorial to learn the rules:

http://gogameguru.com/learn-go-easy-way-go-game-1/

Another introduction to the game:

http://www.britgo.org/intro/intro1.html

Some celebrities that played the game:

http://www.britgo.org/general/celeb/index.html

A great page contaning a lot of info about the game:

http://senseis.xmp.net/

See: http://senseis.xmp.net/?WhatIsGo

Quotes: http://senseis.xmp.net/?GreatQuotes

Wikipedia about the game:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_%28game%29

A club list from UK: http://www.britgo.org/clubs/map

A club list from the US: http://www.usgo.org/where-play-go

KGS Server to play online:

http://www.gokgs.com/

In KGS my name is "nacrox" if you want to find me, I can teach you the basics. The game has a ranking similar to Martial Arts, you go from 30kyu to 1 kyu, and then from 1 dan (shodan), to 7-8 dan, and then 1 dan professional to 9 dan professional, and a handicap system, so you can play a competitive game between a 5kyu and a 1kyu without problems.

Another neaty thing about the game, it's that when you start you feel very lost about it, you don't understand anything, then when you get on 12 or 10 kyu you start understanding more, and you feel great about it, you almost feel that you don't have anything to learn more, but then, you get to 9kyu and start realizing that you don't know anything about the game, that keeps until you get to 1 Dan amateur, where you feel again mastering the game, but it's just an illusion, as when you keep improving you start noticing that you really don't understand anything about the game at all. Even pro's are humble about this because every day new things are being played.

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Well that's, I hope this wasn't in vain and if just one player starts because of this I will feel acomplished, so go ahead and try it. I can offer support if someone wants to know something here, there is a english forum about the game where other players offer help and there are guides to know basic stuff up to 10 kyu, but I will not post it here because of the spam.

Edited December 16, 2013 by NacroxNicke

[tortuosit 485]

I play it sometimes, 9x9 or 13x13 - but I am a bad player. I have problems calculating what could happen next, well I'm used to chess... I'm on DGS and OGS. Mostly I play on OGS against bots or with Drago/GnuGo.

www.dragongoserver.net

www.online-go.com/

They are both slow go servers, with time settings allowing 1 move per day... OGS has more tournaments. As for playing against humans, I like DGS much more.

You are right, as a beginner you feel lost and with no idea and no plans..., this is how I feel often.

There are great PDF book s for beginners out there "River mountain Go" by Oliver Richman and "Shape Up" by Charles Matthews.

The good side about Go is that it is not as "solved" by computers as e.g. Chess. Unlike in Chess, I think mediocre players have a good chance to win Go. I think the compuetr strength in Chess is nothing but frustrating.

An important international forum probably is: http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/

Edited October 7, 2013 by tortuosit

[NacroxNicke 11]

I could suggest doing Life and Death problems, I got frozen up as 12 kyu for a long time, until I started doing L&D problems, and then got quickly to 9 kyu.

Most beginners tend to do life and death problems with the goproblems.com page, but I find it a little bad, since you don't really read the variations, you just click until you have the answer. If you do 15 or 10 L&D a day in the bus or in your free time (I do 30-25 easy ones), you will quickly improve, faster than with anything else at this point (mostly because beginners could have some stuff to think about concepts, but if you can't hold it up with good brute force, aka reading, you will get in weird situations a lot of times because you couldn't read it).

This is a must do for starting in life and death: http://tsumego.tasuki.org/ (See Elementary L&D of Cho Chikun)

Also I don't like too much the bots, since they are very weak at the opening stage, and sometimes they do very weird things, most players get some bad habits from them, you could try playing in a server like Tygem or KGS, and trying the fast games if they suit you (10 mins w/ 1 byomi 30 seconds or 3 byo yomi 30 seconds (blitz)), or slow games (1 hour/30mins, 3 byo yomi 30 secs)

See ya, and again, send me a pm if you want to improve, I can give you a few tips or review a few games

Edited October 7, 2013 by NacroxNicke

[tortuosit 485]

http://tsumego.tasuki.org/ - fantastic resource. I printed some beginners problems on paper and started solving problems in the evening - instead of doing Sudokus :).

[NacroxNicke 11]

I have the answers if you want them, I think that page doesn't give them.

[mr burns 131]

I think the compuetr strength in Chess is nothing but frustrating.

OT, but it´s funny you say that. Years ago i played several matches on a freeware chessgame for PSP (333mhz CPU) and the one damn time when i was actually going to beat it, guess what happened? Whole thing crashed upon pulling my checkmate move *headexplodes* :D

[NacroxNicke 11]

As a side note, I tend to not compare Chess with Go directly, since it makes for some trolling sometimes :P

Anyway, here is another good page for people going into SDK ranks and dan players (Although DDK can use the page as inspiration maybe.): http://www.josekipedia.com/

[tortuosit 485]

I have the answers if you want them, I think that page doesn't give them.

Yes please! I first checked my answers with help of Gnugo, but it would be easier to have it offline.

[NacroxNicke 11]

Here are the answers: http://www.mediafire.com/?m3uueihhpdu1ixh

Edited October 14, 2013 by NacroxNicke

[tortuosit 485]

Thanks Nacrox, the answers are helpful.