Best Go Resources for a Beginner?

wrinkledshirt asks: "So, as an English teacher stranded in the middle of South Korea, I've learned that Go (or Baduk, as it's called here) is a really popular game with the locals. Unfortunately, it's really difficult to learn how to play it when most people who are good at it don't speak English very well. So, I've turned to the web. There are some okay teaching sites, but often the learning curve beyond simple rules explanation is pretty steep... 'This is a white stone. This is a black stone. They take turns. These are eyes. Ready? Okay, now observe how abandoning the joseki here leads to a gote which needlessly gives white sente...' (Me: 'WTF?!?'). What are the best Go resources for a beginner?" "I've been playing Go on yahoo, but the beginner rooms there don't have all that many beginners. Sensai's Library is pretty good, but laid out a little confusingly. The Go Teaching Ladder has a decent list of commented games, but it's hard to know which ones are instructive for beginners. I've also tried playing both GnuGo and Igowin (playing them against each other head to head seems to suggest that GnuGo has the better engine, although my version has a horrid scoring system), but in the end I'm worried that computers are the wrong way to learn this game. Books in English are hard to come by in my part of the country, but I'm considering ordering them or making the trip up to Seoul if there are titles worth buying."

Comments

American Go Association

[scupper]

American Go Association
http://www.usgo.org/

They have a ton of links to tutorials and multimedia aids.
http://www.usgo.org/resources/internet.asp

Go help

[hiroshi912681]

http://senseis.xmp.net/
Here's a wiki dedicated to Go. I've found it very useful.

http://playgo.to/interactive/
An interactive tutorial

http://www.britgo.org/cartoons/
comic for beginners

http://www.usgo.org/
the American Go Association

http://www.smart-games.com/igowin.html
demo version of "The Many Faces of Go". I highly recommend the full version, but it's very very expensive. if you get to the point that this demo is no longer challenging, you should probably purchase it...

http://gobase.org/software/editors/
SGF editor

http://gobase.org/software/clients/
play go online with other ppl

http://go-club.1up.com/
a club I started on 1up

http://games.slashdot.org/games/04/09/24/1742243.s html?tid=202&tid=106
like knoppix, but for go players

ok, that's all for now =P

Hikarunix: The Go Distro

[Lazyhound]

See a previous story.

Re:Hikarunix: The Go Distro

[scupper]

hey, that's pretty damn slick. I think I'll check it out, thanks for the link to the story. You know, it would make a cool stocking stuffer.

One of the best tutorials

[chjones]

is the Interactive Way To Go. It's where I learned. I'm far from any mastery, but I'm quite comfortable playing now.

It's easy to spread out over several sessions, and actually teaches what things are (properly) and what to do about them, instead of simply referring to past games or showing pictures.

Good luck!

KGS

[rmull]

Play on KGS. It's way better than yahoo software wise, and the people are friendlier typically.

Re:KGS

[arose]

There's also DGS for when you don't have enough time to play a whole game. BTW, my nick is same there as here, so feel free so arrange a game.

Re:KGS

[arose]

Fixed link: DGS.

Excellent teaching resource

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried http://senseis.xmp.net/

I learned a lot from there. They explain everything you could possibly need to know, starting from the basics. Its set up as a wiki, and a lot of great people contribute. Just a couple weeks ago they reached their 10000th page.

Sigh

[jorenko]

The first result at google for "learn go" was the one I always considered best for getting the basics down, and a small start into intermediate:

Books on Go

[stone022]

Janice Kim's "Learn to Play Go: A Master's Guide to the Ultimate Game." There are five volumes now, progressing from a nice introduction on up. The volumes are available at Amazon.

Re:Books on Go

[7grain]

I agree completely - These books are EXCELLENT, and easy to acquire (amazon.com, etc). They are very engaging with excellent diagrams and illustrations. The first 2 volumes are adequate to get you going... come back for the later volumes when you're ready for more competitive play. I speak as a relative beginner myself; I'm sure that experts might feel other books have more information, but the Janice Kim books excel as starter books because they are not intimidating at all -- very friendly and informative. I'm surprised how few people are reccommending these books; I find the computer resources to be dry and confusing, myself. And playing a computer is very frustrating as a beginner because they don't make as many mistakes as you do, even at the lowest level settings. It really helps to have another novice to play with so you can talk through your games and learn from each other's mistakes. Good luck.

Monopoly, of course

[Anonymous Coward]

"Take a stroll along Illinois Avenue. If you pass GO, collect $200."

Play it on the computer

[xanderwilson]

Wikipedia lists a whole bunch of software, including at least one free one online:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(board_game)

ALex.

Re:Play it on the computer

[xanderwilson]

Oops. Didn't see the extended part of your entry. You HAVE played it on the computer.

Someone else suggested:
http://playgo.to/interactive/index.htm l
I'll second that.

Alex.

Sensei's Library

[juggleme]

The place is pretty confusing, but the Beginner Study Section isn't a bad place to start.

Play against people

[Vaevictis666]

Best way to learn Go (once you know the hard and fast mechanics) is to actually play people. The general rule of thumb is to expect to lose your first 50 games. If you can find people willing to review the game with you once you're done (it's apparently bad form to do live reviewing when you should be playing :P) I've found even a few games like that is really instructive.

I play online on KGS, which has as its client CGoban2 - it's written in Java, is a really nice client, runs under mac/linux just fine.

Alternately, find a game between equal level players a bit higher than you (10 ranks maybe - a new player starts at rank 30k and goes to 1k, so look for a game between high teen kyu players) and just watch what they do. Save the game when you're done and then use CGoban to edit it and play through. The suggestions I've seen say to first guess where you think they will play (hard at beginning, but not too difficult once the fighting gets heavy) and then, whether right or wrong, try to understand why they played there. Then find a game between some dan level players, watch that, and repeat.

Most of all though, the best way is to play against people your own skill, and KGS (and others such as IGS) do automatic rankings so it's pretty easy to find a game most of the time.

Once you get around 25-20 kyu, then start looking more at the theory. I recommend Kogo's Joseki Dictionary - a dictionary of openings that you can load up in CGoban (among other clients).

Re:Play against people

[Doviende]

you can get to 25-20 kyu pretty quickly, but most good players seem to suggest that you don't study joseki until you're like 5 kyu.

in my experience you don't need to. studying joseki is robotic. for a long time, you need more general principles instead of closing your mind to new possibilities.

-doviende

Re:Play against people

[Anonymous Coward]

What your starting rank is very subjective to the person assigning you your rank. I used to play go WAY back in the day, I started around 12 years ago, and my starting rank was 36-kyu. In fact, this was the ranking that my teacher assigned to all beginners.

I eventually got to the point that the go club I was in fell way behind me (I played for about 4 years, finished around 15-kyu), so I was left playing only my teacher (ranked 3-dan). He pretty much beat me on a regular basis, but he would always critique moves while we were playing to give me more insight into what were good or bad moves. This is a pretty good way of learning about go as well.

Re:Play against people

[bcrowell]

I found it a very discouraging game to try to learn by playing against people, because not only did I know I was going to end up losing, I couldn't tell, at any given time in the middle of a game, how badly I was losing.

Re:Play against people

[rodentia]

I think that's true. Joseki are a dry hole until you are at least 15k. Then, learn two or three thoroughly through their variations and then forget about them and play a few thousand more games. Then study joseki in earnest.

The one Go book that has stayed by me from rank beginner to 5k IGS has been Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go.

Re:Play against people

[girlarmy]

There is a local GO club here in Berkeley and there are parks where you can "pick up" a game in San Francisco. I was turned on to go about a year ago watching four people play in a restaurant in Santa Cruz. I was fascinated and they noticed me and invited me to play. I was walked through my first game right then and there. I too have tried every possible method of learning the game. Having others teach you is definitely the way to go. The GO club is an amazing resource. Smart, talented players who are very happy to help you figure out the game and teach you good tactics until you can have a better understanding about what makes good strategy. Like all obscure and geeky things, most people who play are just excited to meet someone who is interested. I have yet to run into someone here, whom upon hearing I was learning, didn't offer their expertise or advice.

I will second the suggestion of Kiseido GO site

I found their online tutorial far exceeded the others. This was of immense help when I was first figuring everything out. It is written in plain language and lets you do the simplest things over and over again, until you get them, which for me was a the only way to get over that first big hump.

Good Luck!
Welcome to the Club

goproblems

[Anonymous Coward]

Many people have already recommended many of the sites that I would recommend, especially GoBase.

One site I haven't seen recommended is goproblems. Basically, people post a variety of Go scenarios and problems to solve. You can search by level of difficulty or type of problem, and can work through solutions in a variety of ways. Best of all, all you need is a browser with Java.

It's a great site for getting a feel for situations that arise in Go, playing through them to understand them, and analyzing solutions, without playing against another individual.

tutorial site

[Flamerule]

I'll second (or third) the recommendation for the Interactive Way to Go. I looked at all the tutorial sites I could find back when I was first learning, and this one is the best. It's step-by-step, and doesn't go too fast, so it should definitely help you out.

Once you've done all the exercises there, phase 2 of your education should be the igowin demo, which uses a 9x9 board. You get to reinforce what you've learned by playing actual games on a small board. The game AI starts out at (what it considers) 20 or 30 kyu, I think, and then gets progressively more difficult. So you'll see how far down you can get... before too long, you should be able to beat the computer without too much trouble. Side note: it's a windows program, but it's a simple executable; I remember being able to run it fine in wine a couple years ago.

Good luck with the Go. And fyi, GoBase is a great site to check out once you know how to play.

Re:tutorial site

[Anonymous Coward]

I find 9x9 boards too limiting to have a meaningful game with. There just isn't enough room to be able to strategically form good attacks versus your opponent. 13x13 boards are much, much better for beginners to play actual games with. The games take longer, but are nowhere near the length of time for a full 19x19 board, and the size is large enough that the game allows for much more diverse strategy than those available on a 9x9 board.

More Go Links

[Anonymous Coward]

The Magic of Go series of articles (in English) at the Daily Yomiuri online
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/igo_e/

The Japan Go Association's Fun Way to Learn Go online (English version)
http://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/lesson/index2 -e.htm

The Wings Across Calm Water online Go Club
http://www.wingsgoclub.org/

Go problems online
http://www.goproblems.com/

Tips for getting stronger at Go at the UK Go Challenge website
http://www.ukgochallenge.com/tips/tips.ht ml

Tsumego - weekly Go problems
http://www.hitachi.co.jp/Sp/tsumego/inde x-e.html

Tsume Go Problem of the day
http://www.qmw.ac.uk/~ugah006/tsumego/index.h tml

Go websites

[onlyoneshinobi]

This game is so fun I am still a beginner though. Some good recources: http://kiseido.com/ The Go mecha The American Go assoctiation This has everything, might as well make this your homepage. The Kiseido Go server The best Go server out there, very use friendly. My username is "Elad" -oos

Hate to state the obvious

[Programmer_In_Traini]

I hate to state the obvious but it all starts with a simples (Go)oogle search :)

I search for "Go rules" and i got this ....

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=go+rules&btn G= Google+Search&meta=

Hikaru no Go

[Anonymous Coward]

Watch the Anime title Hikaru no go, each episode has a short lesson about go at the end. Amied at children and beginners, though AFAICT.

Your story doesn't make sense

[Max_Abernethy]

How can you teach English to Korean people if you don't speak Korean? If you do speak Korean, please simply stop trying to learn the game from them in English!

Re:Your story doesn't make sense

[Ectospheno]

I taught my kids English and I still can't speak Baby :)

Re:Your story doesn't make sense

[fiftyfly]

Teaching ESL usually doesn't require the instructor to know the native language. often the curriculms are preset and formulaic.

Re:Your story doesn't make sense

[DNS-and-BIND]

1) The native English teachers only get the advanced students that basically speak English already. The basic students are taught by others.

2) Being an English teacher in Asia is a total scam and cop-out job. You need zero skill, and anyone with a degree (even in art history) can get the job and keep it. The student has no way to objectively evaluate the experience. Many English teachers are hard drinkers and partiers who simply teach in order to finance their getting laid expeditions...they could care less about professionalism.

Not to say they're bad people. But even a redneck drywall hanger has standards to attend to...the customer will notice if it's done poorly. Not so for English teachers in Asia.

Re:Your story doesn't make sense

[Ipingforpong]

My mom taught English in Seoul for four years and didn't speak any Korean. I, on the other hand learned Korean as my first language and have since forgotten it.

goproblems.com

[eoyount]

Check out goproblems.com. It is set up as problems rather than complete games, but it has something for players at every level.
Many of the people who comment on the problems really know what they're talking about and don't talk down to those who know less than them, either.

Non-local instruction not much better.

[Telastyn]

While the actual explinations are better, most of the shape terminology is still foreign in the english go books I've seen.

Personally, I found that my experience playing American style turn/tile based wargames [such as the * General series of games by SSI, and pretty much anything published by Avalon Hill] helped a lot when learning go. Both styles of games involve 'lines' of units, and get the player to understand how different shaped lines are strong, how they are weak, and tactics to break the lines.

Why playing against a computer won't work

[thegrue76]

http://www.caldwell.jp/gobeyondchess.html

Snippet:

Computerizing go

The difficulty in computerizing the game becomes evident when you compare the way that go and chess are played. While chess has many standard openings that can be "fed" to a computer for analysis, a go player can pretty much do anything he or she wants. There is no "encyclopedia of openings" such as any self-respecting chess player would study (although there are some standard beginnings that players follow for common sense reasons). Nihon Ki-in's Saheki feels that there is a certain "feel" for the game, one that, at this point in technology, only a human can understand. A "feeling," he says, is similar to fuzzy logic. "Unless the technology of the computer can solve this fuzzy theory, a good player cannot be beaten by a computer."

There are just too many variables in the game of go for modern computers to deal with. A machine, according to Saheki, will have to duplicate human thought to accomplish with go what Deep Blue did with chess. Brute force calculation isn't enough. However, a few computerized go games do exist. How do the best of these compare to the top human players? When I asked Saheki this question, he picked up three magazines that were sitting on the coffee table between us. He put two of them next to each other. "This is a professional-level player," he said, pointing to the magazine on his left. "This is a top amateur-level player," he continued, pointing to the magazine on his right. "And the computer would be...." he proclaimed as he tossed the third magazine to his right halfway across the room, "there. Very, very, very weak." Point taken.

Re:Why playing against a computer won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to play against gnu go, on a mac-lc-3 netbsd system that I was running. It routinely trounced me. So at least computers have reached that level of skill.

And I feel the need to post anonymously.

Re:Backing up a hard drive...

[Drantin]

in your bios startup, change the bootup options to check the internal drive (it'll probably be by serial number) rather than "Removeable Dev" or similar...

Paduk

[Deliveranc3]

When I was in Korea I knew a little paduk. I went to Incheon where there is a mountain with a big statue of MacArthur, anyway there are a bunch of old guys who play there every day. They were nice and let me play, we didn't speak the same language but I had a blast and came back the next day.

Anyway just go and watch, but really you'll need to play at some point.

Watch out though, they smoke :)

Go Sites

[liqnitro]

I am one of the people on slashdot who actually plays the game. It is quite a simple game, black and white stones, placed on intersections. Although quite simple, it is hard to master.

The Daily Yomiuri - A Japanese Daily Newspaper that includes a go collumn, has frequent discussions about pro matches, contains joseki, and best of all contains an archive of previous go collumns that teaches go to beginners. I greatly enjoy reading this site, but of late have not had the time.

GoBase.org, who could forget this essential site (actually I almost did) not only for beginners but for experienced players, contains many, many problems, classic games, wonderfull resource.

The American Go Association - Contains many resources for those who are interested in learning about playing go.

The Korean Baduk Association might be most helpfull for you, however I do not know how much help they can be to english speeking people.

IGS (Internet Go Server), synonymous with online and go, will provide you with many resources about go, and even have an online client that you can play people throughout the world.

KGS is another online go server, apparently it has lectures every week.

The Interactive Way To Go is a link my brother just gave me, it contains some go problems, hope it helps.

Well, I hope to see you on igs soon. Please enjoy the resources that I dug up from you from my personal link folder, they will be invaluable in your progress in learning go.

Beginner's Introduction to Go

[Anonymous Coward]

I've learned Go with the BIG. It's the best introduction I've found so far:

Beginner's Introduction to Go

itsyourturn.com

[centauri]

It's free, unless you want to make a ton of moves on a given day. I suggest joining a fast (28 hours max between moves) tournament or ladder and playing a bunch of games while studying the other resources people have mentioned here.

Great entry level story/discussion on kuroshin

[mosabua]

Quite a while ago there was a great article and following discussion with lots of pointers on kuroshin. Check it out. It motivated me to learn go a bit and play it against the computer here and there. I havent played against a real player yet though ..

This site ie great!

[jotaeleemeese]

Try it, your go urges will be cured.

Beginners playing beginners not a good idea

[wfolta]

You mentioned that there was a site where beginners played other beginners. I'd highly recommend against this. You really need to play against someone who knows what they're doing or you're going to adopt crazy strategies and tactics. Even if you're both reading books and trying it out on each other.

Bruce Wilcox

[tmilford]

Check out his stuff. I'm halfway through Contact Fights, which I've already found to be remarkably helpful. BTW, Bruce is an entertaining lecturer too, if you get a chance. http://members.cox.net/wilcoxeureka/

Hikaru no Go

[Rysc]

Step one:
Get the (subtitled in english) episodes of Hikaru no Go. There aren't too many, a mere few dozen.

Step two:
Watch three episodes. Play go. Repeat until episodes are exhausted.

Step three.
Go back to the tutorials which will now make a lot of sense.

Seriously.

Seems cool enough...

[th3space]

Over the past few years at my local cafe (well, local in terms of where you can find people playing games of various sorts), I've noticed a trend away from chess and backgammon and towards go and cribbage...cribbage I've played, backgammon and chess I've played, but this 'go', I have yet to get involved in.

That said, I've *wanted* to get involved, but have been too intimidated by the speed and ferocity of some of the players there to bother to ask for a quick lesson or three...thanks much for the resources, all. You've helped more than just the stranger in a strange land.

Wait a minute....

[wronskyMan]

Isn't GO only for old people in Korea?

dragon go server

[bertvl]

I like Dragon Go Server, it has a clean simple interface, and allows you to play against others of the same skill. You can start out as a high ku (not haiku) player, and as you beat people your ku will improve, and eventually you'll probably stabilise at a ku value somewhere (or you could go on to being a 9 dan player!) You can also play handicap (i.e. you start out with a bunch of moves) games against much higher rated players, its VERY instructiveto play against really good players this way.

I play it on yahoo

[jim_v2000]

A good way to learn to play, and gain some skill is to sign up for Yahoo! games. You cna play their online version with people of varying skill levels, and Yahoo!'s explanation of the rules is pretty good.

Re:I play it on yahoo

[arose]

...and to get very frustrated, because the passing system sucks. Avoid Yahoo Go at all costs.

Channel surf

[bzarhandz]

If you get any sort of cable service what so ever, you'll be able to tune into a 24-hour baduk channel. I learned a lot just by watching. Channel numbers always seemed to hope around when I was living in Seoul, but the Go channel was usually close to the all-day Starcraft channel...

Use the Google

[some guy I know]

Why are you people doing this guy's work for him?
Is he too lazy to Google for "Go"?
I just did, and it came up with nearly half a billion web sites that mention "Go" in one form or another.
He should be able to find something useful on one of them.

Re:Use the Google

[richy freeway]

Shut up. Ask /. would be a VERY boring place if people like you had your way. If you don't like it then please, for those of us that do, fuck off.

Thanks for listening.

Re:Use the Google

[some guy I know]

My right hand is in front of and slightly above my head, palm facing down.
I rapidly move my hand to a position of similar altitude behind my head while saying the following: "Whoosh!"

In case you didn't get that, either, my original (GP) post was meant to be an amusing send-off on comments to ask.slashdot.org that complain that a questioner should use Google to find the answer to his/her question.
Since "go" is a common English word, the submitter would be unlikely to be able to find anything informative about the game "Go" simply by using Google to search for it (without heavily qualifying the search).
(Note my comment about nearly half a billion page hits, which should have made obvious the humorous nature of my post.)

I expect my GP post to be modded "Funny" any minute now.
Once that happens, then perhaps people like you will be able to interpret it correctly.

(In case you are still unable to comprehend my superior sense of humor, I will state here that, in this post, the second sentence in the first paragraph, the first sentence in the third paragraph, and the first phrase of the parenthesized forth paragraph, are all meant to be somewhat amusing.)

Re:Use the Google

[Anonymous Coward]

>>In case you are still unable to comprehend my superior sense of humor.... are all meant to be somewhat amusing.

It's not, they weren't and you ain't.

>>I expect my GP post to be modded "Funny" any minute now.
Whoosh...I just modded it a troll.

Now that was funny!

Re:Use the Google

[Anonymous Coward]

"I just modded it a troll."

Haha, if you post to a thread, any mods you made to other posts to that thread go away. Now that's funny!

There may actually be an answer here.

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the better things you can do as a teacher is to try to learn something. By trying to learn something from people who don't speak English very well, you are duplicating the experience of your students who are trying to learn English from someone who doesn't speak Korean at all. So, you ask yourself; "How can I help these Koreans to teach me Go?" and that leads to; "How can I help these Koreans to learn English."

Grasshopper, you should ponder deeply on this.

Start with Reversi/Othello

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you grok that, Go will come naturally.

Some will say, "expect to lose your first 50 games". If you play with that attitude, you may as well never start playing. I won my first Go game, and have only honed my skill since. Set your expectations high and you may acquire knowledge faster. You can learn just as well by anticipating mistakes as you can by making them.

good site

[Anonymous Coward]

i am just trying to help but i am not a anonymous coward ;;>.> anyway i have a Hikaru No Go site that can help u most likely learn to play Go cause i have the Rom for the GBA emulator on there. it also teaches you how to create a custom go set of your very own irl.
www.geocities.com/zeno_deadly_assasin

Practice with Go Problems

[phamlen]

I found I made the best progress when I practiced Go problems. While it's also really important to play games with humans, Go problems are a great way to gain skills.

My favorite is actually a series of books: "Graded Go Problems For Beginners" by Kano Yoshinori. It's in English, there are 4 volumes moving from 30 kyu to 10 kyu. About 400 problems a book, with reasonable explanations of both the correct and incorrect answers. Seriously, complete the four volumes and you'll get to 20-15 kyu almost painlessly.

You can also try www.goproblems.com - but I don't like those problems as much as the book series. If you can afford it, there's The Many Faces Of Go software which has good Go problems in it. It has one great advantage over a book - you actually play out the moves and the program doesn't tell you whether you're correct until the end of the sequence.

In the end, practicing problems will help you with a lot of tactical issues: is a group alive or dead, what's the best way to kill a group, how can you connect, etc. Then you can start tackling strategy which is so much harder...

Good luck!

-Peter