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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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:Your story doesn't make sense

[Ectospheno]

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

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.

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.

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.