What app should I download (on Android) if I want to try Go? There are a lot of them, and I have no idea where most of the playerbase is.
I was hoping someone would comment on this actually. Every android app I’ve tried has been riddled with ads to the point of being impossible to play.
If someone has a good one PLEASE let us both know!
Just go to online-go.com in your preferred browser. It works great on mobile. There’s a large collection of puzzles to do. Those are user submitted, which means the quality varies, but some people have put together some pretty good sets that work as tutorials for beginners.
OGS is the most popular server outside of Asia, and has a nice social side with chat rooms and… clubs? I don’t remember their name for it, but you can join groups for finding teaching games, groups for people in your geographic region, etc.
I don’t log on often these days, but I love teaching new players. Feel free to add me as a friend there (and maybe dm me here so I know to look). My name there is nomadfarmer.
Just adding a reply here to direct you to my other comment, which summarizes some of the options.
https://kbin.social/m/comicstrips@lemmy.world/t/791813/-/comment/4808661
Yes please! This was the obstacle that kept me from trying it a couple of weeks ago. Ideally I’d love to find the equivalent to chess.com (or lichess), but for Go.
online-go.com is the closest I know of.
I used to use gobandroid off f-droid, but these days I use crazystone: I like its ai for casual play (and I usually only play casual!). It does seem to have a deep love for talking home with no explanation when it starts up though, so on Lineage I just disable its internet permission.
Online-go is good but I haven’t really gotten into playing against strangers on the internet: I feel I should take it more seriously when I’m against a real person!
Wish I had people offline to play with sometimes though.
I used to use KGS, but that was mostly on the computer, though I know they also have an Android app. That was several years ago, though. My friend who still plays does so mostly on Pandanet via Android.
Those are both for multiplayer, of course. For single player, a while back I used Gridmaster along with a build of LeelaZero, and there are various apps that offer Go problems, including one my friend likes, but I have forgotten what he told me it was. I think it might be Tsumego Pro, but I’ll have to ask him again next time we talk.
Edit: Dragon Go Server probably deserves a mention as well. That’s a site for, basically, postal games via email, and can be accessed entirely via a web interface. It’s not as popular as the sites with faster time controls, but it’s kinda nice for playing a leisurely game with a busy friend.
I use “Sente - Online Go” and really like it. It shows as early access but I haven’t found any issues with it. It connects to the OGS server so you can play against bots of varying difficulty or normal online matches.
Aha, this might be what I was looking for! Is OGS the main platform for online Go?