Go / Wéiqí / Baduk is like the ocean, simple to understand near the shore, but unknowable and somewhat scary in it’s greatest depths.
Games on a 9x9 board are faster and may help during early learning.
Tsumego are small contained Go puzzles, where there is one ideal solution to be found. (Gobandroid or similar)
There is a massive amount of knowledge at this website:
https://senseis.xmp.net/?StartingPoints
(All available under the Open Content Licence)
It is a humbling game. I know nothing about Go.
I’m here with my GO board game wondering why everyone has a block of wood and pebbles…
Newbies are often afraid or insulted to use “handicap” pieces, but the few free pieces given to a lower-rank player are actually quite effective at adjusting the balance with unevenly ranked players. It’s not a huge advantage and doesn’t fundamentally change the play of the game.
Using different sizes of board is also neat. I’m very fond of a short game using only a 9x9 board. Plays a lot faster, but trades strategy for a more tactical game.
Newbies are often afraid or insulted to use “handicap” pieces
I made this mistake! I started learning Go years and years ago, and it turned out the company where I was working at that time had a former 7-dan amateur player. When he found out I was learning he offered to play me, which I eagerly accepted. I didn’t know this at the time, but 7-dan amatuer is the highest Go ranking one can achieve in Japan without playing professionally (there are separate 1-dan through 9-dan ranks for pros). For our first game, he offered to give me the full 9-stone handicap since I was just starting out. I thought that sounded excessive and suggested a 6-stone handicap instead, so that’s what we did. He fucking destroyed me that game. It was not even remotely close. For the rematch, I humbly accepted the full 9-stone handicap.
Well, he still won that second game but the outcome wasn’t as lopsided. It definitely made the game more interesting for both of us.
I personally don’t like the experience of playing with more than 3-4 handicap stones. For the weaker player, every move it’s like “What is my opponent up to now? I am still ahead, I should just play safe.” and for the stronger player it’s like “How can I force my opponent to make mistakes?”. These thoughts are sometimes part of an even game but not as frequently.
I think it’s neat that it was supposedly the hardest board game to get AI to understand and play effectively.
It wasn’t until 2015 that the top Go player lost to an Ai while chess lost in 1997. It’s wild how big that gap is when you think about how much tech had to improve to make it possible.
And didn’t people still find holes in the Go AI’s algorithm and proceed to dunk on it afterward?
This is actually more impressive about AI. People used to think Go AI wouldn’t be able to beat a human player until like 2050. I certainly thought that when I learned it in like 2010. Back then the strongest AI was like 1 Dan (amateur) at most. (9 Dan is the highest rank and professional 9 Dan which you need to play professional games to get to are much stronger than an amateur 9 Dan which is like 9 Dan from an online website. Also the games rankings go from 30 kyu which is the lowest rank to 1 kyu which is the highest “amateur ranking”. After 1 kyu is the Dan ranks ranging from 1 to 9)
Great game, much like chess I have no one in real life to play it with and I lose interest quickly in playing random internet strangers, so it’s been quite awhile since I’ve touched it.
I think a thing that made a huge impact for me was finding a program full of life and death puzzles. It really helped to drill in what a “dead group” looks like, and helped me judge when to abandon a part of the board or continue fighting for control there. Unfortunately that was 15 years ago and I no longer remember the name of that program.
Otherwise I always found the idea behind influence on the board to be very powerful, if difficult to define. I always noticed that good players tend to start by putting pieces all around the board, generally hovering on the third or fourth line away from the edge. Even if they wont fight for those spots later, just that small presence is enough to disrupt how their opponent will play and gives an edge in defending or attacking that area later. I’m a novice player who hasn’t played in a decade so maybe its not great advice, but spread out early! I think it really helps. It makes it a lot easier to claim territory and also just push into your opponents, and hopefully they eat up a lot of space trying to defend that.