Ask Go players about Go (come play Go with us)

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xopods: Oct 26, 2010

Prodigious posted:

Generally speaking, connecting at c7 is very rarely correct. Either b6 or e7 instead is usually better.

Yes, Prodigious has this right. I was just looking at things from a shape perspective, where it mostly looks okay... but yeah. B7 (by which I mean Black 7, i.e. C7) is the wrong direction if we don't have help around. All examples of that move in pro play have either Black support nearby so as not to have to play B11, or a stone nearby on the bottom side to undermine W16.

As it stands, the position looks tidy and joseki-ish, but that White corner is too large for it to be fair, so B should only choose B7 if he has local support.

# ? Apr 25, 2014 03:14

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# ? May 12, 2024 18:19

sephiRoth IRA: Jun 13, 2007; "Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality."

-Carl Sagan

So I'm getting a little discouraged. I know you're supposed to lose 100 games, but I feel like after 10-20 I'm not learning anything. I'm studying webpages about go and things like that but the concepts seem to just fly out of my head when I start playing. Is this just perseverance at this point, or do some people (like me) just not get it?

# ? Apr 25, 2014 20:32

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

areyoucontagious posted:

So I'm getting a little discouraged. I know you're supposed to lose 100 games, but I feel like after 10-20 I'm not learning anything. I'm studying webpages about go and things like that but the concepts seem to just fly out of my head when I start playing. Is this just perseverance at this point, or do some people (like me) just not get it?

You need to alternate studying and playing for fastest results. As in if you study too much you can't understand it, but if you play to much you keep making the same mistakes.

Just ask a stronger player for a review/teaching game. He will tell you what to focus on next.

# ? Apr 25, 2014 20:40

AdorableStar: Jul 13, 2013

areyoucontagious posted:

So I'm getting a little discouraged. I know you're supposed to lose 100 games, but I feel like after 10-20 I'm not learning anything. I'm studying webpages about go and things like that but the concepts seem to just fly out of my head when I start playing. Is this just perseverance at this point, or do some people (like me) just not get it?

I am kgs 10k. Counting ranked games only, I have only lost 49 games total, so the learning hasn't even begun to start. Counting everything that's not bot games/silly/9x9 or 13x13, I've probably only done 125-175 games by this point. That isn't even that much. Play more 19x19 with ITGO goons, get reviews, then play ranked and do the same.

Off-topic: I started on Cho Chikun's intermediate after I got stuck on problem #320 on his elementary. I solved the first 8 and I really like how the first few deal with falsifying eyes.

# ? Apr 25, 2014 20:57

WuChou: Aug 28, 2002; Cosmic.

areyoucontagious posted:

So I'm getting a little discouraged. I know you're supposed to lose 100 games, but I feel like after 10-20 I'm not learning anything. I'm studying webpages about go and things like that but the concepts seem to just fly out of my head when I start playing. Is this just perseverance at this point, or do some people (like me) just not get it?

There's a definite element of perseverance at the total beginner stage. It's hard to remember strategy and tesuji and whatever else when you are still trying to get the basic concepts of the game to congeal in your head and can't read ahead very well (or at all.) Playing a lot of games and asking questions about whatever's tripping you up will get you over the initial hump. Are you on KGS and in ITGO? If not, highly recommend doing so. Playing a ton of quicker games as a beginner is easily the best way out of the early funk and stepping towards really understanding what the hell is happening on the board.

# ? Apr 25, 2014 22:21

Xom: Sep 2, 2008; 文化英雄; Fan of Britches

EDIT: Revised, see my next post.

Xom fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Apr 26, 2014

# ? Apr 25, 2014 22:44

AdorableStar: Jul 13, 2013

I can't solve the 50k problem because it won't allow me to capture the stone in a ladder for some reason. :iiam:

# ? Apr 25, 2014 23:24

sephiRoth IRA: Jun 13, 2007; "Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality."

-Carl Sagan

Thanks for the replies. I play on http://online-go.com/, which I guess used to be nova.gs? I've been on KGS before, but that was a long time ago and a false start. I've only recently been taking the game more seriously. Also what is ITGO? Is that the ITGO league thing? I can't really figure out what to do with that. :/

# ? Apr 25, 2014 23:40

VictualSquid: Feb 29, 2012; Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

areyoucontagious posted:

Thanks for the replies. I play on http://online-go.com/, which I guess used to be nova.gs? I've been on KGS before, but that was a long time ago and a false start. I've only recently been taking the game more seriously. Also what is ITGO? Is that the ITGO league thing? I can't really figure out what to do with that. :/

ITGO is our private chatroom on KGS. Most of us hang out there and chat about go.

# ? Apr 25, 2014 23:56

Xom: Sep 2, 2008; 文化英雄; Fan of Britches

Xom's guide for newbies

Start with The Interactive Way To Go.

After IWTG, check and make sure you're absolutely clear on the following basic game mechanics: eyes, false eyes, and Japanese scoring (i.e. you understand how playing inside your territory costs you point(s) and how removing already-dead stone(s) by filling their liberties doesn't otherwise affect the score except that playing inside your territory costs you point(s)).

Then, two brief items:

Vital life-and-death points and killing shapes

Hane, Cut, Placement is a proverb about where to play to kill. "First, consider the hane. Next, consider the cut. Then, consider the placement."
Beginner's Mistakes (mostly regarding the edge of the board)
EDIT: see also Preventing escape on the first line

Next, I would call the areas of focus Life & Death, Basic Instinct, and Strategy:

Life & Death

Do tsumego to train reading. Five tsumego once a day is more effective than a hundred once a week.

In addition to being a heuristic while reading, Hane, Cut, Placement also describes how to play when you can't read it all out. The orthodox way to kill is to reduce the eyespace until there is a single vital point. Hane is most common way to reduce eyespace. If there are defects in the defender's boundary stones, cutting may result in a fatal reduction. As for placement, even when there's more than one potential point for partition, a placement at one such point may simultaneously threaten to occupy the remaining potential partition point and also threaten to connect out (or falsify a potential eye by crosscutting, or w/e).
Some basic instincts; some basic two-color shapes
EDIT: see also no-no shapes, small gaps

Unfortunately I've found no such article on one-color shapes that's short enough to recommend, so I'll make a few remarks here. I'll restrict myself to three-stone shapes.

This is the empty triangle, which is inefficient and usually bad:

If a white stone is on the marked point, it's not the empty triangle and the proverb doesn't apply. If a black stone is on the marked point, it's even more inefficient and bad. See the linked page for more about the empty triangle.

Here are some standard, efficient shapes to pay attention to and experiment with:

*Not a widespread term.
**Not a widespread term; unrelated to the tripod group!
***Not sure if widespread term.
Strategy: Shygost's Three Questions

Xom fucked around with this message at 11:02 on Feb 27, 2023

# ? Apr 26, 2014 02:16

Xom: Sep 2, 2008; 文化英雄; Fan of Britches

Another goon wrote the following advice for the wave of newbies we got from the Summer 2011 recruit thread:

Under 15 posted:

How to learn go without quitting like a bitch

If you want to learn to play go and get strong as heck and beat the crap out of everyone, you don't have to be a genius or anything, you just have to be persistent. If you aren't persistent, you probably aren't going to be very good at this game. I have seen a lot of people come in with big aspirations, and while most of them get lost along the way, here are some things that the successful ones did:

1. They got a rank...

If you don't have a rank on KGS people are going to treat you like a piece of poo poo. You'll only play guests and other people with [?] ranks, so it's going to be like you're in the kowloon walled city or some poo poo. People with ranks, however low they are, are matched with other people who are trying to get ranked correctly too. The intention makes all the difference in the world in terms of game quality.

2. ...and played ranked, 19x19 games.

There's nothing special in particular about playing ranked games. If you really want to get strong at go, you'll do a lot of problems and 9x9 before even thinking about the big board, but problems are boring and it's hard to find 9x9 games at all, let alone quality ones. Anyone who did any good at this game probably played a lot of ranked games early on. Go has a pretty brutal learning curve, especially in the first month, and it's important to play ranked so you can at least see your progress.

3. They played a lot of those, ranked, 19x19 games.

Some people get all terrified of ranked games and would rather play free. Those people all quit before they get to 12k. They ALL quit. Make every game you play (when possible) a ranked game and you'll have a good, accurate rank. If you wind up only playing three or so ranked games a month, your rank will wind up inflated and you'll lose, making you an even huger pussy. Then you'll only play two next month, and pretty shortly you'll just quit. Maybe after six or nine months you will come back, but you will never get past 12k or so. Play like five ranked games a week at least and you will make good progress without backsliding.

4. They got a lot of reviews.

Whenever you lose a game try to convince someone to review it. Even if they are only a few stones stronger, they usually have some kind of insight to provide. You shouldn't hold out for someone good to review, because even if someone tells you something that is objectively wrong in a review, it's not worth worrying about because those mistakes are indicitive of their rank and you should be so lucky to gently caress up like that as their junior. If you won, a review is probably less valuable, but you should have plenty of losses to show.

If you do those four things and keep it up for about 3-5 months you will make it to at least 9k. Once you're there, you can decide on your own how you want to improve, but for the 20k-10k stretch this is the most realistic way of making it across in one piece.

Xom fucked around with this message at 15:12 on Jan 13, 2018

# ? Apr 26, 2014 02:43

goodness: Jan 3, 2012; When the light turns green, you go. When the light turns red, you stop. But what do you do when the light turns blue with orange and lavender spots?

Xom posted:

Shygost's Three Questions

None of your links work for me.

# ? Apr 26, 2014 03:05

AdorableStar: Jul 13, 2013

goodness posted:

None of your links work for me.

All of them work for me. :shrug:

# ? Apr 26, 2014 03:11

sephiRoth IRA: Jun 13, 2007; "Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality."

-Carl Sagan

Sorry guys, java booted me and I can't log back in

# ? Apr 26, 2014 03:14

goodness: Jan 3, 2012; When the light turns green, you go. When the light turns red, you stop. But what do you do when the light turns blue with orange and lavender spots?

Kheldragar posted:

All of them work for me.

Maybe it's a chrome thing,

or do I have to have an account on that site?

Idk, none of the sensei xmp links work for me :/

# ? Apr 26, 2014 03:15

Xom: Sep 2, 2008; 文化英雄; Fan of Britches

Are you able to visit http://senseis.xmp.net manually?

# ? Apr 26, 2014 03:55

goodness: Jan 3, 2012; When the light turns green, you go. When the light turns red, you stop. But what do you do when the light turns blue with orange and lavender spots?

Xom posted:

Are you able to visit http://senseis.xmp.net manually?

Negative, on either Chrome or Firefox.

# ? Apr 26, 2014 04:25

Xom: Sep 2, 2008; 文化英雄; Fan of Britches

http://gtl.xmp.net ?

# ? Apr 26, 2014 04:33

goodness: Jan 3, 2012; When the light turns green, you go. When the light turns red, you stop. But what do you do when the light turns blue with orange and lavender spots?

Xom posted:

http://gtl.xmp.net ?

Yes that works.

Well now all the links work after going to that.

# ? Apr 26, 2014 04:34

o.m. 94: Nov 23, 2009

The latest Jubango was an interesting game. Big areas; probably the game in which I've been able to predict the most moves ahead of time so far, whatever that means.

# ? Apr 27, 2014 08:57

Svartvit: Jun 18, 2005; al-Qabila samaa Bahth

Sorry for casually ignoring everyone's games on OGS byt I'm in the middle of writing my bachelor's thesis and I'm just casually ignoring everything in my life atm.

# ? Apr 27, 2014 21:41

Xom: Sep 2, 2008; 文化英雄; Fan of Britches

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: Win by a half-point after using the technique from combinatorial-game-theory of getting the last two-point* double-gote move after removing all possible opponent's one-point reverse-sente moves.

^{*i.e. two-point difference i.e. one-point miai value}

# ? Apr 28, 2014 01:55

Symbolic Butt: Mar 22, 2009; (_!_); Buglord

That's pretty cool.

# ? Apr 28, 2014 01:57

derp: Jan 21, 2010; when i get up all i want to do is go to bed again; Lipstick Apathy

areyoucontagious posted:

Thanks for the replies. I play on http://online-go.com/, which I guess used to be nova.gs? I've been on KGS before, but that was a long time ago and a false start. I've only recently been taking the game more seriously. Also what is ITGO? Is that the ITGO league thing? I can't really figure out what to do with that. :/

hi im on this site as well as a few others here, join the SA group! challenge me to a correspondence game! i'm low rank!

# ? Apr 28, 2014 06:15

AdorableStar: Jul 13, 2013

Xom posted:

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: Win by a half-point after using the technique from combinatorial-game-theory of getting the last two-point* double-gote move after removing all possible opponent's one-point reverse-sente moves.

^{*i.e. two-point difference i.e. one-point miai value}

So essentially you took gote a bunch of times and still won by 0.5.

# ? Apr 28, 2014 11:26

sephiRoth IRA: Jun 13, 2007; "Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality."

-Carl Sagan

uranus posted:

hi im on this site as well as a few others here, join the SA group! challenge me to a correspondence game! i'm low rank!

Bam, request sent. I actually really like online-go compared to KGS, if only because I like the interface better.

# ? Apr 28, 2014 14:32

Xom: Sep 2, 2008; 文化英雄; Fan of Britches

Kheldragar posted:

So essentially you took gote a bunch of times and still won by 0.5.

Removing opponent's rev. sente means playing my sente.

# ? Apr 28, 2014 15:54

AdorableStar: Jul 13, 2013

Xom posted:

Removing opponent's rev. sente means playing my sente.

Didn't you tell me reverse sente was a sente move for your opponet but a gote move for you?

# ? Apr 28, 2014 22:48

WuChou: Aug 28, 2002; Cosmic.

Kheldragar posted:

Didn't you tell me reverse sente was a sente move for your opponet but a gote move for you?

Yes, keep in mind reverse sente is only reverse sente for one player's perspective, it's just sente for the other (Xom, in this case). So an opponent's reverse sente is your sente and their gote.

# ? Apr 28, 2014 23:37

distortion park: Apr 25, 2011

Is it just me or is the ranking on online-go.com a bit off? My games seem a lot more one sided than on kgs.

# ? Apr 29, 2014 14:51

xopods: Oct 26, 2010

WuChou posted:

Yes, keep in mind reverse sente is only reverse sente for one player's perspective, it's just sente for the other (Xom, in this case). So an opponent's reverse sente is your sente and their gote.

Yeah, Xom phrased it a little weirdly ("removing opponent's reverse-sente," rather than simply "playing my sente"), but the principle he seems to be describing is that the right time to play your (single-)sente moves is just before the board cools enough for your opponent to play them in reverse sente. So, play all those one-point sente moves just before taking the last two-point gote, otherwise your opponent will play a one-point reverse sente instead of a one-point double gote and you may end up losing a point due to that in the final scoring.

# ? Apr 29, 2014 17:01

o.m. 94: Nov 23, 2009

pointsofdata posted:

Is it just me or is the ranking on online-go.com a bit off? My games seem a lot more one sided than on kgs.

I'm 4k on KGS and just settled at 8k on OGS, so yeah, if you set yourself as your expected rank on other servers you may settle a number of stones away from what you were expecting.

# ? Apr 29, 2014 17:56

xopods: Oct 26, 2010

Different personality types/styles work better or worse for realtime or turn-based play too. So far it seems like my 4d rank on OGS is justified, but I'd probably most correctly be rated 2d on KGS, so I'm the opposite of oiseaux in that regard.

# ? Apr 29, 2014 19:38

Uncle Jam: Aug 20, 2005; Perfect

Some people consider consultation with strong players during a corr game to be OK, I know a lot of people who do this regularly. It might make the ranks a bit wonky especially with a small base. (Not accusing xopods or anything)

# ? Apr 29, 2014 23:55

xopods: Oct 26, 2010

Uncle Jam posted:

Some people consider consultation with strong players during a corr game to be OK, I know a lot of people who do this regularly. It might make the ranks a bit wonky especially with a small base. (Not accusing xopods or anything)

"Ghosting" would become pretty hard to do in the higher ranks anyway. The only two players stronger than me who I'm on a first name basis with are James Sedgwick and Phil Waldron, and I haven't seen either of them since I stopped attending live tournaments. I imagine either of them would think it pretty weird if I contacted them to ask for help in an OGS/DGS game.

I think there's a lot of ethical leeway in turn-based play though... which is kind of what I like about it. Ultimately, the quality of the game is the important thing, and the nice thing about turn-based is that the trailing player can put in as much effort and research as they like to find a move to help catch up, while the leading player will likely slack off a bit. If I feel like I'm comfortably ahead, I play almost like I would on KGS. If I'm behind or the game is close, then I have no problem using publicly-available materials to help research my move.

This means games tend to be a lot closer. I like that OGS actually has the analysis tool built into the interface, as opposed to something like DGS where I imagine everyone at the higher ranks is occasionally downloading the SGF to play out a few variations before deciding on a critical move, but wondering when they do so whether their opponent is doing likewise or would consider it cheating. The fact that you can turn it off is nice, too. Then, even though you could still play out variations in another piece of Go software if you wanted to, it's clear that that would be cheating, and so you don't do it. Either way, better than just leaving it in a grey area.

# ? May 1, 2014 00:12

derp: Jan 21, 2010; when i get up all i want to do is go to bed again; Lipstick Apathy

losing because of misclicks is the worse ughghg

# ? May 2, 2014 08:34

o.m. 94: Nov 23, 2009

uranus posted:

losing because of misclicks is the worse ughghg

Just think about it as your opponents also make misclicks and gently caress up when they should have won so it evens out in the long run.

# ? May 2, 2014 10:59

sensual donkey punching: Mar 13, 2004; =); Nap Ghost

o.m. 94 posted:

Just think about it as your opponents also make misclicks and gently caress up when they should have won so it evens out in the long run.

This goes for really dumb mistakes too, lot of improvement in go is just widening the definition of what a dumb mistake is and then trying your best not to make em anymore

# ? May 2, 2014 13:25

derp: Jan 21, 2010; when i get up all i want to do is go to bed again; Lipstick Apathy

hey khel i saw you on batt's latest video. nice job getting the answer right

# ? May 3, 2014 02:28

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# ? May 12, 2024 18:19

AdorableStar: Jul 13, 2013

uranus posted:

hey khel i saw you on batt's latest video. nice job getting the answer right

I just guessed at the answer, you can read in the comments what I originally thought, but then I remembered some weird second line approach/probe/invasion/whatever to a 4-4 stone and said the correct answer. :shrug:

It does get me to think about the fact that the invasion left miai for the 3-3 point and sliding out to the side.

# ? May 3, 2014 16:28

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