I was doing some spring cleaning, and pulled some old backup drives off the shelf and found some cool old stuff. Among the cool old stuff was some of my very earliest game records from when I was only playing GnuGo and hadn't gotten on to NNGS yet.

I believe this is the first game I actually saved a record of for further analysis. I didn't understand why GnuGo just kept passing, I thought it might have given up (hence the filename). It's a reminder of how mystifying the game is to beginners. As confused as I go makes me now, it's good to know that I could actually be MORE confused.



Anyone else have any funny old game records to share?

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KGS 4 kyu - Game Archive - Keyboard Otaku

This is my very first game I believe, dated 14 Dec 2006. The game is so horrible (I'm white).

My first ever 19x19 games:







And my first ever ever games:

So one lazy evening on September 3rd 2004, after watching the final episode of HnG I was pumped to play some Go. After some quick googling for places to play Go online, I bumped into KGS. I registered an account and, after quickly reviewing what I learned through Umezawa Yukari's Go Go Igo series at the end of the Hng episodes, decided to play a few games and give it a whirl.

Now the only Go experience I had prior to my first experience on a Go server was watching the Go Go Igo mini-tutorials; I hadn't gone through the very helpful playgo.to tutorial and certainly never played against a human being before. As a result, I also didn't know what the "d" and the "k" appended after a user's number meant and so I just challenged people randomly.

The game you see below is the 3rd game of Go I have ever played. I was Black. Note White's rank.

Araban, I think yours takes the cake, the comments from the observers are top notch.

Unless you can get old old game records from yahoo games, this is my first recorded game:



We were both beginners and had played a few games on yahoo before finding the playgo tutorial (which I had completed) and KGS.

I still remember my first ever game on yahoo: we didn't know what eyes were, so although my opponent captured all of my stones, I then captured his whole board group. He gave up.
Wish I could find out my game records (or even how many games and when I played) there.

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a1h1 [1d]: You just need to curse the gods and defend.
Good Go = Shape.
Associação Portuguesa de Go

This thread got me curious, so I browsed the KGS archives a bit.

This was my first KGS game:

Man, was this guy strong, beating me at 9H like it was nothing. I was really lucky to get a review from a player that strong

I may have played a few IGS games before that, and also a few offline games against GnuGo, so I can't really say this is my first game. But I'm sure its within the first 20 or so

(Oh, and a few hundred igowin games, but those don't really count, do they?)

I found this thread amusing for the simple reason the everyone's oldest game record seem to be sgf files. My oldest game records go back to 1974 and, needless to say, are paper records which I still have. When I got to 4k I decided to record every game I played until I reached shodan. That was about 50 games.

I had not looked at them for years until I played over a few of them about 5 years ago. It surprised me how many of the games looked familiar. It did not surprised me how many bad moves I played back then.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

My first 19x19 game on KGS, dated Feb 24th 2009. I was black and it was an automatch 5-stone handicap game.
I will spare you from having to watch such painful play and just show you the position after move 90 – isn't it beautiful?

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bc Move 90
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . X . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . X O O O X . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . X X . O X . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . X . . . . . O O X . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . O X . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . X O O O O X . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . X X X . X X X X O X . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . O O X O O X X O O O X X . . . . . . |
$$ | . . O O O O O O O X O O . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . O X O X O . O X . O . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . O X X X X O O X . O . . . . . . . |
$$ | . X X . X O O O X . X O . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . X X O X . . X . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . X . O O . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . X . . . X . , . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

And here a position from my first 9x9 (about 1 hour before my first 19x19). I was black again!
I played well ... or did I?

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc Move 53
$$ --------------------
$$ | O . . O O X . . . |
$$ | . . O O X X 2 . . |
$$ | O O O X O X O 1 . |
$$ | X O X X O O X X X |
$$ | X X X X O X O O X |
$$ | . . X O O X O . O |
$$ | . . X O . X O O . |
$$ | . . . X X X X O . |
$$ | . . . . . X O O . |
$$ --------------------[/go]

here is my oldest game.
before this I had only tried to do some tsumego problems.
and had a friend of mine explain the rules to me.
I have to admit that i had watched him play a few times.

(I'm black)

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Laurens
Go school: freegame's Teaching School
Author of: The Next Move a book for 15-3kyu players.

This is a cool thread for the reason it's posted, but one other thing also struck me: it's really weird to see things like 'laurens 30k' and 'topazg17k'. It immediately made me picture the opposite, with things like 'loons 5d', 'pogo 2d', and... 'Chew 4k'

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Someday I want to be strong enough to earn KGS[-].

My first few games were offline against another beginner, and I think I played a couple of games on Yahoo before finding KGS, but this is the oldest game I could find:

Awesome idea !

My very first games were 9x9 games against a colleague of mine, who'd shown me how to play.

Being such a great 9x9 player (ahem), I decided I was ready for my very first 19x19 game. Have fun.



I'm especially fond of some of the comments.

niouth: if it is your first game that s really nice
SolarBear [?]: Thank you !
niouth: only 1-2 misstakes
niouth: but not big ones
SolarBear [?]: ok

Damn right.

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Heretix [24k]: Anyone care to give a little bit of commentary, this game is confusing...
mattn [1d]: commentary: "oh my god"
tartrate vs. redrose game

My first game.

Here's my first 19x19 game against a human (on NNGS), I guess I didn't save my very first 19x19 game, which was against GnuGo.

I still have a distinct memory of cobbling life together for that group in the lower left.



I owe a great deal of thanks to aburry, evand, zahlman and shanghai for playing so many games with me on NNGS back in the day with their god-like ranks of 11 kyu and 7 kyu!

I notice many beginner games have a shape like this:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Beginner's nosesuji
$$ | . O O X . . . .
$$ | . O X X . . . .
$$ | . O X . . . . .
$$ | . X O O O 1 . .
$$ | . O X . . . . .
$$ | . O X . . . . .[/go]

Black hopes to stop a freight train plowing into their "territory" by jumping out in front of it. It's a move you never see from a player stronger than 15 kyu, even if they're trying to play badly on purpose.

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KGS 4 kyu - Game Archive - Keyboard Otaku

I was actually thinking that this looks a lot like TheCaptain's games, if white were to have a few stones on the right side of the board.

And Sol, I only wish you had known about the time so that we could see more of that game

Anyway, here's my first game against a human online. Before this, I had played a bunch of games against an Atari Go bot, a bunch of games with my father, and a bunch of games with GNUGo, so I had a little bit of experience under my belt. You can see how well that paid off here . I won by resign, for some reason.

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We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.

I can't post my first games since they are not really worse than nowadays'

My first game...





Honestly now, there is no way I'll ever be THAT good. Bonus points to whoever guesses the game.

Ok, now here is one of my earliest games, and the very first that I won. I haven't improved much.



That's more like it. That's a game that *I* played.

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My plan to become an SDK is here.

So, my earliest games were against a number of friends in high school when we picked up the game and taught ourselves to play ... I was "really good" by the end of it.

We played maybe 25 games each over the course of 3 years or so, against one another, then stopped playing (except when I found someone to play ... happened VERY rarely). 5 years later, I found KGS. Here's first 19x19 game record there that I can find. Note that my first game was against a true beginner. I offered to play him anytime and help him learn.



Felt pretty good about that, but was quickly shown just how "good" I really was.

H9 against 6k


Even Game against 18k ... loss


Of course, I also quickly found my first mentor (Warfreak2) ... I love teaching games on KGS, here's the first one I ever got:

This was my first KGS game against a human. That human happened to be POGO! It's nice to see how far I've gotten since November.

OK, this made me curious.

I played a lot of games against Igowin (like > 500, I got so I played it even) before playing anything else, so I was probably 20k or so by the time I tried my first online game.

I'm white.



I think my poor opponent had never played at all before. Hilariously, this game is mis-scored, as neither of us knew how to use KGS, or apparently how to make eyes...

I can't remember if this was before or after I first went to the club (which I now run) where a 1d gave me 5 stones on a 13x13. I figured I was decent and didn't see how he could possibly win, since I could play even with Igowin at that point, but he totally crushed me with a really nice tesuji (which in reality was quite mundane, no doubt, but I sure didn't see it coming). That's when I was totally hooked.

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That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
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My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com