I am really trying to get more serious about my go. The problem I am facing is a rather limited amount of time, compared to what I would like (playing and studying 24/7 would be nice). Can anyone point me to some books or posts that would be help me to find a path of study that would be time efficient? Right now it basically consists of playing when I can after work. Spending my lunch break reading articles, forum posts here, and practicing life and death on my phone, mostly using Elygo which I love btw.

Another thing I have started to do more regularly is play against Many Faces on my computer. Its not a super computer or anything but it is running a quad 3.6ghz processor with 8gb or ram and a 32gig usb for extra swap space. That should keep MF kicking my butt for quite a while.

Any guidance would be appriciated.

Thank you.

Your MFOG program also has life and death problems. Your machine is plenty for it to be able to play > 1 dan KGS, possibly close to 2 dan. Note that only the top two levels use MCTS evaluation of moves suggested by its go knowledge based AI with the lower levels using the AI for evaluation too.

To avoid learning bad habits, I suggest keeping the program playing strength a few stones stronger than you are and taking the appropriate "not quite enough" handicap. I suggest three stones as ideal (the board is still reasonably open). Do that until you get to the point where you are able to play against the MCTS based levels in a high handicap game.

Thank you for the reply. I will keep that in mind when facing my current arch rival (MFoG).

Is it too early to start learning joseki? I mainly do life and death on my coffee breaks and lunch at work. Will many of the people I play be following joseki or will them not doing it just throw me more off at this point? If so I think focusing more on shape and L&D would probably benefit me more. Then again I am not an expert at becoming strong obviously.

I wouldn't worry about getting firm with joseki yet. Maybe skim some of basics just so you have an idea of who should get what (corner vs. side, territory vs. influence, etc.) but don't get hung up on memorizing any patterns yet.

Full game play is what you really need right now, just to get an idea of what works and what doesn't. Once you get up the the low-teens, rank-wise, you can start focusing (and identifying) where your strengths are and what you need to work on.

For now, just play and have fun!

Bruce "Go is as fun as a mad cat..." Young

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Currently reading: Plutarch, Cerebus, and D&Q 25th Anniversary

Even with little free time it's easy to waste quite a lot of it (I've found, personally). "reading articles, forum posts" might or might not be productive. For me, trawling ebay has been a big Go-related waste of time and reading this forum, whilst fun has proved to not have led to much improvement (sorry L19!). Playing loads of games against real people and doing loads of problems, is probably the most efficient use of your time. As you say you have a smart phone, installing a DGS client will let you get more games in. Looking on the bright side though, not having 24 hours a day to play Go could help you avoid burnout.


edit: oh and I've found doing problems from books to be more efficient in terms of learning than on my computer or phone - a bit like playing computer Go I find electronic problems hard to take seriously (though online play against opponents who I believe to be real people seems to be okay). .. Other than http://www.goproblems.com, where I recently bought a year of pro account, I'm getting quite emotionally attached to my account rating at the moment..

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I am John. John-I-Am.

Everyone overdoes joseki. It's good to know a few, so that you have an idea of what a reasonable result should be in a corner. If in a game you play out a corner and it goes really badly for you, you can also look up the joseki afterward. With joseki, I feel it's really important to try and understand the meaning of the moves, rather than rote memorization.

I would rank all of the following above joseki study for a beginner:

1) Playing games.
2) Having someone stronger review some of your games (we can do that here !).
3) Reading Sensei's Library to get an understanding of Go principles. Honestly, if you're just looking for something to do in your down time, and your time is limited, you'll get far more bang for your buck reading Sensei's than L19.
4) Focusing on the common shapes you see in games and learning from them. For instance, you've probably learned the second line capture by now. There are thousands of shapes that reoccur in games, so actively look for them.
5) Doing go problems. This ties in with point 4.

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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.

Thank you all again for the replys. I spent all lunch reading on Sensei's Library. I'll be really making a large effort to get a little out of my comfort zone and play more online games against real people when I am at home. Just like say, football, you can't become a good Quarterback by watching games and playing madden, as much as actually playing the game. I should get better results in getting stronger by playing games and reviewing what I did right and horribly wrong.

Any suggestions of good books for beginners for problems and theory?

My advice:

1) Drop MFoG - play against real people instead. You can pretty much always find a game on one of the main servers. With bots, even when they are strong, they tend to be pretty limited with their strategies, which in the long run will also limit you. When you play humans, you will notice they play differently. The only good thing about playing bots, I found, is that they do not get 'psyched out' into automatically answering where you play as humans so often do.

2) Instead of reading articles/L19/whatever - try to go through your own games, figuring out what you did right and more importantly - what you did wrong. If you can, go over the game with your opponent, or get a stronger player to comment. You can post your games here, there is GTL, and other resources. Finding a RL club is a great motivator and you meet friendly and helpful people there.

3) Practice as much L&D and tesuji as you can - this you already do, sweet! I find doing the problems from a physical book, maybe even on a physical board with physical stones gives better results, but not everybody has the time/resources, so do whatever works best for you. You can look at some josekis, but I would not worry about it very much for now, maybe just look stuff up when you badly mess it up in your game, or something.

4) When you feel like reading something else, focus on content which adds to your skill and helps you improve - like read about a fuseki pattern on SL rather than follow a nakade discussion on L19.

5) And finally... and I say this with great reluctance... if your resources allow it, get a teacher. I would not worry about a pro teacher for now, just get somebody who can help you go over your games and who can explain the basics to you. Or better yet - just make friends and talk with them. I found this is by far the best way, and most enjoyable. There will be time for teachers later when your skill improves.

Hope this helps.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

I am actually ordering a physical set this weekend. Wife agreed to let me get an early christmas present.

http://www.ymimports.com/p-2352-bamboo- ... oPh3ho_vfI

I do like the idea of playing problems out on a physical media.

I also think I prefer book problems to electronic, though most of my practice is on my phone, note 2 so the screen isn't too small to see. I also carry around some printed game records that I go over from time to time when I have a spare moment at work/waiting for food/whatever.

I really have to say thank you all again for the strong response and encouragement from everyone. I really look forward to sharing my journey with you all.

I think an important point is to keep beeing constant on your game rather than intensive. It's better to do 15 problems a day or 10 than 100 on a weekday because you were bored, and it's better to play 1 fast game everyday (10 mins?) rather than a long 5 hours game in the weekend (at least on this level).

Another important thing is to get better at technique at your level (L&D, connection/cutting, fighting and shape) rather than learning complex openings (Micro chinese, Mini-Chinese, etc), because most of those things are learnt to mantain the control of the game, and at the start it's easier to lose control of a game because you didn't protect a important cutting point or because you overstretched a position, or because you keep playing small inefficient moves, rather because your opening was bad (this is a personal opinion anyway, but it's true that L&D makes you a better player faster than learning root-strategy).

Another important thing is to push yourself, if you are 20kyu, play with 15 kyu, if you are 12 kyu, play with 9kyu, and don't get too attached to winning or losing at this point, if you play with stronger players see it as a gift for learning things, there are so many differences between playing with a guy of your own strenght and another guy that is better. Maybe try joining an asian server, there are a lot of dan players and you will quickly learn from just seeing how they play calm and normal moves.

Anyway, have fun, know when you get tilt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt_%28poker%29) and play when you are comfortable.

PD: Try this to get problems: http://gochild2009.appspot.com/

http://tsumego.tasuki.org/

PD2: When you do problems, you should focus on actually reading the variations, try seeing them with your mind and eyes, visualizing the stones, rather than finding a point and clicking it. Most people get better really fast with L&D because they get better at reading, so when you are doing problems you are actually practicing reading (like when you play) but in a simple way. Also L&D trains your intuition skills with the shape of some problems, after some time you will start seeing the solution straight away, because there are weaker points that normally get repeated and repeated in the problems, but you should always read the variation to keep your reading skills intact

PD3: Also some study stuff (for example, the book Reducing Territorial Frameworks or Vital points and Skillful Finesse for Sabaki) gets better and understandable when you improve your reading skills, because you can work for yourself some things and actually see what the autor means when they say that something is better than another thing (for example when they say that a group will die or that something is in danger).