How do you feel about correspondence games? Do you think it's beneficial to have numerous correspondence games going on at once? I recently started a new job and made an OGS account specifically for playing correspondence games at work on, but I don't have much experience with that time setting. As a relatively new player, do you think this could hurt my growth?

In general you should probably do whatever keeps you most excited about playing and learning, so if that's correspondence games, go for it.

I think that there is a little danger to playing correspondence games at the DDK level (maybe SDK too!) in that you will probably find yourself spending a long time thinking about playing terrible moves (just because you don't know any better yet), which could make it harder to unlearn bad habits. So I would recommend having some of your games analyzed by stronger players (here or on gokibitz.com) to make sure you aren't reinforcing those bad habits.

I started playing correspondence go on the Dragon Go Server 2 years ago when I was around KGS 10 kyu. I found it fun to keep around 4 games going at any given time and went from DGS 15 kyu to DGS 6 kyu (probably very underranked when I started). I don't think correspondence games can really hurt your growth especially if it's not your only way to play. The only problem I have with the format is that games can take anywhere from a month and a half to six months to complete. This means there's not much of a feedback loop for consistent improvement. Now that I'm studying more intensely and playing many more live games I've found that I don't enjoy correspondence games as much anymore because of this extremely long feedback cycle.

Still I've had a lot of fun with the format and believe I learned a lot from it!

I play most of my games on the Dragon Go Server because I rarely get the time to play a full game on KGS. I can play a few moves when I wake up, when walking the dog, eating breakfast, at work, when I get home... basically I am constantly playing Go, but can still tend to other life matters at the same time. I sometimes have up to 20 games on the go at any one time. I use a mobile app, anDGS, on my phone.

What is very handy is I can download the game which allows me to play through variations, so I have learned various things without having to actually make the mistake in a real game. Other times I am sure I have played through every possible variation only to find my opponent makes a completely stunning move that never occurred to me. I learn a lot when that happens.

The downside of course is this can become quite a crutch. When I do play a live game, I make all sorts of really dumb mistakes that I wouldn't on DGS. My ability to read is definitely not as good as it should be. I am trying to rectify this by spending more time with problem books as well as resist the urge to just jump straight to the sgf editor every time..

So no, I don't think it could hurt your growth at all. Just try to balance it out with problem books and the odd live game and you should do fine.

I have primarily played correspondence games since my daughter was born, almost seven years ago. I've been slowly but steadily improving during that time.

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Occupy Babel!

I think the term correspondence games is now obsolete and should be replaced by turn-bases games. I played correspondence games thirty years ago. By that, I meant that I corresponded with people across the world and played a move each time a letter was sent. It was usually about three weeks between playing my moves when my opponent was in Japan. I have one person I play all the time on DGS these days with whom I played correspondence go way back when. We get through our games now in about a month instead of three years.

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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).

I started out by playing 'longer games' in person at my go club. Online I'd basically only play blitz or near-blitz since its hard to find time at home to sit at a game so long uninterrupted. So recently I've decided to stop playing real time games online and treat my club games as the 'fast games'. I think this will help long-term, but like mongus said, the downside is all that time can let the sgf tool become a crutch. I'm already seeing the draw there, so my next few games I'm going to try to either a) read out the variations in my head, or if I must b) play the sequences on a real board so at least I get the muscle memory (so to speak) of playing the moves.

Also since most of you folks seem to play on DGS, you may be interested in my open source desktop client: https://github.com/blamarche/dragon-go- ... t/releases

But then pedants would say normal/real-time games also have turns .

As for the original question, I think correspondence/turn-based/move-a-day games are of dubious value (for improvement) for weaker than ~20 kyus, as the try-something to see-how-well-it-does feedback loop essential for learning is too long, so it's better to play more shorter games. Also the relying on offline play instead of reading can stunt your reading ability. I think it even did for me as I went from OGS 1 dan to 8 dan: although my understanding, judgement, joseki knowledge, experience of shapes etc developed my reading didn't get much stronger, though at least it probably didn't get weaker, and could make me lazy to read. Because of playing on OGS for many years, and not doing tsumego, my reading is probably the weakest part of my game compared to other people of my overall strength (and also mental strength under pressure, another skill you don't develop from correspondence games). Then again, if your schedule means you can't find an hour or whatever to play a game in a single sitting then correspondence games are better than nothing, and fun too.

I totally agree with you. But it is a term which is widely used and does seem more appropriate that correspondence.

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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).

I have been playing go for about three years now, and have only played correspondence. I don't think it's been harmful exactly, but my improvement has certainly been slow in real terms! However, it has allowed me to play with extreme convenience, and a total lack of commitment



This. A thousand times this.

I say this a lot, but: simply playing more games is what I need to do now. If I'm going to take Go seriously at all, and I really would like to, then it's time to figure out how to fit real-time games into my life.

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Confucius in the Analects says "even playing go is better than eating chips in front of tv all day." -- kivi

I actually found OGS took too much commitment and that's one reason I stopped playing there (maybe I took my games more seriously than most, plus let my time get low in difficult positions). I would sometimes be out in the evening and think "I've got to get back before blah blah time or I lose on OGS" (this was before I had a smartphone, my dumb phone with 1 inch screen did have internet but was fiddly and expensive so I only used it as a last resort). And when I crashed my bike and went to the hospital I probably worried more about the OGS games I lost on time than getting my eyebrow glued back together . The need to spend an hour a day (to keep playing at the standard I wished defending titles/ladders) was too much once I was no longer single.