Hi Everyone,

I've been playing go for a bit and am interested in joining the larger online community. I just started playing on KGS and am ranked 20 kyu after playing a few bots. If you know of a good online club for beginners, please let me know.

I look forward to talking with you and hopefully playing games in the future,

Doug

Hi Noodley.
Welcome and I hope you'll enjoy your stay. I don't know of any online clubs, but should you be interested, I would be willing to play a few teaching games. PM me if you are interested. Also, if you have any questions never hesitate to post them here on L19, the people here are really friendly folks. See you around

On KGS look for the Beginner's room and the KGS Teaching Ladder.

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KGS 4 kyu - Game Archive - Keyboard Otaku

Also, rooms->clubs->GoDiscussions.com

Howdy, and welcome!

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

Thank you for the responses. I played some 9x9 games in the Beginners room today and I've found a large problem.

How do you pull yourself away from tunnel vision when focused on one area of the board? Even in the 9x9 games I get so caught up in one side of the board that I miss my opponent surrounding my other stones. Once I even killed my self by reducing to many liberties.

Thanks again,

Doug

Experience.

On a more helpful note, it helps to constantly be examining the health of your groups. Every few moves, look at the board and think "Is this group weak? What about this group?" This also helps you know where to play your next move . As for how to properly tell how weak a group is, that comes from two things:

1) Doing tsumego
2) Experience (see, for example, Lose Your First 50 Games as Quickly as Possible)

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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.