Why did you start playing Go?

[SoDesuNe]

Hikaru no Go, although I strangely can't remember how I came to watch Hikaru no Go.

As for the side discussion: I tried chess a couple of times but I generally quit after a few months. For me it lacks aesthetic appeal (shape!), I think.

[EdLee]

For me it lacks aesthetic appeal (shape!), I think.

Do you mean the abstract shape of the pieces (i.e. their relative coordinates),
or do you mean the actual appearance of the physical pieces?

[Unusedname]

I felt like I could get better at go without memorizing openings.

I felt like it was easier to improve at go.

Actually I think reading a Go book is what did it for me.
I never really read a chess book, though I did do a lot of chess problems.

Thickness/Thin
Moyo/Territory
Heavy/Light
Attacking/Defending
Weak/Strong

Go was broken down for me into so many different things.

Chess was just one big thing. It's easier to learn one small thing at a time.

edit: Also Hikaru

[Marcus]

It's always interesting to contrast different people's experiences. I'm going to ramble a bit, so bear with me ...

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TL;DR - I play go because I can play online easily, and I consider go, chess and bridge to all be equally satisfying pastimes.
---

I learned chess early on in life (I don't remember why I learned it) and got fairly good, for a casual player. Like in go, I don't study chess (or I do so haphazardly), so I would have games where a 1300 rated player would slaughter me, and other games where I took a pawn lead against a 2000 rated player and managed to win (this happened on the same day at the same Chess Club meeting in university). I never got officially rated, so it's hard to judge my current (probably terrible) level of chess play (and I still play fairly often).

Other than playing at some local Chess Clubs and playing 4th board on my High School chess team, I had a group of friends and we were pretty much into whatever games we could play in a semi-competitive manner. We were all reasonable chess players, but nothing special. We were fickle in our attention span, so we liked to have many different games available to play. We soon picked up bridge and backgammon as well.

One day (back in 1998), a few of us were in a book store and spotted a boxed set that contained a cardboard go board, plastic white and black stones, and a small book introducing the game. I bought it, gave the book a glance, and we brought it to our next couple games nights. Over the course of a couple months, I got to play about 15 games. Compared to my friends I had a knack for the game, so I thought I was "pretty good" (hah!). Given the length of time required to play a game, though, most of my friends quickly lost interest and we soon went back to chess and bridge (backgammon also fell off our radar).

Jump forward to 2007. I'd begun working overnight weekends and, rather than sleep during weekdays like I should (I never said I was smart), I'd begun spending time on the internet during the day while my wife was at work. During this time I discovered the online Go community, and I quickly realized just how bad I truly was at the game. Of course, the community also introduced me to KGS, and I happily wasted a bunch of time on there playing what is now thousands of games. This is also the point in time where I was introduced to Hikaru no Go, which I did enjoy.

It's interesting to note that I play pretty exclusively online. I've played thousands of games of go now, but less than 20 of those have been in person. There are local players and clubs in my city, but I don't really get the time to go to them, and I'm not really sure it's my scene. To be fair, the chess club scene is also not really my scene anymore either, though I still play chess as well. If my bridge partner were still available, I'd probably play more of that, as well (I miss bridge; I'm terrible, but it's still fun).

So, I guess the answer to "Why do you play go?" for me is because I can do it online, easily, and it satisfies my need to play a game of some sort. Not a very sexy answer, but it works for me. I also play chess online (and in person). I just love games. I wish I had the courage to try some online bridge, but I really don't want to pull a stranger down with me, and I just want to play casually. My online experiences with bridge have been less than stellar ...

Blah, if you've read my whole rant, I applaud you.

[SoDesuNe]

For me it lacks aesthetic appeal (shape!), I think.

Do you mean the abstract shape of the pieces (i.e. their relative coordinates),
or do you mean the actual appearance of the physical pieces? :)

The first, yeah (I guess ^^)

[Joaz Banbeck]

...
So why/ how did you start playing?

A business associate who I knew showed it to me. At first glance, it seemed trivial: stone surround stones, not much different than Xs blocking Os in tic tac toe, just on a larger scale.

But he was a an exceptionally inteligent person, and he assurred me that it had him continually stymied and perplexed. So I tried a game.

I'm still looking for the bottom of that rabbit hole.

[TheCatLver]

@Marcus- of course I read the whole thing,it's a fatal flaw I have ;D

@Joaz Banbeck- In the end, I guess we're all Alice in Confusing as Heck Land eh?!

[skydyr]

I know quite a few people who were chess players, tried go, and gave up chess, but no go players who tried chess and gave up go. Yes the chess playing population is bigger in the west but I think this still says something about which is a better game.

Arguably, you only see motion in one direction because anyone who might be interested in go has already been exposed to chess due to its ubiquity.

[shapenaji]

I ran out of excuses.

I was a chess player, and rather focused on cracking master. One of the guys from the blitz crowd tried to get me to come play for months.

I wasn't really interested, It would mean abandoning all the progress that I had made. Finally, I agreed to just swing by and check it out just to get him off my back. It's hard to remember the exact motivations that day.

What I can remember, were the consequences....

So began, the Massacre of the Shaolin Temple....


All night I played, high handicaps, low handicaps, beer handicaps. (And we had a diverse crowd, I felt I ought to snag even one game)

Finally, near the end of a game, (in the midst of clear violations of the Geneva convention) One small province, held out against the hordes. Nothing large, but it was forced, and it was tactical, and I had made two eyes despite my opponent's efforts to kill it.

That interested me, because it meant that my chess reading was still useful; that I wouldn't be wasting all that study.

So it got me to come back. I still was more interested in chess, but then when I started to see progress, I became addicted to it.

[skydyr]

As for when I started playing...

I think I first saw go in this book of 20 games or so with glass beads as markers we got when I was young. We didn't understand it, and didn't play it.

When I was in college, a friend I spoke to online convinced me to play, and I played on KGS for a month or two at most. A few years later, he convinced me again, and I played for another month or so, but not much in between or after.

Following that, I read about the game a bit on senseis library, but didn't really play at all until maybe 2011 or so, when I ran into people at work who played. The strongest player was about 10k, and I lost to him, but not by too much. After a couple games, I could beat him with 2 stones, a few later, we were about even, and I started going to a local go club and playing regularly at that point.

I had played chess previously, but got frustrated with the way a mistake often cost the game, and part of what drew me to go initially was the fact that that wasn't always the case. I have attention problems, as well, and felt that go's open-endedness better suited my spontaneous creativity than chess. Of course, I was never much of a chess player and don't think I ever broke 1000 or 1100 ELO.

[pitirre]

I started to play Go because I enjoy games: chess, backgammon, san juan, dvonn and so on. Back then I was an avid chessplayer... until I found Go. I was hooked immediately. But like I said, it was easy for me to accept Go because I like different games.

Maybe you can get your friend into Go by telling him/her the wonderful history of the game. All the famous matches. Find in youtube a nice match with exciting commentary, if he/she likes deep intellectual games they will find it interesting.

If your friend like to read: the master of go by kawabata.

Good luck.

[joellercoaster]

the master of go by kawabata

This was what introduced it to me. Or vice versa.

[jeromie]

I found go through my broader love of board games. I'd always liked games, but when I moved to Colorado in 2008 I found a few people who shared my interest and it quickly became one of my primary hobbies. I started spending a lot of time on boardgamegeek.com, where go is pretty highly regarded (though nowhere near the most frequently played.) I didn't know anyone who played, though, so I didn't pick up go until I found a small folding set in a local thrift store. My wife and I taught ourselves the game, and it wasn't long before go became my favorite game. We actually got a nice board for our fifth anniversary in hopes that it would be a game we could spend a lifetime playing together. (That didn't end up working out--I love studying so quickly outpaced my wife--but we still occasionally play a 9x9 game together.)

I continue playing because it is fun, great mental exercise, has a variety of ways to engage the game (playing, books, problems, etc.), and is something I can easily work on in the evening after my daughter has gone to bed. Plus it is simply the most beautiful and challenging game I have ever played.

[Fedya]

I first read about Go in an article in Games magazine back in the 1980s, but didn't have a set and wouldn't have had anybody to play against. When I was in college in the early 90s there was some Go program on one of the FTP servers, so I tried a game or two but obviously had no idea what I was doing. It was only when I heard a report on Radio Japan around 1999 about Michael Redmond being promoted to 9p that I finally decided to take up the game. Not that I had any pretensions of getting to 9p, but since I had internet access I was able to learn more about the game and find the various servers. I've been playing poorly ever since.

[TheBigH]

I happened to stumble onto Sensei's Library while looking for something completely unrelated.