Life In 19x19

As far as playing Cosumi Level 1 goes, first, take two stones for now; second, never resign.

Nikki wrote:Dear Lifein19x19 Forum,

I'm a former chess player, and I want to learn Go well, and I want to get good fast.

Many said many good things, and gave good advice.

As for me, I am just curious. Why do you want to get good, and why fast?
And what do you mean by 'good'? Like world-class good? Like top-in-the-west good? Like club-level good? Like what?
To some, 15k is 'good'. To others, even 5p is 'not so good'. What do you have in mind?

And what do you mean by 'fast'? Go is a complex game, and unlike chess, progress is not all about memorizing opening lines. It is very individual, and so it is hard to say what 'fast' means, but basically it depends on dedication. From my experience, the more dedicated you are, the more you enjoy the game, and the less it is important to you to get 'good fast', since you just having so much fun - and this is when you get the goodest the fastest. Your question suggest something like "I have a particular situation in mind, now tell me what and how much do I have to grind to get there." Which is, to me at least, sort-of counter productive.

So, what is it you want exactly, and why? Really?

PS>
On a practical level, to at least try to answer your question, there are 'opening' databases out there (look for 'joseki' and 'fuseki') as well as collection of games. There are collections of Life and Death problems (commonly referred as tsume-go), and so on... Look on Sensei's Library for good links and articles.

In your situation, however, I think you would profit more from playing more human players and asking for concrete advice after games, possibly even making friends.

And, as somebody already said - get rid of your 'chess thinking'. It does not really apply to go very much for most parts.

A couple of comments on Game 2.



Main focus: Go for the kill.

Playing Black on the 9x9 and giving komi, it is hard to beat an even opponent without playing aggressively. To play aggressively you need to be able to kill. Might as well learn how now.

If you take two stones on the 9x9, you have good chances of killing something. Go for it!

If you like reading here's a cool link

http://senseis.xmp.net/?HaengmaTutorial ... ntOfStones

There's actually a lot of cool articles to read

http://senseis.xmp.net/?StartingPoints

just get familiar with the words and looking at the diagrams. When I was first learning seeing all these new things and just reading about them was fun for me. I didn't understand anything. But it was fun.

If you like playing keep playing.

Losing is fine. Keep playing until you recognize when you're in atari. Recognize when you're about to be in atari. Recognize when you can put your opponent in atari.

Play bots if it's more convenient. Use undo a lot if you're getting discouraged. One thing I used to do which could be considered scummy is I would play a move. The bot would play something that devastated me so I'd undo and play where he played. But he'd find another move that devastates me. So I'd try undo again. But I'd have to undo three times before I could salvage the situation.

When playing a lot you start to notice when things are going sour 1 move before it happens.
Then eventually 2 moves before it happens
Then 3 moves before it happens.

And even better you start seeing how to sour your opponents position.
Then two moves ahead of your opponents position etc.

Soon you'll get comfortable with the board.
You'll have reasons behind your moves.(They'll be poor reasons)
You'll have a plan. (It'll be a poor plan)
And then you might want to change learning strategies. Because playing bots and pressing undo develops bad habits but it's convenient to get familiar with the game.

Nikki wrote:In chess there is a book called "My System" by Nimzowitsch, it's the #1 chess classic. It deals with important strategic ideas, and is a must have for any level of player. People often come back to it to refresh their knowledge. Is there not a book like this for Go? I have the feeling that many Go books are written to sell instead of trying to create a truly masterful book.

I am familiar with My System. I think the nearest equivalent would be "Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go" by Kageyama. It is at a more basic level, but it covers a lot of topics, and is regarded as a classic that people go back to as they keep learning.

Nikki wrote:[..]

I read that before you start with 19x19 you should get good at 9x9 first.

While I also recommend playing on the smaller boards at the beginning (and nothing bad about playing them even if one is advanced), I don't think this should be compulsory.

Also, how good exactly would “get good at 9x9 first” be?

All people to which I’ve introduced Go seemed to experience some “natural” point in their progress where they wanted to expand their Go experience to the next larger board or directly to 19x19, and then we did so. So … I wouldn't hinder anybody from advancing to larger boards, but sometimes I’d suggest to collect some more experience on the smaller board, especially if they need more than nine HC stones to have a ~50% chance of winning against me on 19x19 (but then again, if people insisted on paying 19x19 I’ve also played against 13 or even 21 stones, that’s not “below” me — and it teaches me to fight!).

You might appreciate the nice little book “81 Little Lions - An introduction to the 9x9 board for advanced beginners” (direct link to PDF, 2.4 MB), written by former OGS moderator Françisa; he introduced it in this OGS forum post.

Nikki wrote:I read that before you start with 19x19 you should get good at 9x9 first.

The 9x9 game is for tutorial purposes. What does it teach? The 9x9 tactics are the same as the 19x19; the strategy is, in effect, completely different. For a chess player, the strategy is going to be the limiting factor. So move up as soon as you can.

Nikki wrote:My problem is that I simply get outplayed in the opening, or "encircled" by the engine, every time I try to play a "solid" game.

Don't get shut in is one of the basic axioms.

Nikki wrote:When I try to prevent getting encircled by expanding more, I get cut[...]

Welcome to basic fighting tactics! We walk a tightrope when we extend: too far, and we get cut, too close and the stones get into an inefficient huddle.

Nikki wrote:I simply don't stand a chance until I learn somewhere how to play strong openings.

Actually you may need the miai concept first, i.e. the principle of leaving two options. For the 3-3 and 4-4 points, getting first to the 3-4 or 4-3 point gives a sound position.

Nikki wrote:As for learning Tsumego, that's what I intended to do anyway. My goal was always to get good as fast as possible, I get no fun out of playing "headlessly".

In chess there is a book called "My System" by Nimzowitsch, it's the #1 chess classic. It deals with important strategic ideas, and is a must have for any level of player. People often come back to it to refresh their knowledge. Is there not a book like this for Go? I have the feeling that many Go books are written to sell instead of trying to create a truly masterful book.

<cough>I'm a go author ... and wrote a book Teach Yourself Go, and one of its aims was to be "safe for chess players". Then I co-wrote a book Shape Up! which is discussed elsewhere on this forum, since it has just been freely licensed. It covers what chess players would recognise as positional play.</cough>

Nimzowitsch=Kajiwara is one interesting equation to work from. Go players (strong ones) are more Karpov than Kasparov is another hint. The Petrosian style is what all pro go players have to learn as "thick play" and honte, I believe. These things are all stratospheric to me, naturally, as a good amateur.

As an ambitious beginner, I think you should get hold of a Tesuji Dictionary. As we say in Shape Up!, knowledge of tesuji (i.e. combinations, in chess terms) makes you an "engineer" in the game: you get the basic structures. That moves ahead of tsumego, taxing though it is.

Strategy in go is mostly about making the right trade-offs, I'd say. Takes a while to sink in.

Nikki wrote:In chess there is a book called "My System" by Nimzowitsch, it's the #1 chess classic. It deals with important strategic ideas, and is a must have for any level of player. People often come back to it to refresh their knowledge. Is there not a book like this for Go? I have the feeling that many Go books are written to sell instead of trying to create a truly masterful book.

If people are writing Go books just to sell, they are in the wrong market!

In any case, this seems like an unhelpful dichotomy. One can aim to write a masterful book on particular topics (like tesuji) without simply "aiming to sell," one can also write a book that doesn't aim to be 'masterful' but does aim to be helpful, informative, serious and so on and so is not merely written to sell. What would be the point of a masterful book that didn't sell anyway? Not many people would benefit from it.

Nikki wrote:Dear Lifein19x19 Forum,

I'm a former chess player, and I want to learn Go well, and I want to get good fast.

You may find that Go does not function like Chess, despite the importance of reading ahead and applying logic. Chess is subtractive; there are fewer and fewer pieces on the board as a game progresses. Go is additive; thre are more and more pieces on the board as a game progresses. This can make Go feel more like poker or bridge than like Chess.

Although Go is not a game that can be mastered in a short amount of time, it is possible to improve steadily. As in Chess, there is a "Go theory", but since Go is a very fluid game in terms of what situations can arise, there is no "one size fits all" approach.

For example, fuseki is the category of opening moves in Go and there are different fuseki patterns. Each pattern offers different possibilities for development in the middle game. So there is no one perfect opening pattern, nor perfect sequences for playing in X opening situation.

Then again, there is one central idea in the game of Go and that is maintaining the connectivity and integrity of your groups of stones (pieces) while reducing as much as needed the ability of the opponent to do the same for his/her groups of stones. This itself is based on the rule of liberties and capture. Here, you will learn the importance of the shapes that your groups take on during play on the board. Some group shapes are easier to capture than others. It is important to keep in mind the difference between good shapes and bad shapes.

I've read "Go a complete introduction" by Cho Chikun, some further sources on the web, and watched a few master games on youtube.

At this stage master games will be too difficult to understand, but they are a good model to emulate, which is why I make it a habit to replay games by master players. (In the Go world we call them professionals.)

I did play Chess in the past, but since I did not have opportunities to study master games I played rather poorly. Currently I am looking for a collection of Chess games without commentary, just to play through them and gain an idea of how to play, after which I will be able to read game commentary with some confidence.

I tried playing at online-go against the computer on 9x9, but I lose against the 20k bot. And here comes my problem: I don't have a clue what to play after the second move, and I don't know where to look it up. There are almost no sources on 9x9 openings, and this freaks me out - I don't know what is a good move to play! In chess, you have names for the openings. You can look up very extensive analysis on those openings, and you know exactly which moves are good, which are bad, and how you can play. You can find videos of master players who explain all of this to you, you can find large databases with statistics and lots of games. There is chess.com premium membership which has puzzles for tactics, interactive lessons in strategy, and a very deep database for openings. In Go, I can't find anything.

Go is not as dependent on brute-force analysis as Chess. Go is much more fluid, so more often than not one relies on intuition to find the best move. Also, in Go there are books that cover fuseki patterns and variations thereof and it does not stop there. There are books on endgame, middle game, joseki - which are tactical exchanges that occur mainly in the corner parts of the board and result in equal tactical advantage for both sides, life & death and tesuji. Although not as numerous as Chess book titles, Go book titles still number in the hundreds.

The most important thing to learn in Go is tactics, namely tesuji, which deals with suitable moves for X tactical situation, and life & death, which deals with whether a group of stones can be legally captured or not. (In Go, groups of stones that, although not immediately captured, are subject to imminent capture are counted as captures by the capturing side at the end of the game.) These two skill categories form the basis of playing strength in the game. Go is a game in which one gains advantage - or loses it - through a succession of tactical exchanges in different parts of the board. As you gain experience, you will increase your ability to look at the big picture and play tactics in accordance with a wider strategic plan. In Go this is known as "whole board" thinking. You can begin to develop this ability by replaying pro games in conjunction with Go puzzles and playing actual games against more experienced opponents.

So here are my questions:

Where can I learn how to play perfect 9x9 openings, and to punish my opponent when he makes a mistake?

Playing on 9x9 is almost all tactics. Do a few elementary level tesuji and life & death puzzles. This will help you develop an intuition for what the best move is.

In Go, when you punish your opponent's mistakes, it does not necessarily mean that the game is over. It usually means that he suffers a temporary setback. One lesson you will learn in Go is that the road to victory is long, so you have to be disciplined in your approach to the game.

Replaying pro games will help your brain get accustomed to the long duration of a Go game and serve as a way to input data that can be used to make educated guesses when assessing a position on the board during play. The more you replay, the better.

I have downloaded "Go Education collection" torrent, and I'm currently reading a book on Life and Death. I also want to buy a Go book, just as reminder to practice and get better. What is the best Go book for all levels, or a fundemental book on Go strategy?

Go fundamentals do take time and practice to master, but it will be easier to understand and apply Go theory after some experience with the game. I doubt a novice can win his first Chess game just after reading a theory book.

Right now I would not worry too much about Go theory, at least until I've spent a few months playing and practicing. All I would do in the meantime is play games, replay pro game records, and do lots of easy puzzles, mainly in the tesuji and life & death categories. In Go training, quantity is quality. For puzzles in PDF format, here is one place to go: http://tsumego.tasuki.org/

Here is an L19 thread where you can get diagrams of game records in PDF format: http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewto ... 17&t=10643

You'll be able to get more out of Go theory books after some experience applying what you have learned till now.

What is the best Go Engine and GUI? I have downloaded GNU Go and Panda glGo.

Thank you in advance,
Kind Regards,
Nikola

Go software can be helpful for beginners, so I would find something like Many Faces of Go or GnuGo against which to play. Also find human opponents. I find these to be more interesting than computer ones.

Welcome to the game of Go! You will not regret having taken it up

For my part, I played a LOT of games on Igowin (a free windows 9x9 program) then moved to 19x19 directly. I almost never go back to 9x9 but sometimes play 13x13 for quick games.

Recommended phone app : Champion Go (based on an awesome montecarlo engine) Different difficulty levels with medals to follow your progress. 9x9, 13x13 and 19x19.

Recomended books :
The Second book of Go
http://www.amazon.com/Second-Book-Begin ... 4906574319

The Level Up Series, (and all their other books) by Baduktopia (you can order by e-mailing them)
http://baduktopia.co.kr/AsaMall/mall/ca ... 1052739554
(and yes it looks for kids. Actualy it is for kids but the content is great)

In the beginning
http://www.amazon.com/In-Beginning-Begi ... XAVMNZ9N2C

Enjoy!