Life In 19x19

Hey everyone!

My name is Nick and I am from the Netherlands as said in the thread subject. I am 22 years old and I have been playing Go every once in a while, when I started I didn't really increase which made me quit and after a certain time, like 5 days ago? Haha, I wanted to give it again a try. I am currently on KGS 18 Kyu and on OGS 23k but, people already say I am also there around 18 to 15 kyu.

Hoi Nick, welcome, you have found a nice place


Groeten uit Duitsland, Tom

Thanks!

Hello Fitachi,
Greetings from a fellow Dutchman here.
Enjoy the game, enjoy this forum.
Perhaps we can play a game some time, either in person or on KGS.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Regards.

Hello, fitachi. Welkom 2 lifein19x19.com!

Go is a fun game, but also difficult to play well. Football is also fun, but difficult to play well - especially at pro level. As with anything else, it's all about the practice and refinement!

If you would like to improve steadily in Go, I suggest these 3 things. Replay kifu (diagrams of game records) by your favorite pro, do plenty of easy puzzles, primarily those in life & death and tesuji categories, and - last but never least - play many actual games against different players.

If you are at a loss as to which pro player's kifu to replay, look for collections of games by 本因坊秀策 (Honinbo Shusaku). The Ear-reddening Game is one of the most famous games by Shusaku and a widely recognized one among Go players everywhere. John Power's book Invincible has a large collection of Shusaku games, many of them with commentary. One way to get benefit out of this is to replay with board and stones all the games in the collection without reading the comments, then replay again, this time reading the commentary. You will definitely become stronger at Go and increase your number of wins after replaying the game records.

If at the moment you cannot get a Shusaku game collection, you can benefit just as well by replaying collections of other pro players. Here is a thread with collections in PDF format: viewtopic.php?f=17&t=10643