Hey guys … I’m completely new to baduk, actually started playing 8 days ago!
So can you guys suggest me what would be a good bot on OGS site to practice with. I’ve been playing with amy-bot (25k), but I feel like I’m not getting much from it… By that I mean, it’s pretty easy to beat and I feel like Im not learning anything from my games…
Actually better to rephrase my question: I would like to play so its not super hard, yet so I learn something from it. So not sure which rank to pick?
I wonder should I start playing games with human on here…maybe that would be better option…
Sorry for stupid questions but I’m completely new to all of this …
There is no minimum point at which you can start playing humans, but if you can already comfortably beat amybot, do not hesitate to play ranked games with humans your level if you keep doing this, you will have many games to learn from
edit: welcome to OGS, and also to the forums I hope you enjoy your time here on our server
It’s a good question because you’re potentially saving yourself from a lot of wasted time.
Bots are not for practice.
I can whole-heartedly recommend that you play humans. There are enough of us on this server
According to an old Go proverb, you should lose your first 100 games as quickly as possible, so good luck with that and always remember: it’s just a game
Well thank you all for the welcome and quick good replies! Your advises are more than helpful!
I use to play chess as teenager, and was decent at it … kinda. Few years back a friend suggest me to try go, but never did … so during this quarantine period, somehow the game popped into my mind and I tried it. And I absolutely fell in love with it. One of those cool discoveries in life… So lets see how this goes.
I too count myself among the many chess converts here welcome <3 it truly is a beautiful game our forum community is very friendly and helpful, so any questions please don’t hesitate to ask!
Thank you very much!
And yeah it’s a completely different beast, compared to chess. From what I can tell in beginning stages, chess mindset kinda doesn’t work on it. So that’s gonna be a work in progress. But honestly I’m really amazed by the game. By it’s simplicity, yet infinite complexity. Not sure how much I’ll be able to improve in it at age of 34. But I’m having fun with it, that’s important
It is katabot (https://online-go.com/player/592684/). I hated playing bots for a long time and always advised newbies to not go near them - but that was because I had not found a good bot or the proper way of playing them. Kata is made for handicap games and playing it with handicap stones will teach you a lot about connections and how to protect your areas. Start with 15 handicap stones and lower the number every time you manage to beat it twice in a row at that stone number. It will almost be like an old-school way of learning go, playing the same opponent over and over and lowering the handicap number.
Do not play bots like amybot or spectral - those are either too smart or too dumb and playing them will just lead to confusion.
I feel I should point out that handicap Go is a very different beast to playing an even game. So, if you just play high handicap games against Katago, you’ll learn very different aspects to the game than playing even games against people your own strength. Not saying that playing KataGo is a bad thing, per se, simply that I think using it as your only playing partner will lead to imbalance in certain parts of your game.
I feel handicap go is different as well but I also feel like it shouldn’t feel like that. It’s all about cutting and connecting. Relying on fuseki patterns is not a recommended way of ranking up/getting stronger and handicap go is a good way of overcoming any such habit.
Sure, that might be true; but if you only ever play high handicap games, it’s very likely you won’t be exposed to a number of different joseki, since white cannot play territorially in the beginning of the game. In addition, an AI like KataGo might play away from a position at a very confusing time for an amateur, which when attempted to emulate may not work in the amateurs case.
I’d point out in addition that Jurgenpine is incredibly new to the game, meaning he will almost certainly make gote mistakes, that the AI feels no need to punish, but players around his level may well do. Being directly taught why a move is wrong is definitely incredibly valuable when starting out.
tl;dr The distinction between handicap Go and an even game is not simply one of fuseki patterns.
Thanks guys for your inputs… We’ll learning all of this on my own, so very hard to put my grasp around it all, or proper approach for that matter. I kinda try to use my experience with learning how to sing, and play musical instruments to this…so will see how that works… Personally, maybe it would be best to play no handicap game, with a player couple of levels higher than me… that way, I could understand what he did after the game, plus pick up some tricks and concepts along the way
Honestly, the best thing you can do imo is completely disgard your ego (not an easy thing to do ^^). Play everyone and anyone. Don’t worry if you’re a lot weaker or a lot stronger, you can gain something from every game.
Play human opponents as much as you want/can - Just keep in mind when you wanna fool around with a bot, katabot is the least harmful one and probably the only bot (you can play against at low rank) against which winning bears some meaning.
if you keep doing this, you will have many games to learn from 
our forum community is very friendly and helpful, so any questions please don’t hesitate to ask!
just enjoy the ride 