I really want to play the Game of GO… BUt despite my watching youtube tutorial videos on the basics, I’ve tried to play several games online, and I just can’t seem to grasp the concepts of eyes, Life and captures. It would seem to my beginner’s frame of mind that the rules contradict them selves.
Here is a game that I resigned against a bot. THis is a common thing that happens as for some reason my stones just vanish from the board. And can not figure out how they are being captured.
I am willing to pay for a person to teach me the basic concept. I have tried the learning part of this website and others and none of it is explaining it very well.
In regards to your stones disappearing, individual stones, or groups of stones, are captured if all the empty space around it are filled in. This only applies horizontally and vertically. These empty spaces are called liberties.
For example, the black stones below has four liberties because the spaces above, below, to the left, and to the right are empty. Another way to count the liberties is to count the black lines coming out of it.
If two stones of the same colour touch, they form a group. These stones cannot be separated, they either stay on the board together or are captured together. Below is a group, it has six liberties because there are six empty points around it: two above, two below, and one to each side:
There are so many great resources (without charge) both here on OGS (Learning, Puzzles) and elsewhere (duck-duck-go is your friend) that paying would seem to be unnecessary. Just a little legwork and patience and you’ll be off and running!
Having gotten whooped by AI bots here and elsewhere countless times, I can empathize with how you may feel. Losing stones unexpectedly is always an unpleasant surprise.
But I’d encourage you to rerun your game above (as I just checked it out) and see how those stone captures came about. What could you have done to avoid some or all of them? Did you notice how White was building a wall - choking off your territorial prospects - while you were reacting instead of being proactive yourself? (Read a bit about sente vs gote.)
I would suggest that focusing on an evolving plan regarding your territorial aspirations as the game unfolds and watching what your opponent does without always having to respond directly to it might be of some help in your learning.
Hi. The beginning is hard. It can be a real struggle, keep going! ^^
Thats the best advice I can give anyone.
I remember when I started, I did the OGS tutorial several times every time after a few matches and it helped me a lot as I was really not able to understand everything. Maybe that works for you too.
(Duck duck go is a search engine like google, btw.)
As noted above, it’s a search engine (preferred by those who don’t want google to have any more of their data). Any search engine will do the trick for finding “Go game” resources, but since “go” is a common English verb, also try “baduk” (Korean) or “weiqi” (Chinese) for more complete results.
I looked at your game. I think you already have understood about how the game works. No worry. You mostly need more practice.
That’s very common by the way. We all here had difficult time when we started playing go. Many of us were surprised by the complexity sitting behind a pretty simple set of rules.
Looking at your game it’s clear that for you, capturing (or to enlarge the idea, threatening to capture) is the right way to try to get something from the board. But this is true for the opponent too. So be more careful on the liberties of your stones. Mostly you lost here because of this.
At the stage you are, you should mostly play and try things on your own. Not much more as long as you don’t really care on your liberties in the beginning. Cutting and connecting, using the edge at your advantage are the very next concepts you will use for a while.
You hope to capture the two white stones but this is a bit dreaming
If white answers simply like this (1) the situation is getting catastrophic for you, you are split into two weak groups while white is pretty solid. A player with a bit of experience would want to resign with this situation
A bit more here, you didn’t answer the white triangle move. It’s ok if you think saving these 2 stones was too small and there are bigger things to play. But in any case white can still capture two black stones if he wants with 1
Let’s go a bit further in the capture things. After white 1 here, black sees he can’t save his stones and accept to sacrifice them, aiming to enclose his corner territory.
You learned here two useful tactics: the ladder (in the post before) and the snap back (sacrifice one to get the whole). Those are important, I’d even say essential in the tactical aspect
BUT:
first train your ability to see liberties of groups ( yours and the ones of your opponent.)
Nothing really can be teached before that. You can fully understand my sequences only if you look at liberties.
So my advice to play many games (dozens?) without worrying if you can’t follow some more strategic or tactical guidelines, and if this is leading to lose most of them.
Join a go club in real life.
Play a lot of games preferably with other beginners.
Ask questions after the game like: why did that group die, etc.
Maybe a better player can help you by reviewing your game.
Some really good advice given here and helpful, understand explanations of simple concepts, please keep going with your advice, i read with anticipation that’s for sure much better than the site’s explanations, that’s for sure. thank you for your insight
I feel that @dokbohm’s comments are a bit unfair sometimes and I want to add some context for the benefit of the well-meaning community here.
I had the opportunity to watch several of @dokbohm’s games live.
While I was observing, the pattern was always the same: After the first moves being played very quickly, @dokbohm starts to play instantly. And I’m not talking about one or two second response times. I’m talking about instant play. So fast that I was wondering how this would be possible with a human hand.
Needless to say that almost all of these instant moves didn’t make any sense from a Go perspective.
Some of @dokbohm’s opponents encourage him/her to play slower or offer help. Eventually the opponents start munching away @dokbohm’s stones (which are in atari all over the board) after which @dokbohm resigns - usually before having reached the middle of the game.
So from what I have seen it is almost exclusively about throwing stones on the board without thinking - often as fast as technically possible - followed by a quick resignation. I have barely seen efforts to actually really play a game of Go.
you are very harsh with your words, and even though some of what you say is true, you make me out to be a very unsavoury person. This is not fair i am just an old guy trying to learn a game that is very hard to learn unless taught one-on-one so please review your claims of me
you also have not seen my 3 day 13x13 games which play most often, and i do think about each move.. the 9x9 games usally 2/3 min types i really doing them just waiting from my oppoent ina 3 day gameto respond to my next move
Even if you are only playing those quick games while waiting for something else, I think you should take them more seriously.; otherwise you are just baking in bad habits. At least think long enough to avoid putting your stones in atari, and preferably to be aware of all stones on the board that are in atari. If the time limits are too short for that, play with longer limits or do something totally different while waiting.
I thought @FritzS was not really trying to be harsh, even if it came over like that. If their description of how you play is accurate, then it is fair to let the community know that.
As to the help on the site, it is very hard to write it so that it helps everyone. I wonder if you can suggest a better way to explain things, or point to things that are not clear to you? But maybe when you have got your head round the mechanics you will wonder why you did not understand them before!
