I haven’t been able to start a game agasint the computer in some time. Is this feature gone? I was kind of relying on it as I’m not good enough to waste a real players time yet.
A word of advice, playing only computer opponents will actually make you worse. 
However, they should be working. I will nudge them to get them moving again.
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I would play against other weak players. Bots aren’t good for your go playing
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And don’t feel like you’re wasting other people’s time. 
Thanks all. I’m still playing bots while I lock down what the basic rules are, but point taken.
“Bots aren’t good for your go playing” if you are 6 dan player. If you are DDK they can help a lot
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But they play so differently from humans that one ends up developing bad habits.
I don’t know what the state of the art in computer Go is, but it is well-known that the weak bots from several years ago will impact your style in a bad way. This is definitely true for Gnu Go.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to try it out and prove your human superiority over the stupid piece of metal 
But when you are in your 10th bot game, it is high time to move on.
Human opponents are much more innovative and versatile.
Especially when you have just gotten a nice lead through hard work, your opponent will sit up in their chair, turn off the distracting music and tell their boyfriend/girlfriend to shut up for a minute. 10 kyus suddenly start reading like high dans.
This will catch you completely off guard if you have become too used to the docile gnu.
@Mudd2247, you are not wasting anyone’s time! In fact, there is probably someone around your strength right now, waiting for anyone to take the game offer, and wondering why nobody wants to have a fun time right now
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Hi Animiral,
I was just reading a review of yours (good one I must say). Please note that before you send a soldier into battle you train him to kick, puch defence and defence. Bots will beat a 1 Dan player, a DDK has a lot to learn as they do not make silly mistakes as a 30 kyu does. Of course there is life beyond them, once you know the basics and a little more.
By the way Samraku if a bot beats you you do not learn bad habits with it
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I once had a discussion with some other OGS players in the English chat.
They argued that in order to achieve any certain strength in Go, a player would have to learn the skills of the ‘previous’ level(s) first to get a solid foundation. On this you would build the next level of skill and learn new things in addition, like a house or other structure that you construct one part at a time.
I stood with the philosophy that a local dan player sensei told me:
The strength of a Go player is heavily determined by the extent to which they have mastered the basics. When two professionals with equal reading ability play against each other, the one who wins often does so because of their more refined understanding of shape, direction, proper timing, all the usual stuff.
To expand on this, I have drawn a parallel to a diamond, or a painting, piece of music or other art. These are not things which you ‘construct’ (maybe initially, just a very little bit), but which are refined. You start out with a simple, crude core, e.g. some chord progressions, or a crude understanding of Go based only on the rules. Then you refine and polish that understanding until it becomes better and better.
I was pretty much alone with that standpoint. Maybe it didn’t help that the discussion took place in the context of the OGS rank feature. I was lamenting the removal of the custom rank setting and the introduction of the forced rank that you get to pick just once at account creation.
I said that there is always more learning value in games against stronger opponents than weaker ones.
This is really my core message. Trying to learn ‘the fundamentals’ from weaker players (or bots) is like trying to build a rocket engine from a faulty design.
The rank system part of the discussion continued in this very interesting forum topic.
So that is how I see the issue - in Go, you teach pro soldiering from the start and hope that most of it sticks the first time. Admittedly, this is not the majority opinion.
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I’ll give you a game - you’re plenty good enough for my time