I’m a French beginner and, like many people, I discovered Go through Hikaru no Go. I know the rules and I’ve been playing a bit online.
Here’s the paradox I’m facing: against ultra-beginners I win (which feels normal), but as soon as I play against intermediate players, I get completely crushed. It feels like there’s no middle ground.
I’ve been reading about openings and basic strategies. When I watch other people’s games, I usually don’t struggle too much to spot good moves. But when I’m actually sitting in front of the board myself, everything suddenly feels much harder. My biggest weakness, I think, is that I really struggle to visualize territory during the game.
Do you have any advice on how to improve properly as a beginner?
I’ve read somewhere that playing blitz games or games with 10 seconds per move can be a good way to train your intuition and reading skills. Do you think that’s a good idea, or should I focus on slower, more thoughtful games instead?
I’m open to any advice, like studying methods, exercises, common beginner mistakes to avoid, recommended resources, anything
I got this book but it’s out of print and hard to find at a reasonable price. I’d suggest Motoki’s book “le langage des pierres”.
You can also ask stronger players to review your games. But the best is to join a club. If there is no go club close to your home, you can join the online club “SITS”.
I see you’ve lost your first three games on OGS, that’s undoubtedly disappointing but I’d just suggest you play bots a bunch of times until you start winning and your rank stabilizes. That feels a lot more neutral than accidentally over-ranking and losing a bunch of games to humans.
for some french content, you can also join some discord channels like sits, fulgurogo, GOATs Jeu de Go.
You can also find plenty of go video on youtube. TherapieGo did record some sets of pedagogical videos.
The basics are “know your shapes”, just avoid shreded-keima, avoid to be surrounded, avoid to respond every moves of your opponents and it should be fine
Play at the speed you like. You mostly need to accumulate experience with many games, reading power and using shapes and tactics. Working on your fondamentals like use of the edges, cut and connect, use of influence… That doesn’t need very large time settings, it’s not about some intellectual performance but that’s not very well working in blitz either. It’s good to not play instinctively but instead asking yourself if you have to answer and where is the biggest place to play at each of your move.
