I’m coming back to Go after a hiatus of a couple of years. I learned the game in high school and played it off and on. Without anybody to play with, my only option was to play online which causes my anxiety to go through the roof. Playing was never consistent for me because of this. Still I stuck with it through college but never decided to dedicate a good amount of time to it.
Just yesterday I decided to jump in again and break through my fear of playing online. It was hard until I decided to support the site in order to get some game analytics to help me learn. Turns out that my anxiety for online play is rapidly disappearing because I’m benefitting from my loses. Suddenly I’m enjoying this far more than before.
I’m starting off on 9x9 boards because they’re quick and allow me to practice during down time at work. I’d like to play 19x19 however. My plan is to understand some fundamentals in the 9x9 and then graduate to 13x13 on weekends when I have more time and then eventually to 19x19. Though I wouldn’t be opposed to a correspondence game in 19x19.
So anyway, just thought I’d introduce myself and extend an invite to players both stronger and weaker than me for a game. From what I understand, my opponents can utilize my analytics after a game. If that is something of interest to you, then by all means let’s play!
Pleasure to be back and see that the community is doing well
Howdy and welcome! I have found that playing slow and deliberate correspondence games really helps with the anxiety produced by time-controlled games. Not that I ever NEED 7 days per move, but that feeling of having “all the time in the world” helps me relax, read out the various options, do a proper risk analysis, and play each move in a way that I am comfortable with.
If you’re not finding a challenge that you can accept (a lot of challenges have rank requirements), just create your own challenge, or feel free to post to the forum and ask for a teaching game - those usually get a few responses pretty quickly.
I’m sure that the anxiety of on-line games is more common than you can expect especially for blitz game where a lot of trolls realize themselves beating (destroying) serious go-learners. If this should happen to you, don’t care and look forward.
My little suggestion is: go immediately on 19x19 and start from an elementary book on fuseki. 9x9 and 13x13 are completely different. You should understand soon the “wide space” and how to handle it. This is obviously only my humble opinion. You probably don’t know yet it, but the relationship among stones position versus a well-defined space available on a 19x19 board is crucial.
I am quite new here, like you, and I can say that is a good place for serious learners.
welcome back to Go, and many thanks for supporting OGS, we appreciate it very much.
I am also happy to play any correspondence games, feel free to just send me a challenge with your preffered settings if you ever felt like it
