I’m a computer programmer and have been watching alpha go playing as I’m very interested in the AI but I still struggle to understand the game with the professional commentator after spending 8-10 hours reading the rules and trying go myself.
I have downloaded igowin ( the windows version ) and I can’t even beat that at 23 kyu, I keep thinking I have created an alive group and then suddenly white owns the board and my group is gone. This is on a 9x9 board with handicap stones.
I’m looking for something that shows how to play a 9x9, what moves are terrible, what moves are good. Ideally a computer program that slaps you on the wrist then goes back and shows you the proper move but I’d settle for a series of videos aimed at kids or something
Hey, welcome to the site. First off, we have our own tutorial, which you can find on the sidebar. There’s also a lot of resources on our resources page to help teach the game.
If you have unlimited time and energy, there’s pretty much nothing better than Nick Sibicky’s beginner classes on YouTube. Sort by “oldest” and play the videos in order where he teaches the class or just pick out interesting topics one by one.
For kid-focused material, I enjoy the understated cartooning of Andy & Serra on the BadukChannelAmerica YouTube channel.
Thanks, I think I grasp the basics of the game after going through a few tutorials, my problem is when you have a board in front of you I have no idea how the rules and examples translate into games. I’ll check out the videos, cheers
Part of the process is learning through trial and error and that is a start.
I’m a computer programmer myself and would be glad to play a teaching game if you willing to play correspondence. PM, or just send a challenge. If challenging, Fischer time with 1 day added per move with a max of at least 3 days and Unrated. I’ll provide comments as we go. Undo can allow us to back up and try again.
Thanks! I tried to set up the teaching game but couldn’t find unrated as an option and I also couldn’t find the pm function, it’s probably staring me in the face
It’s the “ranked” thing. If it’s unchecked then it doesn’t count towards ranking points.
You can PM someone by first searching them with the search and then clicking the name and a “minimenu” will appear. Click on the chat bubble
It’s on a full 19x19 board, not 9x9, but chrisc36’s DeepGo DCNN go bot (~7k) (HTML and JS, online) shows you what moves it thinks is best, if you check Show Analysis. If you uncheck Auto Move, it’ll also let you set up a local position without interfering.
Take this problem, for instance. It appears to be a simple shape, right? So how to play?
The first-level player plays C, which dies obviously to White A.
The second-level player plays B, which still dies to White A but less obviously.
The third-level player plays A, a living shape.
The fourth-level player notes that even if Black plays A, White can play C and produce a seki (mutual life) with Black A, White C, Black M1, White J1, Black H1, White B, which would remove the territory, and considers playing away to a potential bigger point elsewhere on the board.
Nah, that’s silly. A beginner has no idea what you are talking about in any of those cases.
A first level player is no longer a beginner in this example.
Sure you can listen to Dan’s who say “I am only just beginning to learn this game”, but practically speaking we all know really what a beginner is, in the context of this thread.
I can really relate. Go requires one to understand so many separate concepts that it can be difficult to tie them all together.
I know that text isn’t as easy-to-absorb as a video series - but - I’ve been working on a 19x19 FOR BEGINNERS series that tries to explain those concepts in a gradual manner, and help you find your own ways to use them in the game. Perhaps reading about some of these basic concepts will help these videos come into focus.
They’re presented in a somewhat unusual way (a list of WMV files to be downloaded from the WBaduk site) but they’ll hopefully all work fine.
With thanks to go4thewin and his post on L19, in which he explained
This is a series of beginner go videos by Seunghyun Lee 7 dan and Choi Dongeun 1p from cyberoro/wbaduk/Korean Ministry of Culture and Tourism.There are many more cyberoro videos if you want to take your go studies further, I can link to them.
They seem to be for young children, but i think you will enjoy them as well. It is designed to take someone from seeing a go board for the first time to sdk. You would have to play games and either do badukpop, wbaduk tsumego, or the graded go problems for beginner as well to improve that much though.
. I’ve also just posted a list of other resources for beginners, which you can find here: 
It seems like it could be a useful thread, maybe to link into others that collect resources.