looking for sage advice teaching in a game how to play

looking for friendly one on one at least 7 day maybe longer game more of a teaching thing i guess. i am looking for where someone could on each move tell and show their thinking about each move telling about scores and strategy and helpful advice about the game we are playing. someone does have to be really good iam 25k or worse iam sure player, and anyone 15 to 10k would be of great help iam sure even someone 18k thats played a while who has patience with an old goat please pm me to start a game - please no off this site games or sign ups i want to stay in the gs framework of play thanks all

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I would advise you to stop playing correspondence games: you do not yet have enough go intuition to look at a board afresh each time, parse it into chains and groups, understand what is going on and come up with plans of what to do next. If you were thinking about the same board 20 seconds ago and 1 minute ago and 2 minutes ago and 10 minutes ago you have a better chance of making coherent and connected plans, rather than being a goldfish trying to read War and Peace one letter at a time once a day.

Live games are what you need (and not blitz, think at least 20 seconds each move), and a live teaching game with a fellow human is one of the best ways to learn there is.

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Stay frosty, @dokbohm — more and more people seem to be catching on, or at least starting to see through…

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Capture d'écran 2025-10-15 105057

You don’t play 10-minute games. That one for instance was 3 minutes.

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You got so much input in so many different places, you can just re-read your other topics/teaching games/reviews.

Whats the point of people spending their time giving advice when its already there multiple times and getting forgotten some people (me) may even say ignored?

Some people here are (way too) kind with you. Its your turn now. Learn the game and make other peoples effort not wasted. Go ahead and ask questions about stuff that was explained to you, but it makes no sense if you don’t say why you dont understand it. If you ask all these basic questions right, with the previous input given, you will answer 90% to yourself before clicking the submit button.

I hope people get more strict with you.

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@dokbohm, can you please tell me, how you pretending to be a (reasonably) nice, old guy who would like to learn the game of Go does go together with your behaviour over the board:

  1. Playing hundreds of games, resigning (basically) all of them. Even games that you had won on the board and where all you needed to do was clicking the “Pass”-button.
  2. Still playing many (if not most) of your moves after “thinking” for less than one second, demonstrating your complete inability or unwillingness to play a game like Go in the first place.

Essentially, why, despite all the guidance we have given you, are you acting more like an unruly toddler than a reasonable person genuinely interested in the game?

How can you expect anyone taking you seriously?

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Oh my gosh! Such hostility from all of us here at OGS! What terrible task-masters we must be - trying to bend you to our will by forcing you to… what…?

  • read an online article about what makes a Living Group?
  • do some tsumego so you can understand what makes or breaks a living group?
  • join a Discord server so that an experienced teacher can volunteer their time for free to help you learn the things you claim you so badly want to learn?

Gosh, what awful people we must be to throw so much hostility at someone so poor, and so old, just playing a few silly games while waiting for the sickle to fall. We should just feel awful about ourselves, and rush to help you right away!

And yes, if you can’t tell, I’m being sarcastic. It’s very difficult to take you seriously when your online interactions are so repetitive and transparent.

You may not be very good at playing Go, but you are surprisingly adept at SEEKING ATTENTION. Let’s just go over the script real quick:

  • You start by innocently asking for help and include lots of details about how badly you want and need help (i.e. I’m so old, this game is so hard, I’m so frustrated, confused, etc)
  • People show up and try to give you guidance and concrete steps that you can take
  • Rather than engaging with the content of the advice, you instead try to engage with the people - not seeking to improve your game, but seeking to continue the conversation and draw the person further in - or draw in other people that you can get attention from
  • Eventually, the people volunteering their time trying to help you improve end up feeling manipulated or trolled - because you’re not actually paying any attention to the content, you’re just seeking more attention - and they push back
  • As soon as you feel any resistance, you whip out the “oh poor me, everyone is ganging up on me - I’m so poor and old and defenseless, everyone should feel bad for me” script, and you say you’re taking your ball and going home

Except you never go home - you just wait 24 to 48 hours, and then post yet another new thread with the exact same script

The one small flaw in this plan is that the OGS forum is a fairly small, tight knit place, and things have reached the point where we are catching on to your modus operandi

When you post a new thread, trying the same gambit another time - people just reference your previous thread, and warn others to take you with a big grain of salt…

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New account name coming up in 3 … 2 … 1 …

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LOL yep 100%

Except at this point his writing style and playing style are so easily identifiable, we’d know him by any other name…

I wonder if KGS has a forum… :rofl:

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:+1:

great book!

Yada yada yada, you are the poor victim of course. Again.

At the very least show us that you really want to learn the game, stop randomly throwing stones on the board without thinking and finish your games (by passing) instead of resigning every single one of them.

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As explained previously several times, you resigned games you would have won had you passed and scored them.

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But you come on the forums bemoaning that you have yet to win your first game, so 4 or 5 games whilst a small minority of your total, are more than enough to satisfy that first win goal. Or do you not actually want to win, but prefer to make woe-is-me posts about not winning?

This statement is a great learning opportunity for you!
Why?
Because in Go it is often extremely hard to know when your are beaten.

This is even true for stronger players, let alone for beginners.

I would even claim that most of the time resigning doesn’t make any sense at your level. Not only because you don’t know when you are beaten. But also because it is much more important to learn finishing the game, making sure your groups are alive, trying to kill groups of your opponent and learning what is really dead and alive than ending the game quickly and starting a new one.

Will you listen to me?
Will you change your habits?
Will you start thinking before making moves?
Will you start finishing games instead of resigning them?

Positively surprise me!

@dokbohm, wow!
I’m really impressed.
You have finished several games yesterday by actually scoring them.

That’s a significant step forward in your Go-journey!
And even if not everything is perfect yet regarding finishing your games (that’s normal), you are finally in a position where scoring the game can provide you valuable feedback.

Let’s look at this game for example:

and at its scoring result:

Which of all these numbers (marked red) do make sense to you?
Which of them do not?

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If this isn’t malicious compliance :joy:

Close your borders @dokbohm!

ok fair enough question i think to answer i lost the game by 6.5 pts white had 25.4 ownership of the board, not once did i get above the graph point every move of my was wrong i guess i had 9.5 pts they had 16 pts – so thats was my understnding of what these things mean

Are you aware you didn’t finish the game (passed prematurely)?

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This is true, and it’s because black had enclosed their territory. However, your (white’s) position was stronger.

the line going below zero means that white has the better position (according to AI). Therefore it’s not true that:

Had you continued the game, you could have at least surrounded some pts of territory in the bottom left:

and much more if you killed either of those black groups

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@dokbohm, scoring-wise you are correct:
You had 9.5 points and black had 16 points. Black won by 6.5 points.

However, there are two BIG opportunities for learning in this game:

First opportunity for learning: “W+25.4” means that if two perfect players would have continued the game (instead of ending it by passing), white (so you!) would have won the game by approximately 25.4 points. So when you were thinking that you have been beaten and you passed to end the game, you were actually clearly ahead and could have won the game.
Which raises the question: Why did you lose the game by 6.5 points when you were actually ahead by 25.4 points?
Which leads us directly into the …

Second opportunity for learning: When you and your opponent ended the game by passing (going into scoring) both of you only got the points that you really had secured at that point (by fully surrounding territory with your stones for example). The fact that you had lots of potential to fully surround territory is completely ignored as soon as you end the game and go into scoring.

This means: You should have continued the game, trying to seal off the boarders to your territory (somewhere along the X-marks in the picture below) and you would have had a good chance of winning the game.

Long story short:
It’s great that you start trying to finish your games by passing, going into scoring!
However, make sure to seal off all the borders of your territory before ending the game. Otherwise you won’t get points for your territory when the game gets scored.

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