Looking to play my first game

Hello!

For the past 4 days I’ve been learning and reading about Go (even found a book which I’m in the process of annotating and highlighting), however I have yet to play a game against an actual person and use anything I’ve learned. I’ve played a few games against AI, however it felt like I didn’t get much out of it, so I’m looking for a real person to play against.

Thank you!

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Welcome to OGS, the forums, and the game of Go!

I’d be happy to play a correspondence game with you, if that’s what you are looking for. I’ve sent you a challenge. Feel to reject and amend, if that’s not what you wanted.

If you want a live game right now, we could play a quick 9x9 game with handicap stones.

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If you prefer someone closer to your level for some practice, feel free to challenge me for a correspondence game.

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correspondence may take a lot of time
better to play a lot of fast live little 9x9 games against other beginners. (25k - 20k)

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Thank you everyone for the replies! I think I’m going to take Stone_Defender’s advice and do some 9x9 games with other beginners and in the future, when I’m confident enough with my skills to play longer games, I’ll come back to this!

Thank you again!

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It’s very nice what you did already and i hope you will get some games quickly, especially with other beginners. I am not anymore but you can challenge me if you find me online at the same time.
By the way, did you check if there is some players where you live for a face to face game?

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I prefer live 13 * 13 games, 9 * 9 is just reciting the variations, but 13*13 can be a beginning to a lot of newbies according to my experience, and correspondence games usually take a long time, not suitable for people who have just started learning.

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Welcome to the game of Go! Hope you enjoy it. Always nice to see beginners! Feel free to request a 9x9 or 13x13 game with me if you wish! I would be happy to play teaching games if I am available.

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Well, I didn’t reply before because I didn’t want to confuse the beginner with too much info, but it seems the people have already decided to do that, so I might as well jump in the mix.

As a beginner, I was really shy about my skill and wanted to get a good idea of what to do before bothering other humans with my silly moves. So I really wished there was some approach that could just give me clear guidelines to make “meaningful moves”, just to be able to play without being confused every second.

If you’re that kind of beginner, and I get a feeling you are, I suggest ignoring the “play lots of fast games with other beginners” meta at least for a while, especially because OGS doesn’t exactly offer you that option unless you’re familiar with exactly how it works.

There are two things that instead I believe fit really well with “shy”-type beginners like me. (They both come in the form of YouTube videos, I hope it’s not an issue for you)

  • This video explains a generally good psychological approach to playing and learning as much as you can from every game. The rest of the series is extremely good too, but that episode in particular is a must-see for most beginners (the part about learning is towards the end of the video if you want to watch just that).

  • In a similar vein, but much more detailed, is the “Clossi Approach” developed by this guy. It gives you guidelines to decide where to move at any point in the game, and they’re built to promote learning from your games and get good habits that are also transferable to the 19x19 board.
     One thing to keep in mind is: this method will not necessarily lead you to win more games, but it will lead you to learn more from them.
     If you’re shy like I was, it also allows you to partially detach yourself from your moves and not feel too apprehensive about them. Or about losing at all, really.

Also, I saw you were matched with a 12k in your first game and they played a bit sadistically trying to kill everything you had even though they had already won. I hope you weren’t too discouraged by that.

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I have checked and I’ve seen a few but unfortunately all are pretty out of the way, but I’m gonna keep looking! I’ll be getting an actual board soon so that I can practice and solve problems on it, and some of my family members are interested in learning so at least I have that

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Careful, you are making many people envious! :wink:

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Oh that’s nice. When i started myself, i found a student like me interested so we played many games. I was lucky because i think it was a great time we spent together. I was thankful to not be submerged by go theory and experiment freely with someone similar in strength.

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