New Go Player- Advices

Hi all, i’m an upper intermediate chess player who recently discovered Go. Currently i’m training only on the 13x13 and have learned some strategical/tactical basic themes. I still don’t feel alright to play against human players cause my level is probably embarassing but i have played som games against a 9/10 kyu engine for training.
Now, as for chess ,the main thing is of course keep playing to acclimatise yourself with tha game. But anyone has any advice of what to study/see/read in order to improve?
Also if you want to add me as friend and maybe help me with training games you are more than welcomed. I’m open to teach chess as well if anyone is interested!

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thing is: level of other human beginners is “embarassing” too.
So advice №1 don’t play vs AI, humans are more easy and interesting

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Please embarrass us!
:grinning:

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Working through Becoming 9 Kyu - A Series for Beginners might be useful?

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That and many other resources can be found here:

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Welcome to the forum, nice having you with us!

Read or watch anything you like and mostly play with humans, bots are bit boring don’t you feel?

There are a lot of topics here answering newcomers with various advices.

You can ask for reviews here too.

Ah and try to see if there is opportunity for you to play face to face where you live, it’s awesome experience i suggest you.

Play as often as you can, enjoy the game!

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I made this, and I also think it’s what you’re looking for. Coming from chess, you’ll be pleased that this course follows the typical chess tutoring structure. It starts from the fewest pieces possible, introduces the essential concepts one by one, and progresses to the more advanced tactics and puzzles. And I teach you at your own pace. Of course, because Go is an additive game rather than a destructive one like chess, I start with the opening rather than the endgame. But the course otherwise does what you’d expect and should give you all the tools to achieve a single-digit rank here.

Welcome, too!

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Sadly that’s what most new players think, but the truth is there’s usually enough eager opponents online, and if all matched they could get some games against each other, it’s so more fun playing against another person!

In my very humble opinion, you’ll improve faster, if that’s something that’s important to you of course, if you try your skills against other people, bots can get repetitive.

And it’s really not that much of a deal playing someone a few ranks above or below, games are still interesting and fun all the way.

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My number one advice is stop playing against bots.

The stronger ones will crush you and that would be more likely to be discouraging than educational.

The weaker ones are even more damaging to your progress, since they generally have glaring flaws that might teach you the wrong intuition and reinforce bad habits.

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This is the best advice so far. We recently re-started in-person sessions at our Go club and I forgot how much better it is in-person than online. Don’t get me wrong - online is still awesome - but in-person is another level of awesome :grin:

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In principle, I agree. In my mind I know we should avoid bots and play with people.
However, it is discouraging to try and play with people and get opponents who are not patient with other players, who suspect your every breath for cheating, who have a billion of requests about “etiquette” or who care about their rank too much.

@GabriBio
My advice would be to play a lot and to study when you have time.
Bots are an easy way to try your hand and to play silly, learning moves without stress, but playing with people is indeed better and more efficient in the long run.

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Zen mode is your friend.

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Well i still hope there is much more chances to get nice players who will at least not be like that and even more friendly, sharing their enthusiasm.
But no world is perfect.

No need to go to some extreme attitude, you could lose some nice chat too.

That’s basically is not a privilege reserved to the bots, silly moves and experimentation should be welcomed in games between beginners and even more advanced players.

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I’m for the middle path.

Sometimes I just want to play my moves and not even engage with my opponent.

Sometimes I am more talkative and lucky and we end up reviewing the game together and playing variations.

That’s what I like on OGS. There’s an option for (almost) everything.
That’s what I hate on OGS too :sweat_smile:.

Anyways, what I said should be read as: do not stop playing humans because you get distracted by in-game interaction, not as: please avoid any interaction with humans here.

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I get that.

About playing humans, for @GabriBio, the short usual rules of politeness are
1 say “hi gg” at the beginning.
2 say thanks at the end.
3 don’t talk during the game.

That’s not compulsory you can do more or less but that’s how most will feel comfortable.

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Thanks for the suggestion. I will stop playing AI :slight_smile:

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WOW! This is exactly what i was looking for. My only concern is shifting to 13x13 to 19x19, i don’t feel ready for it having only 10 days of experience.
Tomorrow i will reach a Go club to grasp a bit of theory of 13x13 and play a few games. Maybe i will feel more confident then to start your course on the 19x19 :slight_smile:

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No one becomes ready for it, without just giving it a go. The 19x19 game is quite different than smaller board sizes, so the only way to have enough experience for it is to experience actually playing it.

At the end of the day, it’s not brain surgery, so perfectly fine to just learn as you go.

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You will find there is quite little theory out there for this board size. Almost all English theory content is for 19x19, with some bits and pieces written for 9x9, but even 9x9 has much more theory content than 13x13.

As for when to start the bigger board, some start on it straight away. It’ll bend your brain a bit first couple games getting used to all the data to hold but you soon learn to filter down the relevant parts and it becomes manageable as you learn :slightly_smiling_face: enjoy the journey!

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The only theory i learned about 13x13 is that the ability to use the center at your advantage is reduced, compared to 19x19 (which is something i am still not so sure about that)

Besides this, all what you already learned on a 13x13 will be useful on a 19x19, no worry.