I want to learn Go seriously, and avoid online. assume that there is no Go player in my area, no local community.
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I am curious to know your reasons behind this.
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Since I didnât know what a [IZIS Intelligence Go Board is, I looked it up.
Looks like a nice thing, but it is a lot of money.
Definitely has dome nice features though.
If you definitely want to avoid being online, this seems like a good option.
Being isolated from other go players is a disadvantage. In my opinion the best way to learn go is to play other people. The absence of other players and a local community makes that difficult. How about looking for players who want to play a correspondence game with you, using sms, email or even postcards to relay the moves?
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Do you know the game already?
If you donât or are at the very beginning, I would still go with online first and learn the basics, before making that investment.
One option with online is to play correspondence games and ârelayâ the moves onto a real board at home.
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You donât need iZIS to play a bot, you need a computer only. You donât need to go online too, just install a bot on your computer.
IZIS is an interesting hardware but not necessary. Quite expensive IMHO, and you may have more difficulties to parameter to your own convenience.
Finally bots have pros and cons. They can only partially replace humans. Nothing so fun to win thanks to the weakness of a bot. Nothing so fun to be crushed by a strong bot either.
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No, it is a terrible investment. It might be reasonable spending.
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So, if you would like to play at home on a goban against bots - there are lots of ways to do this that would cost you a lot less money - assuming that you can order a decent goban and stones for less than $900 USDâŚ
Rather than having the AI built into the board, itâs much more economical to download any of the free Go AI options available, and have that live on a laptop / PC, and then you play that in physical stones on your goban
So, if you are anywhere between 15 kyu and 8 kyu or below, I would recommend starting with GnuGo - if you follow that link you can download a free SGF editor that comes bundled with GnuGo
If you are already 8 to 5 kyu or above, and want to get stronger, I would recommend Katrain
Katrain also has the added benefit of helping you review your games with a strong AI, and helping you see where the game turned, and how you can improve from a given position, etc.
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The latest version of Katrain has humanlike AI all the way down to 25k. Do you still reckon to start with GnuGo?
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For me, I guess itâs based on familiarity - Iâve spent more time exploring GnuGo at various rank levels, and Iâm more familiar with its various play-styles.
Iâve experimented a bit with the human-like Katrain at lower kyu levels, and - in my very subjective experience - it still feels like Katrain will recommend fight-heavy options that I associate with higher ranked play, even when I try to set it to play at lower kyu levels
To me, it feels like GnuGo relies less on fighting / invading, and more on being ruthlessly efficient with grabbing an advantage early, and then using direction of play to build moyos and extensions - so I associate those skills with ranking up from like 15 kyu to 10 kyu, but thatâs just my take on it
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Just so that you know thereâs another option:
I canât afford either of them 
but for some reason I cannot explain Iâd prefer this one, just a gut feeling.
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IZIS looks to be very cool. It is also very expensive for what it is. (As hinted at above by @Uberdude, it will certainly go down in value over time, not up⌠therefore, it would be an expense, not an investment).
Of course if you have oodles of cash to burn and a hankering for an IZIS that wonât quit. Take the leap. Have a blast!
However, if you still have an open mind, read onâŚ
No doubt you appreciate that an IZIS is a board-shaped container that houses an AI bot buried inside with a neat blinking goban. In other words, it is a computer wrapped inside a Go board. Youâre not avoiding a computer. Itâs just got a different interface (one that is very limited compared to a typical computer or tablet) for you to interact with.
Whether itâs upgradable over time (new programs? updated bot logic?) I could not tell by reviewing the companyâs website. I, too, was intrigued enough to take a close look at first. Again, itâs a very cool idea. For half the price or less, Iâd even take another look. ButâŚ
As noted by others: A real computer or tablet (which you obviously have access to or you wouldnât be reading this forum) gives you access to free upgradable/tweakâable AI bots. And with that same computer or tablet you get free access to plenty of learning resources (e.g., check out: WEIQI Roadmap).
So instead of spending US$900 on an IZIS, personally I would spend half of that on a really nice Android tablet (if I didnât already have one 
)⌠along with a lovely real world hands-on Go set for the dining room table. Keep the other half of that money in your pocket.
Then, download some free AI programs onto your lovely hi-resolution tablet and play Go offline against the AI bots while you manipulate those beautiful real world Go stones on the board on your dining room table.
Alternatively, spend a fraction of that $900 on personal video lessons with a Go guru online. I know youâve said you donât like the online Go gaming experience, but perhaps with a kind human face with whom you build a learning relationship, thereâs likely to be a very different experience.
Regardless, happy hunting. Let us know what you wind up doing! 
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Thatâs a great question, but before I/we can properly advise further on the IZIS Intelligence Go Board, I need to understand what âlearn Go seriouslyâ means to you given your constraints.
The IZIS board is a high-tech, expensive item. The key features it offers are opponent simulation (AI) and automatic recording/review. Since youâre serious and have no local community or opponent, the AI is the boardâs main value to you. To determine if itâs worth the significant investment, please reframe your goal with some specifics:
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Current Level & Goal: What is your current estimated rank (e.g., 20 kyu, 5 kyu, 1 kyu)? What rank do you aim to achieve? (Your current OGS rank is 2Kyu and your 9x9 is stronger than 19x19 records for the last 30 days, right?)
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Budget & Duration: You mention âseriousâ >>> What is your total budget for learning tools (boards, books, software, courses) and How long are you committed to/dedicating to study (e.g., 1 hour/day for the next month/quarter/year)?
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Specific Need: Are you looking for (a) strong opponent(s) to practice against, or a teaching tool that can offer problems, reviews, and tutorials? (Note: As OGSers mentioned in details above, high-level AI opponents are widely available and free/cheap online, even if you just want to review the game on a physical board later).
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By understanding your rank and what you hope to get specifically from the AI opponent/teacher (s), we can assess if the IZIS board is the best way to spend that money compared to, say, a high-quality physical board and a subscription to an advanced Go learning app/course used for problem-solving and self-study.
(Picture taken by me at a dear friendâs country garden)
I greatly enjoy my Chessnut smart chess board, itâs a meaningful improvement vs either playing solely online or mirroring my moves on a âdumbâ board. I find the act of not having to click to input a move after you make it is psychologically huge.
That said, my Chessnut board was literally 15% the cost of either of these things.
There are a few phone apps that will let you take a screenshot or live video of a goban and translate that into a virtual board position. I sadly donât know of any apps that both have that functionality and have it wired up to a Go server, although maybe some support bots.
Iâd love to build similar functionality into the OGS client Iâm working on, and wire it up so that in live games it will both automatically recognize moves you play and speak moves opponents make, so you can play a game without looking at the computer screen, but since I havenât even opened the initial version of my app up to external testers beyond a few friends thatâs quite a ways away .
(Iâm assuming by âavoid onlineâ you do not actually mean âavoid playing with other players onlineâ but âavoid staring at a computer screenâ. If you donât want to play with other humans, I donât know what to say â this is a fundamentally social game!)
At the risk of putting too fine a point on this, the âgameâ of go is essentially a 2D math puzzle. Humans playing against humans is merely a social construct making it as such, but by no means is our playing against each other a key requirement of the puzzle itself. 
I think we have very different views on the importance of what you describe as âmerelyâ a social construct (there are many 2D math puzzles that do not have the context of several thousand years of social culture!), but I also fear thatâs a bit off-topic for âshould I buy the robotâ
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On the side of seriousness if I may suggest, the first and most important point is how real is your effort you put in your studies.
How you read enough a problem in your brain and reach a certainty of getting the solution.
How you put the diagrams on a board with real stones.
So this is not fondamentally a matter of materials, and be sure to not search a solution in something else as yourself.
This reminds me of the time I was committed into getting stronger myself. Every day I met my teacher who gave to me a used and old book of tsumego. I put each problem one by one on a board and spent time until I got the solution for sure. My teacher was in the next room doing other things and this pushed me to read as far as I could. I had to prove that I wasnât lazy. An IZIS board wonât have so much help on this.
If you feel you are already committed in deep studies, practicing every day tsumego and dissecting pro games, then you may have a look to get your experience a bit more cozy with an IZIS board.
Your hypothesis makes me wonder if you review often your games after it ended with your opponent (something I usually do OTB).
Agreed! We can start a fresh thread on this if you please, but itâs largely academic.
Nothing to wonder about here. Yes, I most certainly do review my (mostly losing!) games. I donât need to use real stones on the table, as a screen depiction of the game (and my mistakes) provides plenty of insights.
Back on thread: Itâs unclear to me how an IZIS would enhance this learning experience.
Itâs not about real stones. Itâs about how limited you feel about the social interaction. Are you reviewing with your opponent? Itâs something I donât see often online.