Where do I learn go

I’ve tried the tsumego web sites but I don’t understand why the answers are correct or not. What should I do?

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Play a bunch of 9x9 games it’s fun and fast and the quickest way to learn some basics. Move to bigger boards when you feel like it. Focus on having fun and you’ll be a solid beginner before you know it.

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I do not see that tab on my browser.

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I do not see community, tools, or a search bar.

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It looks like @Atorrante has the “experimental changes” turned on, which you too can turn on in Settings under “general preferences”:
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I highly recommend doing so, because the new interface is a big improvement, in my opinion. Nevertheless, the things they are trying to show you are available in the old interface, as well, which is the current stable version.

If you click on the “hamburger menu” in the top-left:
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You’ll see both the search bar and the “learn to play Go” link that Atorrante was referencing.

Personally, I’d rather recommend an external resource: learn-go.net. It’s a lovely interactive tutorial that takes you from the very basics to some pretty complex stuff.

There’s a chance that the OGS “learn to play go” module has been improved since I last looked at it, but the last several people I’ve pointed in its direction (2 years ago) came away confused and ultimately stopped playing, later citing confusion from the tutorial over “eyes”, which is a fundamental concept to beginner Go problems. Honestly, it’s probably still a decent intro for some people, but learn-go.net is just more comprehensive, has more examples, and clearer explanations.

Also, what sites are you looking at for tsumego? The internal OGS one? Another I’d recommend is tsumego-hero.com, which nicely gamifies tsumego, but also has a solid collection of puzzles for absolute beginners, as well as collections for people at all levels.

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Ok. Yes, the ogs lessons are very confusing, talking about “bent four” shapes that are never defined, and telling me I have to choose between ADKS with no explanation of why K was the right answer.

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That makes sense! My friends also thought that there weren’t enough clear definitions. I think it probably would work really well as a “refresher” for someone who has already learned the rules, but then stepped away for awhile.

Learn-go.net is my top recommendation, but if you find that tutorial ever going at too high a speed, it doesn’t hurt to pause, return to earlier sections in the tutorial, or to take a break and try some beginner problems on Tsumego Hero before advancing further through the tutorial.

Also, if you ever have specific questions about concepts, definitions, or anything else Go-related, this forum is full of people with vast and varied Go knowledge, so I’d highly recommend that you come back here if you need more help :slight_smile:

If you search for terms related to your question, you might even find that a similar thread already exists (the Forum search functions here are handy and robust), and if you’re not sure where your question should be asked, you could always just continue this thread right here or create a new one

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I’ll throw my 2cents in here.

I have a whole playlist for steps after you learn the rules of the game. Explaining bases, opening, and some simple middle game and end games principles to follow. Clossi Approach

I also have a problem set I made for some simple beginner tactics like capture and cutting. Go Problems

Since I made these I am biased but hopefully you find them helpful.

:+1:

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The best introduction to Go I’ve ever seen is the “Beginner Go Series” by “In Sente” on Youtube, especially the “Staying Connected/How to Practice” episode.

I feel that the first few of those videos are almost perfect as far as teaching to a total beginner goes, the next ones might confuse you a bit more, in that case there are also some other good resources such as the Tiger’s Mouth tutorial and perhaps the Beginner Study Section at Sensei’s Library, on top of the resources other people linked here.

It looks like you might have missed this topic that Atorrante linked in their first reply to you. I’ll add to that the link to OGS user pseudocalm’s profile, where they have a link to a google doc of their own full of Go resources for beginners.

I feel like there actually are a lot of good resources aimed at beginners, but for one reason or another it seems to be difficult to let beginners easily find those resources.

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Can’t believe nobody has mentioned Go Magic yet, they have some great content!

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For free?
In video format (find his first videos where he has DDK lectures):

In forum text/images (has already been mentioned):

In Android:

In book format (Life and death + relative shape explanations in Chapter 6):

I feel that the forum should have a topic similar to this one pinned at the top, together with the “Welcome to the Online Go forums!” one, so that it’s among the first things a newcomer sees when they come here. Perhaps titled “List of resources for beginners” or something more eye-catching.

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There is such a thing:

You could have found all this information in this topic and MUCH MORE, in the topics categorised as: “Resources”, “Teaching” and “Go Videos”

Also, in the website itself there is this:

Books, video, equipment, groups, discords, software, other servers, more sites, other resources, online teaching schools, clubs and organisations.

All those can be found with a couple of clicks. People complain sometimes that OGS UI is not very friendly, but I do not think that it is obscure either:

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I know that the resources are somewhere to be found if you search long enough, my point is that beginners and newcomers are the most likely to be disoriented when coming here, which is why this very topic we’re writing under exists.

So for example I don’t think any newcomer is likely to click on “Bugcat’s thread guide”, because (at least to me) that title immediately sounds more like a thing you might be interested in if you had ties with the community, and even if you click on it, being confronted with the wall of links mostly confirms that feeling, especially since most of the links near the top are non-go stuff at a glance.

Other Go Resources is a great page that I happened to already know about, but the sidebar activated by the hamburger button also seems to escape a lot of users (as we see in this topic, again). Also, it’s been pointed out in this topic that the “Learn to play Go” thing might not be as newbie-friendly as one would hope. Generally, I would say that for total beginners neither of those places are as good as many of the resources we’ve linked in this topic.

Since beginners who have such troubles might find their way to the forum, I was just proposing to have a visible topic with a title that immediately communicates to newcomers that it’s going to answer their questions. And since as we can see from this topic there are a lot of good resources for beginners, I think it would be good if they were curated in a newcomer-friendly sort of way.

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To answer this question specifically (i.e. understand tsumegos and not other aspects of the game), I don’t know what you mean by “the” tsumego web sites but maybe you have been working on tsumego collections that are too difficult for a beginner. Try these: https://tsumego-hero.com/sets, start with sets of difficulty 1 and then sets of difficulty 2. If you still don’t understand why a move works or doesn’t work, play out some variations on a real board or on a go software. And if you are still confused, ask specific questions on the forum, someone will certainy explain in detail!

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The best place to learn go is a go club if you have the opportunity.
So the first thing i would try is checking if there are some go players around.

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I don’t understand their problems at all. There are no hints or explanations.

Can you give an example or two of a problem you don’t understand?