Your beginnings with Go

[Vsotvep]

1. How long have you been playing Go?
   Since December 2015, just before AlphaGo shook up the world.

2. How were you doing at the beginning?
   I played pretty randomly, not knowing where to start. My first instinct was to cover the board as homogeneously with the stones as possible, and then start fighting over the spoils. The 19x19 board always has been more attractive to me than the 13x13 or 9x9 boards. I remember discovering sensei’s library, and learning a few joseki. Then I spent a whole lot of time reading more articles on sensei’s…
   Apart from playing against my girlfriend, I didn’t really want to play against other humans (no easy way to take back mistakes and explore alternative routes), so I played a lot of games against AI, in particular against Steenvreter, GnuGo and Cosumi. This brought me to what I would now estimate to be around 12k.

3. How old were you when you started?
   22

4. Why did you pick up Go, how you got in touch with it for the first time, what was your motivation at the beginning?
   I’ve already told this on another topic once:

@Vsotvep

I wanted to play a game with my girlfriend, which was supposed to be Othello / Reversi, but I thought she meant Go when searching for a game with black and white pieces. After we played some Othello we decided to both learn the rules of Go and try it out. She liked it for a while, until I got hooked to sensei’s library and she couldn’t win anymore.

5. How do you think a person should do at the beginning? What would you expect from a beginner in the first few weeks since they started?
   First I expect them to play all their stones right next to each other, in a very small corner or somewhere in the middle of the board. Then I would expect they will learn that they’re always too slow and overshoot by playing too loosely.
   They will get very frustrated when they’re facing the same stupid mistake yet again, for the 50th time (not discovering an atari, putting their own group in atari, filling an eye, hane on the 1st line and being cut).
   They have potential if they survive long enough to discover a snapback before playing it.

6. How you progressed since the start?
   As stated before, I played a lot on my computer and phone against bots, until I was about 12k. After discovering correspondence, I played some games here on OGS, which got me to SDK rank quite smoothly. I think what mostly helped me to get to SDK was to start planning moves, force myself to actually read (something which I still have to do regularly) and watch the NHK cup.
   I also still feel I’m actually more towards 10k if I have to play live games, I don’t like the stress and halfway through the game I tend to lose focus.