Your beginnings with Go

[yebellz]

In addition to this one, people have similarly discussed their beginnings with Go in other threads as well

Average Age on OGS

I’m really curious about what the average age on OGS is. Poll is anonymous, but feel free to share your story about how long you’ve been playing and how you got into the game if you like. poll

Did anyone here start learning in their 40s, and how high have you gotten?

I understand that learning Go when you’re younger is optimal, but those of us who started in our 40s can’t really change that. So I’m curious: Did any of you start to learn Go in your 40s? How high have you gotten in rank? (specify server/association for that rank) How long did it take you to reach that rank? And how focused have you been (or were you) on learning & improving? I realize that most stories will be complicated (I stopped learning for 2 years, etc.), and anecdotal data isn’t rea…

Interest in Go and Connections to CJK Cultures

It seems that a lot of people that are interested in Go tend to also have some sort of connection and/or affinity to Chinese, Japanese, and/or Korean (CJK) cultures, which are traditionally and historically associated with Go. Hence, I wanted to ask some questions via this thread. Do you have any connection to the CJK cultures? poll How are you connected to the CJK cultures? poll For privacy, I’ve made the polls anonymous. However, if you would like to share, please feel free to reply in a comm…

Self-reference for completeness

Your beginnings with Go

So I had my first game around two weeks ago. I don’t feel like I’m doing as good as I would like to, I’m a bit flustrated, which is why I want to ask about others’ expirience in that matter. I play igowin at three stones handicap, I won around 50% of games since the beginning (started 8 days ago, had only 3 games before that). I went as far as to 16kyu (I know it’s not accurate), so two stones handicap, but I can’t get past that. I feel like my play is all over the place, I can’t defend when s…

And in a broader, but related vain, here are some other threads focused on forums users talking about themselves…

Which languages do you speak?

Just out of curiosity, how multilingual are Go players? You can mention languages you are a native speaker of, you are fluent, actively learning or studied during one summer in your teens or even picking words and phrases due to exposure (for example you have a Greek son-in-law). All accepted. I’ll go first, from best to worst, at varying levels: Greek, English, French, German, Korean. I also tried to learn Portuguese (BR) and Hawaiian. Edit: since we ventured into ancient time…

Story Behind Your Username and/or Profile Pic?

I was thinking about usernames today. Choosing a username is a surprisingly difficult task; first, you have to think of something you like enough to have associated with your online identity, and then you have to hope that what you came up with is not taken. I thought it might be fun to explore how we each came up with our usernames. While I am not particularly fond of my own username, it does show a few things about my personality. I can’t recall the first place I used the name RubyMineshaf…