Learning Go

Go is an board game that originated in East Asia, probably China, more than 2000 years ago.  It’s a strategic game with two players, like Chess, but with a completely different “feel”.  I don’t know how to articulate what that feel is, but I can say that playing Chess has always felt unnatural to me, like doing an exercise my body wasn’t designed for, Go has always felt natural. But I guess some people feel the opposite, and some people enjoy both games.

A go board during a game

The first time I played was sometime in 2001 or 2002, but I didn’t stick with the game because I didn’t have many chances to play, and didn’t know where to learn more about it.  This guide is to help out with that.  I’m not going to explain the rules or  strategy, but I will tell you where to find people who can.

The Rules and the Basics

I really recommend The Interactive Way to Go when you’re starting out. The site is a series of lessons done in java so that you have to answer questions that steadily require greater understanding of the game. The pacing of the lessons is good, so that if you start at the beginning, you should move pretty smoothly through them without having to go back a lot.  Even if you’ve played a few games, you may get something out of studying the patterns, or tesuji, that appear later in the guide.

Finding Opponents

Once you know the rules, there’s no substitute for playing. So check out your local club (perhaps us) or KGS (a go server). Promotego has an easy search for clubs within the United States. Especially on KGS, it should be easy to find many players near your strength. If you find players with a different strength level, handicaps are an ordinary part of go that can help equalize the game. I have played for several years, but I still regularly take a handicap of four stones, and I know players who could give me nine stones, if they were gracious enough to play me.

Playing 9 x 9 games is a good way to learn because it doesn’t take so long, and because the small board helps you focus on the fundamentals of the game. My experience from watching people is that playing the 9×9 boards is the fastest way to learn.

There are computer programs which can play Go, but they play oddly, so if you play them too much, it may hurt your play. This is less of a problem if you play 9×9. If you download Glgo, it comes with a program you can play.

Even More

The good news is that everything from here on out is optional. You can spend as much or as little time on Go as you’d want. Just keep playing, and you’ll enjoy the game and improve over time. But if you want to learn faster, there’s other things you can do.

If you have fifteen minutes to kill, you might not have time for a game, but that’s plenty of time to do some Go problems. First of all there’s Goproblems.com. In my opinion, the best problems there are in the time trials on the right. The Senseis’ Library wiki has a section of beginner exercises. Gobase has a set of Korean academy problems, as well as facilities for replaying professional games, but they’ve started requesting a donation for joining.

There are a lot of really good go books out there. Tesuji and Life and Death by James Davies are both extremely good.  Tesuji is easier, while Life and Death has a very broad range of problems.  If you had to pick one book that’s helped me more than all others, it would be Attack and Defense from the same series (Amazon doesn’t have it, but other places do). Kageyama’s Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go is one of the most popular books out there.  It’s got a really nice conversational feel, and helps with big picture aspects of your game. I also like Fundamental Principles of Go by Yilun Yang, though it’s probably for somewhat more advanced players. Lastly, David Carlton has an incredibly in depth set of reviews for go books published in English.

Once you’ve been playing games for awhile, it helps to start reviewing them. That’s easy if you play on KGS, since it creates a record of the game. Otherwise, just sit with your opponent and try and replay as much of the game as you can. The more that you try this, the more you can remember. If you can, get a stronger player to have a look at the game and advise you. There are a lot of people who might be willing to review your games, including several people in the Pittsburgh room on KGS. Otherwise, just exchange ideas with your opponent. When you get to a move that gave you a hard time, try out different variations, or try to identify mistakes you made. You can also submit games to the Go Teaching Ladder.