Many names, the same game. Go.



The oldest game still played today. Probably the game played by the most people world wide. And one of the deepest, most beautiful games ever created. As Edward Lasker (Chess IM) said, "If aliens exist, they play go."

To stimulate the discussion and answer some questions I'm sure will come up:

I've been playing for about 4 years now. I took up the game after becoming frustrated with chess. I'm ranked about 6 kyu right now.

Go is primarily an Asian game. Originated in China, but very popular in Japan and Korea now too.

Rankings: There are three divisions. From worst to best, they are 30 kyu to 1 kyu, 1 dan to 7 dan, and 1 dan professional to 9 dan professional.

Rules: Quite simple. Players alternate playing a stone on the intersections of the board. Black goes first. If a stone (or a group of stones) becomes surrounded to the point where there are no empty points adjacent to it (or liberties), that stone (or group) is captured. You can not repeat a position. At the end of the game, the winner is the player who has the most points, the sum of the area in which they've surrounded on the board plus the number of captures they've made.

Learning the game: Go download igowin and play against the computer a few times. Then download KGS and watch and play away. Expect to suck for a while. Thankfully, go has a very elegant way to handicap games, by providing the black player with several free moves, usually 2 to 9 stones.

Game in progress on KGS:




World Champion: Go doesn't really have a world championship. It does have a lot of separate tournaments. And some players do well in these consistently. I'd say that Lee Chang-ho is the closest thing to a champ there is.

Computer Strength: In general, computers suck at playing go. Recently, MogoTitian played with a 9 stone handicap and beat Kim MyungWan (8 dan pro). They played again with a 7 stone handicap, and Kim crushed Mogo.

That should be enough to get us going. Ask away.

who is winning in the screenshot you posted and what do the numbers 4 and 5 under your names mean?

how good did you get at chess before you quit to play go?

How much of a beating do you take when you first start playing? I've heard new players should be prepared to get crushed when they start before they "get" what's going on.

It's a random shot I googled. I counted the score quick, and it appears that white has about 88 points (84 surrounded, plus the 4 stones captured), and black has about 69 (64 points + 5 captures).

The numbers under the names indicate the number of captures each side has made.

USCF rating of about 1300. I quit mostly because of the difficulty of finding similar strength opponents, the lack of a viable handicap system, and the existence of draws.


Alot. It's discouraging at first, but it's better to play and loose to a player that has some idea of what's going on, than playing and maybe beating another newbie.

In addition, white is usually given 6.5 points for free at the end of the game to compensate for letting black move first. The half point prevents ties.

And that komi as it's called, is not factored into my estimate of the score.

Forgot one thing on this. The difference in strength is related to the number of handicap stones required to allow for an even game. IE, a 8 kyu would play white and give a 10 kyu two handicap stones.

All professionals are strong enough that giving any kind of a handicap results in a loss. Their rankings are determined based on their tournament results.

Between two pros, a 9 stone handicap (the largest commonly given) results in a win by about 130 points.

How does the clock work on KGS? Compared to FICS the server is very poorly documented and so I wasn't able to figure that out. I watched a couple of games there a few weeks ago and had no idea what the hell the time controls were doing. I'd like to start playing at some point but that threw me off.

How does a game of go end? Do you fill up all the intersections or get a set number of stones? Are resignations allowed? Are there go tournaments in the US? Can you approximate your go rating and those divisions as ELO numbers so I better understand what they mean?

Closer to the former. Eventually you reach a point where there are no more sensible plays to be made. You have the option of passing instead of playing a stone, and the game ends when both players pass, I believe. EDIT: When I say there are no more sensible plays, eventually every stone you play is either going to be filling in your own territory or be dead in your opponent's territory, and either way it counts against you.

KGS supports all the major time methods.

X minutes absolute aka sudden death

Canadian (X moves made in Y minutes, after X moves the clock resets to Y)

X minutes + Y x Z seconds by-nomi. After X minutes, you have Y periods of Z seconds. If you move faster than Z seconds, you loose no time.

The last is the most popular. Typical games are 20 minutes plus 5 30-second by-nomis. Some people play blitz at up to 0 minutes + 1 8-second by-nomi. So 8 seconds per move max.

A legal move is to pass, IE not play a stone. The game ends when both players pass. Usually this is at the point where there are no more points to be taken. Playing beyond this would only result in you loosing points by filling in the territory you have captured, or by increasing your opponents score by playing within the area he has captured.


Of course.

They're rare, but yes some. Only amateurs though. AFAIK, there are only 2 American pros, one is retired (but teaches here in Minneapolis. Great guy), the other plays in Japan.

I don't know enough about the ELO or the KGS ranking math to do this.

KGS ranking math

Shamelessly ripped from Wikipedia

Elo Rating Go rank
2940 9 dan professional
2820 5 dan professional
2700 7 dan amateur or 1 dan professional.
2600 6 dan (amateur)
2500 5 dan
2400 4 dan
2300 3 dan
2200 2 dan
2100 1 dan
2000 1 kyu
1900 2 kyu
1800 3 kyu
1500 6 kyu
1000 11 kyu
500 16 kyu
100 20 kyu

I'm digging these threads. Never played Go, but I think I'll dl it and give it a whirl.

Another game I'd like to see someone do one of these on is cribbage.

In Chess, perhaps the best advice you can give a beginner is to spend most of their time studying tactics.

Is it similar for Go? If not, what should a beginner focus on to improve their overall skill?

How long did it take you to get into the single-digit kyus? I've been playing for about five years, non-seriously, with some big gaps in between, and I'm only around 22 kyu.

Also, do you play at DGS?

Well, go is a much subtler blend of strategy and tactics. If a game of chess is a battle, then a game of go is a war.

There are some common tactics (called tesjui) that any beginner can pick up easily. Most of these will arise naturally in games.

If I were to suggest a path of study, I'd say, skip the studying, play 100 games. Then read a tesjui book and a book about life and death and continue playing.

Life and death is the study of attempting to kill (or make un-killable) a group of stones.

Example:



If it's black's turn to play, he can make his group unkillable by playing at A. White can't play at either of the two remaining points inside his territory because those stones would have no liberties, and they'd immediately be captured. Conversersly, if it's white's turn, he can kill this group and eventually capture all of black's stones by playing at A.

About a year of playing 5-10 games per week, with a few hours of study or review per month. I went from 30 kyu to about 18 kyu in aboul 3 months.

Here's my current ranking graph, returning from about a 1.5 year break.



I was rated at 8 kyu when I stopped playing.

No. KGS only right now. I haven't had time to hook up with my live playing friends recently.

To help us newbs out, can you mspaint, on the screen shot in mp, which stones are captured?

I AM HELPING!!



Anything that would be surrounded before it can surround any group of the opponents is dead where it stands. For example, the big black group on the right side is dead, because a white play at Q13 would surround it totally. Then it would be removed.

Usually, white wouldn't play at Q13, since it's superfluous (and would reduce white's score in some scoring systems).

How did you get into this mindfucck of a game?

Dead stones and groups are marked in red.



In doing this, I realized I miscounted in my response about this. Black is getting crushed. White is winning by about 50 points, instead of the 20 that my original count gave.

You want a mindfucck? Play go blindfolded. Or worse, have both players play with the same color stones.

Oh, I see where I was stupid now, a captured stone is actually REMOVED from the board. I did not get that.

I played Pente a ton, but never Go. I am culturally ******ed obviously.

Thanks to both responders.

Ray

i know you're joking here, but it made me think of a question. what kind of crazy variants of go are there? my dad used to play scrabble very seriously and he's told me about some sick games like "clabbers" where you're allowed to play a string of letters in any order as long as they anagram a word. any insane variants of go for wacko advanced players?

I thought Go was a solved game? How can a computer possible not win every time then?