6 ms·
I'm learning the game of Go at near fourty. But I'm not having any of the problems he describes. A great thing about learning and playing online is that you ca
by danielvf 10y ago
I'm learning the game of Go at near fourty. But I'm not having any of the problems he describes.
A great thing about learning and playing online is that you can find an opponent at your same skill level within minutes. Unlike learning in a local club, where every person you will ever play beats you every time, I win slightly more than half my games. I also get this nice increasing graph of my skill level. This is a lot more fun.
- reefoctopus 10y agoWhere do you play?
- danielvf 10y agohttps://online-go.com/ https://online-go.com/ I highly recommend it.
- artursapek 10y agoI just started on there as well, great website.
- aurelianito 10y ago11k there. What are your strengths?
- danielvf 10y ago19k. I started a few weeks after AlphaGo's big games.
- artursapek 10y agoI'm hovering around 18k, still a noob
- aurelianito 10y ago11k there. What are your strengths?
- karlkeefer 10y ago5 kyu checking in. The client is terrible and old, but the community on KGS go server is unparalleled. Highly recommend giving it a shot - very high level players will often provide commentary to help you improve.
- fonosip 10y agoTry http://go.ba.net http://go.ba.net Play Go with Friends or Bots no registration, no download needed
- lordnacho 10y agoI wish physical sports were like this. Anything online is blessed with this mechanic where you can keep it challenging for everyone other than the people at the top or bottom (based on my experience in CoD where I'm pretty sure I'm bottom). With sports like soccer it's quite noticeable that some people are way better than everyone else, or way worse. And there's no way to improve since you can't just rearrange thousands of teams.
- crispyambulance 10y agoMany physical sports are actually just great for 40+ folks, that's why there are "masters" categories in competitions. As long as individuals recognize the limitations of their age groups they'll be just fine. Actually, even if individuals _don't_ recognize their age limitations and play against 20-somethings that's also OK (if they're willing to have their ass handed to them on every competition).
- spdegabrielle 10y agoI started playing soccer at 40 - the best way to learn is to play with and against people who are much better than you. BUT is is a dangerous game - you can get hurt playing against 20year olds!
- braythwayt 10y agoFor a modest value of “much.” My experience is that you need to play against people who will challenge you, but within an appropriate level of attainment. I am a keeper, so I will speak of keeper skills. One important skill to learn early is to get off the line and cut off the angles. If you stay on the line when you are just learning, the net is too big and you have no chance to make saves. Thus, you never learn to make saves because you have no real feedback on what you do. You always lose. Now if you come out a bit, you start making some saves, and you get better at it. This would lead you to a place where you make nearly all the saves, and you would stop learning, unless your opponents are good enough to use passing and make you keep track of multiple strikers at once. But if they are so good (or your defenders are so bad) that they are always swarming the net in threes and fours, you would get stick on the line and never learn anything. So, the best way to learn is for your opponents to be better than you, but not so much better that they discourage good play on your part. And as you get better, they must get better as well, so that you must continue to get better.
- wslh 10y agoI tried to learn Go, obviously beyond understanding the rules, and found it very difficult comparing to Chess. I wonder how you dealt with the huge exploration space of just putting one stone in the beginning of the game. In Chess, every movement is very constrained.
- danielvf 10y agoThe first move is actually pretty constrained - there's only four normal choices, of which only two are usual. You are trying to grab a corner, and trading off between a certainty of controlling a corner (4-3), or more influence on the rest of the board (4-4 on the corner dot).
- tel 10y agoI often feel like "learning Go" is deceptively a few steps deep. When one learns Chess you effectively can get to the tactical aspect as soon as you know how the pieces move. When you "learn Go" at the first level you understand the rules and their basic consequences, but you still don't quite know "how the pieces move". This is natural since no rule dictates these things in Go—they're something you learn as handed down from thousands of years of people playing it. But once you get the "how the pieces move" of Go—essentially, the Haeng-ma and maybe the basic opening algorithm, you can quickly dig in to the really rich tactical and strategic levels just as you can with Chess.
- dvanduzer 10y agoCrowdsourcing your opponents online is a perfect way to train a skill. (Assuming you've identified a clear skill you wish to train, and that you're willing to make that time commitment to train it.) Anonymous opponents can take the sting out of the learning curve. A lot of local special interest clubs fail because they don't deal well with newcomers and beginners. This essay was perfect down to the last line, written through the lens of that special bond of parenthood.
- vithlani 10y agoHi, what learning sources would you recommend? I am in a similar position...