8 ms·

Learn to play Go

403 points by kqr 1y ago

sagaro 1y ago
This is pretty well made. The progression is good and there are no distractions. And best part it doesn't force you to create an account.
- nearting 1y ago
  Yes, but without an account, at least on mobile, you can't change any settings besides light/dark mode and language, which is pretty annoying.
  - nakedrobot2 1y ago
    honestly i find it confusing. it tells me to make a move, but i don't know if i'm playing black or white. sometimes when i click on a point, it puts the opposite color on a different point.
    - amcoy37 1y ago
      The opposite color appearing on a different point is the computer playing the response to your move.
suds05 1y ago
Keeps you engaged.
brooke2k 1y ago
By chance I used this just a few weeks ago when I started learning to play Go. It's a pretty good resource! Personally, my favorite tutorial I went through was The Interactive Way to Go (https://way-to-go.gitlab.io https://way-to-go.gitlab.io) Also notable is Sensei's Library (https://senseis.xmp.net https://senseis.xmp.net) which is a very old and unbelievably thorough wiki on everything Go. It's a cool place to browse even if you don't play.
- zovirl 1y ago
  Sensei's Library is a gem from the non-commercial web! It reminds me of the C2 wiki (https://wiki.c2.com https://wiki.c2.com) but for Go instead of software engineering.
frenchtoast8 1y ago
I recently learned Go for the first time and I have played almost 50 games of 9x9 on Online Go Server so far. I’m finding it a lot of fun but it has been very humbling. I learned chess in 7th or 8th grade and was easily able to get to about 700 Elo on chess.com after barely learning the rules, which is about the 60th percentile on the site. I only play a couple games a year now but can still hold my own against 1200 Elo opponents, which is in the 90th percentile. I feel like I have put in just as much effort into learning Go. I bought a book and have been doing exercises. But I’m still in the 0.1 percentile on the site! (Yes, that’s not a typo.) I’m sticking with it because it’s fun and that’s all that matters. But I definitely have a lot to learn.
- igor47 1y ago
  The skill that transfers from chess to go is reading -- "if I play here, my opponent is likely to play there, and then I will..."
  - Zacharias030 1y ago
    why is this downvoted?
- jibal 1y ago
  The average FIDE elo is 1550; chess.com's average of 1200 elo is much lower because it has many beginner players, including children. The gap between those is huge--much larger than the numbers may suggest. At chess.com 1200 elo people still have terrible board vision and routinely drop pieces; by the time one reaches FIDE 1550 elo that is no longer true and people are starting to plot out complex tactics requiring accurate visualization several moves ahead. According to the elo formula, a 700 elo player is expected to "hold their own"--draw or win--against a 1200 elo player 1 in 19 games (so they will lose 18 of 19 games), and against a 1550 elo player 1 in 134 games (so they will lose 133 out of 134 games). A 1200 elo player is expected to "hold their own" against a 1550 elo player about 1 in 18 games (they will lose 17 out of 18 games). However, the chess.com and FIDE elos are from very different pools--1200 elo at chess.com is probably equivalent to about 600-800 elo FIDE.
DevDesmond 1y ago
I know that UI! https://lichess.org/learn https://lichess.org/learn
dragontamer 1y ago
Unfortunately, the early moves in the game ("Joseki") are the most important. They are also the most difficult to learn. It is essential to study these tactics in this website... if only because they are the only "ground truth" known about Go. But for rapid improvement, the only real way forward is to play lots and lots of games to learn how the early game flows. Direction of play, which side of the board is most important and other such details. Seems like a reasonably good tutorial in terms of layout. But just pointing out: joseki and direction of play is "more important" in terms of winning. Its just damn near impossible to teach so maybe its best for beginners to ignore this incredibly important (and difficult) subject. --------- To put it in perhaps more concrete terms: playing a "tactic" position may net you +10 points across a sequence of 5 moves or so. (IE: One well placed tactical move, and ~4 followup moves may capture 5 enemy stones + 5 territory simultaneously from your opponent). However, every single early-game move is worth nearly +20 points of territory if played correctly. I'm serious. That's why when you watch top-level Go play, there's a lot of "teleporting" across the 19x19 board, searching for the most important positions. And there is also very, very loose play and possible sacrifices / aji. (Maybe its not a true sacrifice, but you'd be willing to sacrifice if the opponent over-extends).
- tarvaina 1y ago
  Nitpick: The early moves in the game are called fuseki. Joseki refers to well-studied local patterns of moves and they appear through the middle game, not just in the early game. A couple of things I love about go is that you don't need to memorize fuseki, and that applying joseki correctly is as much a matter of judgment as it is of memory. (I am a 1 dan go player but haven't played much in the last 15 years.)
  - charcircuit 1y ago
    He could be thinking of shogi (though the kanji is 定跡 where joseki from go is 定石), where joseki refers to the well studied ways to play the opening of the game.
- Zacharias030 1y ago
  I don’t share that sentiment. Yes, at some point when people are somewhat able to take a decent lead home the fuseki becomes important. Before that, beginners really need to understand how to „move“ their stones, how to defend and connect their groups and how to cut and capture. If you see a strong player win against a weak player with a large handicap it always goes down the same way: the strong player places stones all over the board such that eventually many many skirmishes appear all over the board and then she is patient to take small advantage after small advantage, manifesting groups and territories out of what looks like thin air to the other player. At a somewhat higher amateur level and above the fuseki again loses importance and the distinguishing factor is fighting skills and judgement, fuseki and prep just becomes table stakes.
joeyrideout 1y ago
I became interested in learning Go recently after watching the magnificent AlphaGo movie [1] which is free on YouTube. I highly recommend giving it a watch if you haven't already. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXuK6gekU1Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXuK6gekU1Y
- jibal 1y ago
  Wow, that was incredible. I cried when Lee Sedol won game 4. And his and Fan Hui's philosophical takes were remarkable.
- ProllyInfamous 1y ago
  Watching the human programmers become dumbfounded as AlphaGo invented novel Go-playing strategies... is what I remember most from having watched this a few years ago (right before GPT3.5/ChatGPT debuted). The algorithm makes [victorious] wildcard moves which no human player would even contemplate [stupid moves become masterplays]. When 9D-master Sudol attributes human qualities to the beauty of his AI opponent's creativity upon formulating certain moves... is definitely eye-opening. Hubris replaced.
  - dragontamer 1y ago
    Nah. I think with the rise of KataGo, its becoming clear that AlphaGo's "dumbfounded" strategies were instead incredibly strong tactical play with hilarious levels of blindness with regards to ladders. It feels like modern AIs (like KataGo, which are hundreds of times better than AlphaGo) are getting closer to what humans consider appropriate strategic play. Go players must be humble because if the opponent is stronger then the opponent wins. But Go AI Programmers don't necessarily have to be. Go AI programmers look for the weaknesses, lean upon them and yes, prove that AlphaGo/AlphaZero never learned ladders. Ever. Or other such concepts of strongly forcing moves (ex: loose ladders). That's one of KataGo's biggest innovations. Explicitly programming a ladder solver so that simple ladders can indeed be factored in by the neural net. ---------- I do wonder how Lee Sodul will react if we told him that the superhuman AI he played could not see ladders... and had other such key weaknesses.
pixelpoet 1y ago
Love to see the objectively better Go on HN now and then too ;)
bubblyworld 1y ago
I love Go and have played it a lot in person, but I always struggle to get games online, even on OGS. Feels like the online community is very small compared to chess (which is now my boardgame of choice, basically for this reason). Has this changed? Are there better sites now where a beginner can find matches without waiting half an hour or more?
- Axnyff 1y ago
  There are more people on kgs and on fox go server
  - bubblyworld 1y ago
    Thanks, I'll check those out.
  - qnpnp 1y ago
    I wouldn't say so for KGS, especially for beginners. OGS is the go-to for western servers nowadays. Fox, without a doubt. I recommend Weiqihubb for a quick-access app to asian servers on all platforms, with puzzles (https://walruswq.com/WeiqiHub https://walruswq.com/WeiqiHub).
- lucketone 1y ago
  Do your settings allow for handicapped games? This increases pool of potential opponents.
  - bubblyworld 1y ago
    My personal preference is to play non-handicapped games, but that's a good point, thanks.
- iberator 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - heeton 1y ago
simianwords 1y ago
Will I like go if I don’t like chess? Chess seems too one dimensional for me if that makes sense.
- kqr 1y ago
  Only one way to find out. If you dislike chess because you don't like abstract total information strategy board games you will not like go. If you dislike chess because - it has too many rules, - the board is too smalll, - the pieces move around too much, or - it doesn't involve adversarial, collaborative construction, or any of the other things that make go different from chess, you have a chance of liking go.
  - simianwords 1y ago
    > If you dislike chess because you don't like abstract total information strategy board games you will not like go I think that's why I don't like chess. It seems to me that a winning strategy would be to think as far ahead as possible by enumerating all the permutations. A few heuristics exist however.
    - Ruarl 1y ago
      The neat thing about Go is that, whilst the winning strategy is exactly to think ahead and enumerate all possible positions, to do so is impossible. (Even the superhuman AI fudge it. They can just read farther ahead than humans.) So to do well you have to learn how to support your reading ahead with heuristics and a feel for the game. A famous amateur player and advocate for the game once went through all the game records of Go Seigen in order to digitize them. This means having to pore over hand-written diagrams looking for the next number in the sequence of moves. Obviously this is easier if you can guess where to look. But, if you guess them all correctly, then you are playing just as well as the old master! After spending a good few months on the task, he was a significantly better player!
      - simianwords 1y ago
        Nice. As systems become more and more complicated (like real world itself) it is no longer feasible to enumerate all permutations but rather get a feel for the patterns - an intuition. A skilled intuiter (?) would know the subtle ways in which patterns emerge.
qnpnp 1y ago
I think is the best Go tutorial to learn the rules: https://www.learn-go.net https://www.learn-go.net
marcosscriven 1y ago
Just idly clicking through until I got to “Ko”. I had no idea Go was stateful!
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  It's not supposed to be stateful. The ko rule is only there to block infinite loops.
  - marcosscriven 1y ago
    What I mean is you can’t just look at a board and know the ko “state” - but yes I’m sure in practice it’s not that important. Just my engineering brain picking up on it.
    - Liquid_Fire 1y ago
      Chess also has this "problem" thanks to rules like castling and en passant capture.
      - thaumasiotes 1y ago
        >> What I mean is you can’t just look at a board and know the ko “state” - but yes I’m sure in practice it’s not that important. > Chess also has this "problem" thanks to rules like castling and en passant capture. Chess is intended to be stateful. If you forget whether a castle has occurred (and then the king walked back to its starting position, and a rook repositioned into the corner) or not, chess players will note that you've messed up the game. The castling rule is there to stop you from castling more than once. Go is not intended to be stateful, and if you forget that a particular board layout may have come up in the past, go players will not note that you've messed up the game. It doesn't matter. The ko rule isn't there to stop you from repeating a board twice. It's there to stop you from having to repeat a board layout an infinite number of times, because things like the need for food and sleep would interfere with the game. Wrt the implementation concern, this distinction means, for example, that you must always track the castling state regardless of whether a player asks for it, whereas you're fine not bothering to track the history of a go board unless a player asks for it. You can just say "if you want to invoke ko, press this button, and we'll remember that board layout, and if it's already been flagged, the game will draw". That isn't done, but it could be done.
szopa 1y ago
I first learned to play Go back in university, but never got very good (it was competing with learning how to program). Many years later, shortly after the war in Ukraine started, I was looking for an activity to share with my 8-year-old son. Life was chaotic then: everyone was anxious, we were hosting a refugee lady, and I could see the stress taking a toll on him. I wanted something where it would be clear we shouldn’t be disturbed – and Go fit perfectly. We started playing, and it was fun. One of the great things about Go is its elegant handicap system, which makes it possible for players at very different levels to still enjoy a fair, challenging game. Since then, we’ve been going to the local Go club in Warsaw, and it’s become our main hobby. We play each other almost daily, travel to tournaments (sometimes abroad), and even spend our vacations at Go summer camp. The camp is actually a magical event. It takes place at a campsite in the middle of the Kaszuby Lake District. The conditions are spartan – you either live in a tent or a five-person cabin, and hot water is scarce. But the crowd that gathers there is incredible. Over breakfast you might get an impromptu intro to lambda calculus, in the evening you might end up in a deep philosophical conversation, or hear travel stories from far-off places, or suddenly learn way more about knitting than you thought possible. When we first went, it felt like discovering our long-lost family. The Go community is much smaller than chess, but also far more tight-knit and welcoming. I’ve heard chess can be more cutthroat, while in Go there’s this unspoken understanding that if you drive people away, you’ll have no one left to play with. When I travel, I like to drop in on local Go clubs. It’s always been a great experience – I especially enjoyed visiting the San Francisco Go Club in Japantown. I play almost exclusively over the board. I prefer long, thoughtful games, and I can’t really focus the same way on a screen. Oh, and the anime about Go, Hikaru no Go, is really good (you should watch it even if you don’t care about the game).
- vintermann 1y ago
  That anime is one of my favorites. The main characters are pretty anime-ish, all anime protagonists from that time look more or less the same, but the older adults (apparently Go is a bit of an old person's game in Japan) are drawn in a more naturalistic style with a lot of character. > in Go there’s this unspoken understanding that if you drive people away, you’ll have no one left to play with. Definitively not in online Go. I ran into some people who clearly thought racist trash-talk was a way to reduce the competition.
aosmith 1y ago
Go is a great game, my wife and I always have a drive-by game going, we use 1 lid and swap it after we place a stone.
- frumiousirc 1y ago
  > we use 1 lid and swap it after we place a stone. What does "lid" mean here?
  - happimess 1y ago
    I suspect that each player has a bowl of stones, and they have 1 lid that covers those bowls. After taking a turn, the player puts the lid over their own bowl so that the other player can easily see that its their turn. "Drive by" game, to me, sounds like they've got the board set up somewhere in the house, and make moves over the course of a day (days?), rather than sitting across from each other and having dedicated time for the game.
  - kqr 1y ago
    I suspect they have two containers for pieces, and they put the one container lid on the container with their colour when they have played, revealing the other's pieces and indicating it is their turn to play. It took me a bit to decode also.
ggm 1y ago
Across years of play, the only game of go I won, was a win by default at inter university go in the UK when my opponent didn't show up. I even lost the game I played with my son, teaching him the moves. It's a great game.
- s1110 1y ago
  To learn the basics of Go you have to lose your first 100 games
  - ggm 1y ago
    I shouldn't have stopped at 98. truly, the thing I love about Go is two things. Firstly, the handicap system means you can play a good game between neophytes and high-dan players, it's mutual. Secondly, its built on such simple foundations. No horsey-horsey-moves. Thirdly, even innumerate people who can't count to 3 can play it. You're playing a game substantively unchanged from before chess
fho 1y ago
I've been playing Go with my spouses brother for a while. He had a lot of free time to studyGo back then, I didn't. I couldn't get a single win out of him, still I enjoyed every single game. We rarely play anymore, I should invite him over sometime :-)
- alan-crowe 1y ago
  I'm on the other side of this, meeting a friend two or three times a month to play Go and giving him a three stone handicap on a 13 by 13 board. Sometimes I play a move with a huge, but hidden threat behind it. If he plays elsewhere instead of answering locally, I get to play a clever sequence and capture some stones. I could just wait for the blunder and win. Instead I give a quick lesson in tactics: here is my plan, if you want to play elsewhere, your move needs to have an even bigger threat behind it. He is learning, and now I face my clever moves being player against me. This makes it harder for me to win (it is about 50:50 with the handicap), but also more fun for me to play. You could ask your spouses brother for a "teaching game" or a larger handicap, or a bit of both.
  - fho 1y ago
    "two or three stones" sound huge. We are 20k vs 14k, iirc that does not justify a three stone handicap. Our games feel relatively close, it's just evident that he is always ahead.
    - alan-crowe 1y ago
      On a 19 x 19 board the ranks are traditionally determined by the handicap needed to give an even game. So a 14 kyu would give 20 - 14 = 6 stones to a 20 kyu. 20 kyu is a rank that often sees rapid improvement, as the basic ideas "click" just through play and experience. You might be stronger than that now. Handicap stones give a greater advantage on smaller boards, but 19 x 19 is the standard size. I've not seen any specific guidance for smaller boards.
heeton 1y ago
Nice to see other go players here! Here are some go resources I like that I haven’t seen mentioned yet. 1. https://gomagic.org/ https://gomagic.org/ , it has free and paid content, and I learned a lot here. 2. The European go journal. A nice print publication, I’ve not lived in or near the Asian countries with a stronger go history so I’ve enjoyed getting printed problems and go news. 3. The “so you want to play go” book series by Jonathon Hop. I like his writing style.
ChaoPrayaWave 1y ago
My daughter has recently become obsessed with Go and now beats me half the time. I think that's good because Go helps her slow down and think before she acts.
- tux3 1y ago
  I lesson I have yet to learn (along with everyone on the Fox go server, presumably)
tomaskafka 1y ago
I apologize to hijack this a bit, but do you know of similarly accessible resources about chess? So far the stuff I found online is either nerdy or explaining the basic moves to the children.
- rplnt 1y ago
  Not really an answer, as I only tried it once, but there's a Chess course on Duolingo now. You can skip the very basic lessons and then it seemed to focus on positioning in openings.
- preek 1y ago
  This is very similar for Chess: https://lichess.org/learn https://lichess.org/learn Source: I am playing both Go on OGS and chess on Lichess.
- somenameforme 1y ago
  If you mean for the stuff after you know the basic rules of the game, I'd highly recommend Daniel Naroditsky's 'speed runs.' [1] Basically he starts at an extremely low rating and works his way up in an intentionally instructive/systematic way, often playing the same openings and what not. It's extremely instructive for players at all levels. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/@DanielNaroditskyGM/playlists https://www.youtube.com/@DanielNaroditskyGM/playlists
drillbit 1y ago
I learnt to play Go about 15 years ago, in university—never to a particularly high level, but it was a satisfying experience nonetheless. Much like learning to play a musical instrument, it teaches perseverance, discipline, and self-restraint while also letting you have fun. Back then there were many fewer online resources in English for learning Go. These days there's also professional-level commentary in English (Michael Redmond's youtube channel is particularly good). There was an older guy running the local club at the university, a strong player who had a passion for teaching the game. This is in a small town in quite a remote area. I later heard he had learnt Go in the 1970s, first by reading books, then by meeting Japanese fishing crews who had come to the harbour to play. We're still friends today. Go has many proverbs which act as rules of thumb for playing well (e.g. 'hane at the head of two stones'). IMO an underrated one is 'make friends playing Go'. As great as resources like the link are, I still prefer to play in person, over a board, for this reason.
- aapoalas 1y ago
  I'm a big fan of local proverbs / vernacular in go, enough to ask about them on Reddit quite a few years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/7fgru4/local_go_vernacular/ https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/7fgru4/local_go_vern... Maybe you'll find them useful or fun :)
mark_l_watson 1y ago
Go is a wonderful game. My older brother bought a Go set when I was a little kid and we played together. Now, 65 years later I need to give him a 9 stone handicap (I cheated by taking lessons from a South Korean Go Master and studying several books), but thanks to the wonderful handicap system, games can still be fun even when players have very different skill levels. I randomly tried a few exercises on the linked web site - nicely done! Off topic, but I wrote a commercial Go playing program in the late 1970s. This was a great hobby.
- zenlot 1y ago
  Out of interest which language you used for that?
  - mark_l_watson 1y ago
    I used UCSD Pascal on an Apple II computer.
SchwKatze 1y ago
One thing that stood out when I tried to learn and play Go was the tempo. I'm a chess guy, and I like to play blitz with 5+0 and bullet (format equivalent to tik tok) so games tend to be frenetic, but it's quite rare to find a Go game on those formats, they tend to have 40+ min in time. And honestly, this is a big W for Go.
- swannodette 1y ago
  Blitz format is reasonably popular on KGS (once you get to a certain level) usually 10+0. Blitz is harder to find on Pandanet - but you can easily blitz on Fox.
  - zahlman 1y ago
    Zero increment blitz go is a terrible idea IMX; people will just play nonsense moves after the game should be ended, and calling a moderator takes time. Go lacks the absolute nature of checkmate.
    - zovirl 1y ago
      http://online-go.com http://online-go.com has an interesting anti-stalling feature: If you pass several times it checks with KataGo. If KataGo is 99% sure you will win, either player can click a button to accept that result and end the game.
Razengan 1y ago
Hikaru no Go was my gateway drug into Go and a great anime in its own right
thrance 1y ago
I heavily dislike the auto-generated translations. They sound weird and make the website look cheap. I would rather you provided no translations and maybe let those less comfortable with English among us use their browser's auto-translate feature. Also, I'm sure there are several volunteers out there who would gladly translate this amazing resource for free.
- zahlman 1y ago
  > Also, I'm sure there are several volunteers out there who would gladly translate this amazing resource for free. The site is doing this exactly because those volunteers haven't shown up. Be the change you want to see in the world.
  - thrance 1y ago
    I'm not that into go. And I still think forcing AI slop on people is untasteful, doubly so when it is that unnecessary.
superkuh 1y ago
This is nice, it's okay, but things like this have really decreased in quality and utility since Flash went away and the partial replacement of javascript took over. The old online-go "Learn Go" implemented in flash much, much better and more intuitive and interactive than this.
beej71 1y ago
I was introduced to this game over 30 years ago. And since then I've been studying and playing on and off. And today I can safely say... I'm still horrible at it. :) But, damn, this is a beautiful game. It's fun and there's no upper limit to the challenge. The way the game ends (by agreement that there are no further moves of benefit to either player) is amazing, as are the handicap rules (which make it so players of differing (to a point) strengths can still play all-out against one another). The boards and pieces are works of art in themselves, and the game is steeped in tradition. That said, the boards and stones can be expensive, so lots of people DIY which is also fun. There's a web page out there that talks about making boards with MDF and Sharpies. And you can buy melamine stones relatively cheaply, though if you can find glass or ceramic stones for a little more, they're much nicer. When we were starving students in junior college and first learned about the game, we went out on a country road and gathered all the relatively small, round stones we could from the shoulder. Then we went to my parents' garage and found cans of black and white spray paint to paint the stones, and some leftover wood paneling that we cut in a square and lined with a magic marker. The set was, arguably, offensively ugly. But I still have it in my closet.
- noman-land 1y ago
  Honestly my first thought was wanting to see the board and stones.
insane_dreamer 1y ago
This is a great resource. I've been wanting to learn Go (beyond the basics) and teach it to my child.
ilikehurdles 1y ago
I enjoyed learning at first but I found the course overall really, really tedious. I stopped during the 12 back to back quiz questions asking how many liberties there are on a board. Clearly by the 6th iteration I knew how to count. It could likely be condensed.
mirthturtle 1y ago
I love Go! Been streaming it on Twitch for the last five years or so (https://twitch.tv/mirthturtle https://twitch.tv/mirthturtle), lately as a "Go airline" (MS Flight Simulator & Go simultaneously). There is an engaged community in the Twitch category, if you are looking for Go friends, but still, nowhere near as large as Chess.
nxpnsv 1y ago
My son and I just did the first collection of lessons. The Swedish translation isn't perfect, but he understood and enjoyed it immensely. Well done, I might have to buy a board now :)
kouru225 1y ago
This has some serious bugs. I just tried to play 2.16 is the group alive. It told me I was wrong for saying black was alive when it clearly had two eyes. Then I tried 2.17 and it showed me a screen of a black formation that has two eyes, but then says "White to play. Make two eyes." This is clearly the wrong prompt for this board. Not only is the color wrong, but the formation already has two eyes so I don't know what you want me to do here.
- amcoy37 1y ago
  Hmm, both 2.16 and 2.17 worked for me. Which of the 6 puzzles in each chapter didn't work for you?
  - kouru225 1y ago
    In 2.16: 3 says I'm wrong for saying its alive. It's clearly alive. It's a big black formation with one eye in the corner and one eye at the bottom 4 Says I'm wrong for saying its alive. It's clearly alive. It's a big black formation with two eyes diagonal from each other, one on the edge. In 2.17: 2 shows me a black formation with two eyes already made and says "white to play. Make two eyes." 3 is doable but it also says "white to play" while showing a black formation. 4 shows me a black formation with two eyes already made and says "white to play. Make two eyes." 5 shows me a black formation with two eyes already made and says "white to play. Make two eyes." 6 shows me a black formation with two eyes already made and says "white to play. Make two eyes." FYI I'm using firefox
    - kevlened 1y ago
      The lessons are correct, but may be more obvious with better definitions. "Alive" pieces remain permanent throughout the game. In both 2.16 examples, white can capture black by filling the gaps. "Eyes" only have one space each and are fully surrounded by a single color. In both 2.16 examples. there are no eyes. Look at 2.17 with this new definition to see where the gaps are not yet eyes. 2.17 (3) is asking you to place a white piece within the black formation. This renders correctly for me in firefox.
renshijian 1y ago
This website for learning Go is amazing! It's like a gentle old man is teaching you: "Look, they will be out of breath when they put the pieces like this - as if they were gently lifted away." After clicking the mouse a few times, you can actually understand the breathing and life and death in the thousand-year chess game. It turns out that learning Go can be as natural as playing games

403 points by kqr 1y ago

This is pretty well made. The progression is good and there are no distractions. And best part it doesn't force you to create an account.

nearting 1y ago
Yes, but without an account, at least on mobile, you can't change any settings besides light/dark mode and language, which is pretty annoying.
- nakedrobot2 1y ago
  honestly i find it confusing. it tells me to make a move, but i don't know if i'm playing black or white. sometimes when i click on a point, it puts the opposite color on a different point.
  - amcoy37 1y ago
    The opposite color appearing on a different point is the computer playing the response to your move.

suds05 1y ago

Keeps you engaged.

brooke2k 1y ago

By chance I used this just a few weeks ago when I started learning to play Go. It's a pretty good resource! Personally, my favorite tutorial I went through was The Interactive Way to Go (https://way-to-go.gitlab.io https://way-to-go.gitlab.io) Also notable is Sensei's Library (https://senseis.xmp.net https://senseis.xmp.net) which is a very old and unbelievably thorough wiki on everything Go. It's a cool place to browse even if you don't play.

zovirl 1y ago
Sensei's Library is a gem from the non-commercial web! It reminds me of the C2 wiki (https://wiki.c2.com https://wiki.c2.com) but for Go instead of software engineering.

frenchtoast8 1y ago

I recently learned Go for the first time and I have played almost 50 games of 9x9 on Online Go Server so far. I’m finding it a lot of fun but it has been very humbling. I learned chess in 7th or 8th grade and was easily able to get to about 700 Elo on chess.com after barely learning the rules, which is about the 60th percentile on the site. I only play a couple games a year now but can still hold my own against 1200 Elo opponents, which is in the 90th percentile. I feel like I have put in just as much effort into learning Go. I bought a book and have been doing exercises. But I’m still in the 0.1 percentile on the site! (Yes, that’s not a typo.) I’m sticking with it because it’s fun and that’s all that matters. But I definitely have a lot to learn.

igor47 1y ago
The skill that transfers from chess to go is reading -- "if I play here, my opponent is likely to play there, and then I will..."
- Zacharias030 1y ago
  why is this downvoted?
jibal 1y ago
The average FIDE elo is 1550; chess.com's average of 1200 elo is much lower because it has many beginner players, including children. The gap between those is huge--much larger than the numbers may suggest. At chess.com 1200 elo people still have terrible board vision and routinely drop pieces; by the time one reaches FIDE 1550 elo that is no longer true and people are starting to plot out complex tactics requiring accurate visualization several moves ahead. According to the elo formula, a 700 elo player is expected to "hold their own"--draw or win--against a 1200 elo player 1 in 19 games (so they will lose 18 of 19 games), and against a 1550 elo player 1 in 134 games (so they will lose 133 out of 134 games). A 1200 elo player is expected to "hold their own" against a 1550 elo player about 1 in 18 games (they will lose 17 out of 18 games). However, the chess.com and FIDE elos are from very different pools--1200 elo at chess.com is probably equivalent to about 600-800 elo FIDE.

DevDesmond 1y ago

I know that UI! https://lichess.org/learn https://lichess.org/learn

dragontamer 1y ago

Unfortunately, the early moves in the game ("Joseki") are the most important. They are also the most difficult to learn. It is essential to study these tactics in this website... if only because they are the only "ground truth" known about Go. But for rapid improvement, the only real way forward is to play lots and lots of games to learn how the early game flows. Direction of play, which side of the board is most important and other such details. Seems like a reasonably good tutorial in terms of layout. But just pointing out: joseki and direction of play is "more important" in terms of winning. Its just damn near impossible to teach so maybe its best for beginners to ignore this incredibly important (and difficult) subject. --------- To put it in perhaps more concrete terms: playing a "tactic" position may net you +10 points across a sequence of 5 moves or so. (IE: One well placed tactical move, and ~4 followup moves may capture 5 enemy stones + 5 territory simultaneously from your opponent). However, every single early-game move is worth nearly +20 points of territory if played correctly. I'm serious. That's why when you watch top-level Go play, there's a lot of "teleporting" across the 19x19 board, searching for the most important positions. And there is also very, very loose play and possible sacrifices / aji. (Maybe its not a true sacrifice, but you'd be willing to sacrifice if the opponent over-extends).

tarvaina 1y ago
Nitpick: The early moves in the game are called fuseki. Joseki refers to well-studied local patterns of moves and they appear through the middle game, not just in the early game. A couple of things I love about go is that you don't need to memorize fuseki, and that applying joseki correctly is as much a matter of judgment as it is of memory. (I am a 1 dan go player but haven't played much in the last 15 years.)
- charcircuit 1y ago
  He could be thinking of shogi (though the kanji is 定跡 where joseki from go is 定石), where joseki refers to the well studied ways to play the opening of the game.
Zacharias030 1y ago
I don’t share that sentiment. Yes, at some point when people are somewhat able to take a decent lead home the fuseki becomes important. Before that, beginners really need to understand how to „move“ their stones, how to defend and connect their groups and how to cut and capture. If you see a strong player win against a weak player with a large handicap it always goes down the same way: the strong player places stones all over the board such that eventually many many skirmishes appear all over the board and then she is patient to take small advantage after small advantage, manifesting groups and territories out of what looks like thin air to the other player. At a somewhat higher amateur level and above the fuseki again loses importance and the distinguishing factor is fighting skills and judgement, fuseki and prep just becomes table stakes.

joeyrideout 1y ago

I became interested in learning Go recently after watching the magnificent AlphaGo movie [1] which is free on YouTube. I highly recommend giving it a watch if you haven't already. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXuK6gekU1Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXuK6gekU1Y

jibal 1y ago
Wow, that was incredible. I cried when Lee Sedol won game 4. And his and Fan Hui's philosophical takes were remarkable.
ProllyInfamous 1y ago
Watching the human programmers become dumbfounded as AlphaGo invented novel Go-playing strategies... is what I remember most from having watched this a few years ago (right before GPT3.5/ChatGPT debuted). The algorithm makes [victorious] wildcard moves which no human player would even contemplate [stupid moves become masterplays]. When 9D-master Sudol attributes human qualities to the beauty of his AI opponent's creativity upon formulating certain moves... is definitely eye-opening. Hubris replaced.
- dragontamer 1y ago
  Nah. I think with the rise of KataGo, its becoming clear that AlphaGo's "dumbfounded" strategies were instead incredibly strong tactical play with hilarious levels of blindness with regards to ladders. It feels like modern AIs (like KataGo, which are hundreds of times better than AlphaGo) are getting closer to what humans consider appropriate strategic play. Go players must be humble because if the opponent is stronger then the opponent wins. But Go AI Programmers don't necessarily have to be. Go AI programmers look for the weaknesses, lean upon them and yes, prove that AlphaGo/AlphaZero never learned ladders. Ever. Or other such concepts of strongly forcing moves (ex: loose ladders). That's one of KataGo's biggest innovations. Explicitly programming a ladder solver so that simple ladders can indeed be factored in by the neural net. ---------- I do wonder how Lee Sodul will react if we told him that the superhuman AI he played could not see ladders... and had other such key weaknesses.

pixelpoet 1y ago

Love to see the objectively better Go on HN now and then too ;)

bubblyworld 1y ago

I love Go and have played it a lot in person, but I always struggle to get games online, even on OGS. Feels like the online community is very small compared to chess (which is now my boardgame of choice, basically for this reason). Has this changed? Are there better sites now where a beginner can find matches without waiting half an hour or more?

Axnyff 1y ago
There are more people on kgs and on fox go server
- bubblyworld 1y ago
  Thanks, I'll check those out.
- qnpnp 1y ago
  I wouldn't say so for KGS, especially for beginners. OGS is the go-to for western servers nowadays. Fox, without a doubt. I recommend Weiqihubb for a quick-access app to asian servers on all platforms, with puzzles (https://walruswq.com/WeiqiHub https://walruswq.com/WeiqiHub).
lucketone 1y ago
Do your settings allow for handicapped games? This increases pool of potential opponents.
- bubblyworld 1y ago
  My personal preference is to play non-handicapped games, but that's a good point, thanks.
iberator 1y ago
[flagged]
- heeton 1y ago

simianwords 1y ago

Will I like go if I don’t like chess? Chess seems too one dimensional for me if that makes sense.

kqr 1y ago
Only one way to find out. If you dislike chess because you don't like abstract total information strategy board games you will not like go. If you dislike chess because - it has too many rules, - the board is too smalll, - the pieces move around too much, or - it doesn't involve adversarial, collaborative construction, or any of the other things that make go different from chess, you have a chance of liking go.
- simianwords 1y ago
  > If you dislike chess because you don't like abstract total information strategy board games you will not like go I think that's why I don't like chess. It seems to me that a winning strategy would be to think as far ahead as possible by enumerating all the permutations. A few heuristics exist however.
  - Ruarl 1y ago
    The neat thing about Go is that, whilst the winning strategy is exactly to think ahead and enumerate all possible positions, to do so is impossible. (Even the superhuman AI fudge it. They can just read farther ahead than humans.) So to do well you have to learn how to support your reading ahead with heuristics and a feel for the game. A famous amateur player and advocate for the game once went through all the game records of Go Seigen in order to digitize them. This means having to pore over hand-written diagrams looking for the next number in the sequence of moves. Obviously this is easier if you can guess where to look. But, if you guess them all correctly, then you are playing just as well as the old master! After spending a good few months on the task, he was a significantly better player!
    - simianwords 1y ago
      Nice. As systems become more and more complicated (like real world itself) it is no longer feasible to enumerate all permutations but rather get a feel for the patterns - an intuition. A skilled intuiter (?) would know the subtle ways in which patterns emerge.

qnpnp 1y ago

I think is the best Go tutorial to learn the rules: https://www.learn-go.net https://www.learn-go.net

marcosscriven 1y ago

Just idly clicking through until I got to “Ko”. I had no idea Go was stateful!

thaumasiotes 1y ago
It's not supposed to be stateful. The ko rule is only there to block infinite loops.
- marcosscriven 1y ago
  What I mean is you can’t just look at a board and know the ko “state” - but yes I’m sure in practice it’s not that important. Just my engineering brain picking up on it.
  - Liquid_Fire 1y ago
    Chess also has this "problem" thanks to rules like castling and en passant capture.
    - thaumasiotes 1y ago
      >> What I mean is you can’t just look at a board and know the ko “state” - but yes I’m sure in practice it’s not that important. > Chess also has this "problem" thanks to rules like castling and en passant capture. Chess is intended to be stateful. If you forget whether a castle has occurred (and then the king walked back to its starting position, and a rook repositioned into the corner) or not, chess players will note that you've messed up the game. The castling rule is there to stop you from castling more than once. Go is not intended to be stateful, and if you forget that a particular board layout may have come up in the past, go players will not note that you've messed up the game. It doesn't matter. The ko rule isn't there to stop you from repeating a board twice. It's there to stop you from having to repeat a board layout an infinite number of times, because things like the need for food and sleep would interfere with the game. Wrt the implementation concern, this distinction means, for example, that you must always track the castling state regardless of whether a player asks for it, whereas you're fine not bothering to track the history of a go board unless a player asks for it. You can just say "if you want to invoke ko, press this button, and we'll remember that board layout, and if it's already been flagged, the game will draw". That isn't done, but it could be done.

szopa 1y ago

I first learned to play Go back in university, but never got very good (it was competing with learning how to program). Many years later, shortly after the war in Ukraine started, I was looking for an activity to share with my 8-year-old son. Life was chaotic then: everyone was anxious, we were hosting a refugee lady, and I could see the stress taking a toll on him. I wanted something where it would be clear we shouldn’t be disturbed – and Go fit perfectly. We started playing, and it was fun. One of the great things about Go is its elegant handicap system, which makes it possible for players at very different levels to still enjoy a fair, challenging game. Since then, we’ve been going to the local Go club in Warsaw, and it’s become our main hobby. We play each other almost daily, travel to tournaments (sometimes abroad), and even spend our vacations at Go summer camp. The camp is actually a magical event. It takes place at a campsite in the middle of the Kaszuby Lake District. The conditions are spartan – you either live in a tent or a five-person cabin, and hot water is scarce. But the crowd that gathers there is incredible. Over breakfast you might get an impromptu intro to lambda calculus, in the evening you might end up in a deep philosophical conversation, or hear travel stories from far-off places, or suddenly learn way more about knitting than you thought possible. When we first went, it felt like discovering our long-lost family. The Go community is much smaller than chess, but also far more tight-knit and welcoming. I’ve heard chess can be more cutthroat, while in Go there’s this unspoken understanding that if you drive people away, you’ll have no one left to play with. When I travel, I like to drop in on local Go clubs. It’s always been a great experience – I especially enjoyed visiting the San Francisco Go Club in Japantown. I play almost exclusively over the board. I prefer long, thoughtful games, and I can’t really focus the same way on a screen. Oh, and the anime about Go, Hikaru no Go, is really good (you should watch it even if you don’t care about the game).

vintermann 1y ago
That anime is one of my favorites. The main characters are pretty anime-ish, all anime protagonists from that time look more or less the same, but the older adults (apparently Go is a bit of an old person's game in Japan) are drawn in a more naturalistic style with a lot of character. > in Go there’s this unspoken understanding that if you drive people away, you’ll have no one left to play with. Definitively not in online Go. I ran into some people who clearly thought racist trash-talk was a way to reduce the competition.

aosmith 1y ago

Go is a great game, my wife and I always have a drive-by game going, we use 1 lid and swap it after we place a stone.

frumiousirc 1y ago
> we use 1 lid and swap it after we place a stone. What does "lid" mean here?
- happimess 1y ago
  I suspect that each player has a bowl of stones, and they have 1 lid that covers those bowls. After taking a turn, the player puts the lid over their own bowl so that the other player can easily see that its their turn. "Drive by" game, to me, sounds like they've got the board set up somewhere in the house, and make moves over the course of a day (days?), rather than sitting across from each other and having dedicated time for the game.
- kqr 1y ago
  I suspect they have two containers for pieces, and they put the one container lid on the container with their colour when they have played, revealing the other's pieces and indicating it is their turn to play. It took me a bit to decode also.

ggm 1y ago

Across years of play, the only game of go I won, was a win by default at inter university go in the UK when my opponent didn't show up. I even lost the game I played with my son, teaching him the moves. It's a great game.

s1110 1y ago
To learn the basics of Go you have to lose your first 100 games
- ggm 1y ago
  I shouldn't have stopped at 98. truly, the thing I love about Go is two things. Firstly, the handicap system means you can play a good game between neophytes and high-dan players, it's mutual. Secondly, its built on such simple foundations. No horsey-horsey-moves. Thirdly, even innumerate people who can't count to 3 can play it. You're playing a game substantively unchanged from before chess

fho 1y ago

I've been playing Go with my spouses brother for a while. He had a lot of free time to studyGo back then, I didn't. I couldn't get a single win out of him, still I enjoyed every single game. We rarely play anymore, I should invite him over sometime :-)

alan-crowe 1y ago
I'm on the other side of this, meeting a friend two or three times a month to play Go and giving him a three stone handicap on a 13 by 13 board. Sometimes I play a move with a huge, but hidden threat behind it. If he plays elsewhere instead of answering locally, I get to play a clever sequence and capture some stones. I could just wait for the blunder and win. Instead I give a quick lesson in tactics: here is my plan, if you want to play elsewhere, your move needs to have an even bigger threat behind it. He is learning, and now I face my clever moves being player against me. This makes it harder for me to win (it is about 50:50 with the handicap), but also more fun for me to play. You could ask your spouses brother for a "teaching game" or a larger handicap, or a bit of both.
- fho 1y ago
  "two or three stones" sound huge. We are 20k vs 14k, iirc that does not justify a three stone handicap. Our games feel relatively close, it's just evident that he is always ahead.
  - alan-crowe 1y ago
    On a 19 x 19 board the ranks are traditionally determined by the handicap needed to give an even game. So a 14 kyu would give 20 - 14 = 6 stones to a 20 kyu. 20 kyu is a rank that often sees rapid improvement, as the basic ideas "click" just through play and experience. You might be stronger than that now. Handicap stones give a greater advantage on smaller boards, but 19 x 19 is the standard size. I've not seen any specific guidance for smaller boards.

heeton 1y ago

Nice to see other go players here! Here are some go resources I like that I haven’t seen mentioned yet. 1. https://gomagic.org/ https://gomagic.org/ , it has free and paid content, and I learned a lot here. 2. The European go journal. A nice print publication, I’ve not lived in or near the Asian countries with a stronger go history so I’ve enjoyed getting printed problems and go news. 3. The “so you want to play go” book series by Jonathon Hop. I like his writing style.

ChaoPrayaWave 1y ago

My daughter has recently become obsessed with Go and now beats me half the time. I think that's good because Go helps her slow down and think before she acts.

tux3 1y ago
I lesson I have yet to learn (along with everyone on the Fox go server, presumably)

tomaskafka 1y ago

I apologize to hijack this a bit, but do you know of similarly accessible resources about chess? So far the stuff I found online is either nerdy or explaining the basic moves to the children.

rplnt 1y ago
Not really an answer, as I only tried it once, but there's a Chess course on Duolingo now. You can skip the very basic lessons and then it seemed to focus on positioning in openings.
preek 1y ago
This is very similar for Chess: https://lichess.org/learn https://lichess.org/learn Source: I am playing both Go on OGS and chess on Lichess.
somenameforme 1y ago
If you mean for the stuff after you know the basic rules of the game, I'd highly recommend Daniel Naroditsky's 'speed runs.' [1] Basically he starts at an extremely low rating and works his way up in an intentionally instructive/systematic way, often playing the same openings and what not. It's extremely instructive for players at all levels. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/@DanielNaroditskyGM/playlists https://www.youtube.com/@DanielNaroditskyGM/playlists

drillbit 1y ago

I learnt to play Go about 15 years ago, in university—never to a particularly high level, but it was a satisfying experience nonetheless. Much like learning to play a musical instrument, it teaches perseverance, discipline, and self-restraint while also letting you have fun. Back then there were many fewer online resources in English for learning Go. These days there's also professional-level commentary in English (Michael Redmond's youtube channel is particularly good). There was an older guy running the local club at the university, a strong player who had a passion for teaching the game. This is in a small town in quite a remote area. I later heard he had learnt Go in the 1970s, first by reading books, then by meeting Japanese fishing crews who had come to the harbour to play. We're still friends today. Go has many proverbs which act as rules of thumb for playing well (e.g. 'hane at the head of two stones'). IMO an underrated one is 'make friends playing Go'. As great as resources like the link are, I still prefer to play in person, over a board, for this reason.

aapoalas 1y ago
I'm a big fan of local proverbs / vernacular in go, enough to ask about them on Reddit quite a few years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/7fgru4/local_go_vernacular/ https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/7fgru4/local_go_vern... Maybe you'll find them useful or fun :)

mark_l_watson 1y ago

Go is a wonderful game. My older brother bought a Go set when I was a little kid and we played together. Now, 65 years later I need to give him a 9 stone handicap (I cheated by taking lessons from a South Korean Go Master and studying several books), but thanks to the wonderful handicap system, games can still be fun even when players have very different skill levels. I randomly tried a few exercises on the linked web site - nicely done! Off topic, but I wrote a commercial Go playing program in the late 1970s. This was a great hobby.

zenlot 1y ago
Out of interest which language you used for that?
- mark_l_watson 1y ago
  I used UCSD Pascal on an Apple II computer.

SchwKatze 1y ago

One thing that stood out when I tried to learn and play Go was the tempo. I'm a chess guy, and I like to play blitz with 5+0 and bullet (format equivalent to tik tok) so games tend to be frenetic, but it's quite rare to find a Go game on those formats, they tend to have 40+ min in time. And honestly, this is a big W for Go.

swannodette 1y ago
Blitz format is reasonably popular on KGS (once you get to a certain level) usually 10+0. Blitz is harder to find on Pandanet - but you can easily blitz on Fox.
- zahlman 1y ago
  Zero increment blitz go is a terrible idea IMX; people will just play nonsense moves after the game should be ended, and calling a moderator takes time. Go lacks the absolute nature of checkmate.
  - zovirl 1y ago
    http://online-go.com http://online-go.com has an interesting anti-stalling feature: If you pass several times it checks with KataGo. If KataGo is 99% sure you will win, either player can click a button to accept that result and end the game.

Razengan 1y ago

Hikaru no Go was my gateway drug into Go and a great anime in its own right

thrance 1y ago

I heavily dislike the auto-generated translations. They sound weird and make the website look cheap. I would rather you provided no translations and maybe let those less comfortable with English among us use their browser's auto-translate feature. Also, I'm sure there are several volunteers out there who would gladly translate this amazing resource for free.

zahlman 1y ago
> Also, I'm sure there are several volunteers out there who would gladly translate this amazing resource for free. The site is doing this exactly because those volunteers haven't shown up. Be the change you want to see in the world.
- thrance 1y ago
  I'm not that into go. And I still think forcing AI slop on people is untasteful, doubly so when it is that unnecessary.

superkuh 1y ago

This is nice, it's okay, but things like this have really decreased in quality and utility since Flash went away and the partial replacement of javascript took over. The old online-go "Learn Go" implemented in flash much, much better and more intuitive and interactive than this.

beej71 1y ago

I was introduced to this game over 30 years ago. And since then I've been studying and playing on and off. And today I can safely say... I'm still horrible at it. :) But, damn, this is a beautiful game. It's fun and there's no upper limit to the challenge. The way the game ends (by agreement that there are no further moves of benefit to either player) is amazing, as are the handicap rules (which make it so players of differing (to a point) strengths can still play all-out against one another). The boards and pieces are works of art in themselves, and the game is steeped in tradition. That said, the boards and stones can be expensive, so lots of people DIY which is also fun. There's a web page out there that talks about making boards with MDF and Sharpies. And you can buy melamine stones relatively cheaply, though if you can find glass or ceramic stones for a little more, they're much nicer. When we were starving students in junior college and first learned about the game, we went out on a country road and gathered all the relatively small, round stones we could from the shoulder. Then we went to my parents' garage and found cans of black and white spray paint to paint the stones, and some leftover wood paneling that we cut in a square and lined with a magic marker. The set was, arguably, offensively ugly. But I still have it in my closet.

noman-land 1y ago
Honestly my first thought was wanting to see the board and stones.

insane_dreamer 1y ago

This is a great resource. I've been wanting to learn Go (beyond the basics) and teach it to my child.

ilikehurdles 1y ago

I enjoyed learning at first but I found the course overall really, really tedious. I stopped during the 12 back to back quiz questions asking how many liberties there are on a board. Clearly by the 6th iteration I knew how to count. It could likely be condensed.

mirthturtle 1y ago

I love Go! Been streaming it on Twitch for the last five years or so (https://twitch.tv/mirthturtle https://twitch.tv/mirthturtle), lately as a "Go airline" (MS Flight Simulator & Go simultaneously). There is an engaged community in the Twitch category, if you are looking for Go friends, but still, nowhere near as large as Chess.

nxpnsv 1y ago

My son and I just did the first collection of lessons. The Swedish translation isn't perfect, but he understood and enjoyed it immensely. Well done, I might have to buy a board now :)

kouru225 1y ago

This has some serious bugs. I just tried to play 2.16 is the group alive. It told me I was wrong for saying black was alive when it clearly had two eyes. Then I tried 2.17 and it showed me a screen of a black formation that has two eyes, but then says "White to play. Make two eyes." This is clearly the wrong prompt for this board. Not only is the color wrong, but the formation already has two eyes so I don't know what you want me to do here.

amcoy37 1y ago
Hmm, both 2.16 and 2.17 worked for me. Which of the 6 puzzles in each chapter didn't work for you?
- kouru225 1y ago
  In 2.16: 3 says I'm wrong for saying its alive. It's clearly alive. It's a big black formation with one eye in the corner and one eye at the bottom 4 Says I'm wrong for saying its alive. It's clearly alive. It's a big black formation with two eyes diagonal from each other, one on the edge. In 2.17: 2 shows me a black formation with two eyes already made and says "white to play. Make two eyes." 3 is doable but it also says "white to play" while showing a black formation. 4 shows me a black formation with two eyes already made and says "white to play. Make two eyes." 5 shows me a black formation with two eyes already made and says "white to play. Make two eyes." 6 shows me a black formation with two eyes already made and says "white to play. Make two eyes." FYI I'm using firefox
  - kevlened 1y ago
    The lessons are correct, but may be more obvious with better definitions. "Alive" pieces remain permanent throughout the game. In both 2.16 examples, white can capture black by filling the gaps. "Eyes" only have one space each and are fully surrounded by a single color. In both 2.16 examples. there are no eyes. Look at 2.17 with this new definition to see where the gaps are not yet eyes. 2.17 (3) is asking you to place a white piece within the black formation. This renders correctly for me in firefox.

renshijian 1y ago

This website for learning Go is amazing! It's like a gentle old man is teaching you: "Look, they will be out of breath when they put the pieces like this - as if they were gently lifted away." After clicking the mouse a few times, you can actually understand the breathing and life and death in the thousand-year chess game. It turns out that learning Go can be as natural as playing games