Anyone play GO on yahoo?

[ad4mz41]

I was just wondering if anyone plays GO on yahoo. I play pretty often but I'm not really good or improving. I really started just playing the game. If anyone wants to play sometime PM me or something and I'll give you my AIM screenname to set up a time/date.

[Destiny]

Maybe not many people here knows how to play. I dont, but im trying to learn

[Toruxxx]

i dont even know what GO is?? want to fill me in anyone?

[ad4mz41]

It's a Japanese game played on a 19x19 board with lines going vertical and horizontal. You place white or black stones on the intersections and the basic idea is to get more territory with your stones and to shrink your opponents territory. The rules and such are very easy and playing it is very easy to learn. It's just all the strategy moves and things that make this game very hard.

[complich8]

I play, but not on yahoo ... not online much at all anymore.

If you want to get stronger, I've found some really good paths for you to walk.

Step 1: The "Learning to play Go" series (by Janice Kim and Jeong Soo-hyun). It's a series of 5 books that'll start you on the basics and take you to a point that, if you're playing and you're reading and understanding the book examples, you'll probably end up around 12 kyu in 2 or 3 months. The whole series can be bought at samarkand for about $70 (a good deal considering they normally retail for about 10 bucks more than that): http://www.samarkand.net/Web_store/web_store.cgi?product=book

Step 2: Supplement "Learning to Play Go" with web resources: www.goproblems.com for relatively interactive go problems that cover a fairly wide scope, www.gobase.org for databases of openings and pro games and all sorts of resources. http://senseis.xmp.net/ (sensei's library) for a wiki that's got a lot of useful info for terminology and history, and the go teaching ladder http://gtl.jeudego.org/ for game reviews at all levels that you can follow through. Go teaching ladder games are commented by other stronger go players, and the review service is open to anyone, but generally it's not recommended to submit "boring" games for review.

Step 3: Play a lot, while you're reading and learning. To help play, look for a local go club (if you're in the US you might find an AGA chapter near you, if not you might find some other club around, or start your own with some friends (playing in real life is a lot more fun and a lot more conducive to teaching each other than playing on the net). You can also do net games at yahoo (like you've been doing, but yahoo's kinda the bottom rung of it), or at kgs ( http://kgs.kiseido.com/ ) or igs ( http://www.pandanet.co.jp/English/ ). KGS is a clean looking system written entirely in java, and has a fairly large community following it. IGS is a bit larger, but a bit uglier -- but since it's an open protocol that it uses, there are other prettier clients. I'd recommend kgs as a starting point.

Step 4: while you're playing real people, also play computer programs. Gnu Go (which can be interfaced by Jago) is fairly strong, as is The Many Faces of Go. GnuGo is free, Faces is "not free" but can be found without having to pay for it...

My roommate went from complete beginner to being about 7 kyu in 6 months or so, spending between 2 and 5 hours a day (sometimes more) on it. Considering how much time we spend on the forums and watching anime, that sort of time commitment isn't too bad. I'm still around 12 kyu, 'cause I haven't been able to devote time to it regularly. The main reason I recommend avoiding yahoo is that it doesn't have a "real" ranking system, just its numerical ratings that don't really mean much.

Good luck!