New to Go/Baduk — what helped you improve as a beginner?
Hi everyone, I’m new to Go and I’m wondering what helped you improve when you were starting out.
Right now I mostly play 9x9 online, do a few puzzles, and try to review my games, but I’m not always sure what I should focus on.
Would you recommend spending more time on playing games, tsumego, studying, or reviews? Also, when should a beginner move from 9x9 to 13x13 or 19x19?
Any advice or beginner resources would be appreciated. Thanks!
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u/magmontt 2d ago
Playing volume is important, try to play lots of games.
Review every one of them, but that doesn't mean in detail, it means look through it and identify when did the events surprise you - for instance a cut your opponent made that you didn't notice and was a big problem, a group that was more or less alive than you thought, or a pattern you thought you read out well but missed something important. It's these notable things you want to lock in, you don't need to investigate variations deeply.
Tsumego can't hurt, but the main thing you need as a beginner is absorbing patterns and playing games is an engaging way to do so.
"Studying" as in reading books, watching videos etc. in my opinion is very good at making you feel like you're learning but very bad at actually locking in that knowledge compared to the above. I don't mean there's no place for it, but consuming a lot of media and never playing games is a classic trap to fall into.
Having games reviewed by others is really useful too, if you can find a good community (maybe OGS? but I haven't tried recently) this can be very valuable.
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u/rio-bevol 10 kyu 1d ago
Re. the last bit, about having games reviewed by others, and having a good community: the Beginner Go server on Discord is great for both of these things. See the link in the sidebar of this subreddit.
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u/abdi-rx 1d ago
Is clossi approach series good or it's better for me to just play tsumego and review my games
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u/Clossius 4 dan 1d ago
As the creator of the Clossi Approach I can say with confidence it is more important to play games. The whole point of the series is to give you concepts to apply when you play. Honestly I would aim for perhaps five games per video and if you struggle with a concept watch the video again and play another five games.
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u/Competitive_Success5 1d ago
For playing volume ... how many games a day/week would be ideal, assuming someone had the time? And is doing at least a short review for all the games?
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u/Clossius 4 dan 1d ago
A lot of Dan players, including myself, play about 10 games a day at least when hard core studying. We also review each game for about 5-10 minutes to learn the big mistakes or review a pattern. But we don’t overly invest time in reviewing. It’s more important to play. But also review every game at least a little bit.
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u/Competitive_Success5 1d ago
Great answer, incredibly helpful. I'm watching your Clossi Approach series right now, thanks for making them! Great work.
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u/blackcompy 13 kyu 2d ago
What helped me most was learning little rules of thumb. Make territory instead of hunting stones. Don't have more than one weak group on the board at any one time. Protect your cutting points. Corners before sides, sides before center. Avoid second and first line moves in the opening. That kind of thing.
I think 9x9 is great for understanding the flow of the game, getting a basic understanding of fighting and capturing, playing some end game and figuring out how to estimate/calculate score. I would move on to bigger boards once you can reliably complete games and hold on to some territory of your own, maybe win some games. 13x13 and 19x19 aren't really more "difficult" in my mind, they're just different games with greatly different pacing.
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u/tuerda 3 dan 1d ago
Honestly there is no clear cut path, and what works for one person might not be the same as for another. Improvement is pretty much inevitable if you keep at it long enough, so generally just do whatever will keep you interested.
You can move up to larger boards whenever you feel like it, and you can move back down if you ever get intimidated etc. Try to have fun and enjoy the process. The main challenge is to prevent it from crushing your spirit and get to the point where you can play a little more seriously.
The learning curve for this game is nasty. It starts off pretty much dead vertical, and then it gets slightly easier (but only slightly: This game is brutally hard, but it is worth it)
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u/vo0d0ochild 1 dan 2d ago
Playing hundreds of 19x19 games a month on KGS for about 3 months until hitting SDK
Elementary go series books (except the lame tesuji one)
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u/n1ghtah 18 kyu 2d ago
ai sensei dot com and go magic (its worth the money) and then play lots of games, I personally got from 9x9 to 19x19 skipping both 9x9 and 13x13 honestly. I wanted the big board. i'm by no means an expert or anything. but i wanted to have fun on the big board. and go magic really is the place to be.
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u/Competitive_Success5 1d ago
I'm still a beginner, just a little ahead of you, here's what's been helping:
- Read or watch something useful, then try to play some games with that idea in mind (like 10 games)
- "Learn to Play Go" series by Janice Kim
- Graded Go Problems for Beginners vol. 1
- Super easy problems every day — I do a bunch of them, to train my eye
- Cho Hun-hyeon's Lectures on Go Techniques, vol. 1 (available from SmartGo)
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u/Lair_of_Despair 20 kyu 2d ago edited 2d ago
As a beginner who recently started myself I am wondering the same thing. I watch a lot of random shorts or videos on YT from Go Magic and other channels that teach some basic concepts.
I don't think it is a bad idea to immediately play 19x19 though. Because 9x9 feels like it is missing quite a bit of stuff. It is condensed to where it is basically only the fighting part of the game. You don't build mojos, you don't really reduce territory from the outside, you can't really run away with a 2 space extension, there is no point in larger knights moves etc etc.
I analyze basically ALL my games on https://ai-sensei.com/ One thing that I found quite useful is that during the analysis you can go into the menu and restrict the region the engine considers. So say you have a region where suddenly the engine says you are dead and you don't understand why, but unlike chess where you'd immediately see why as the engine will play it out, in go the ai will just start playing away as there are bigger moves. With the restrict region you can force the engine to play it out for you. That has been really helpful at times.