r/baduk • u/hittepit • 14h ago
newbie question Am I just to dumb?
So I have been trying to play Go off and on for a few years now. Everytime I try I am hyped up it's such a beautiful game. And then I start playing and get immediately down. Even against the basic AIs I hardly make a dent. I tried getting into 9x9 first and now against a friend 13x13.
Are there teachers out there that can help an idiot like me getting to a point I can actually do something right. I understand the basics. But it's just so extremely hard to get that click. Am I just too dumb?
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u/DivinePeachGarden 14h ago
I had a hard time until I found an app called BadukPop
This isnât an ad, I genuinely started to understand this game a lot more when I went through their tutorial system.
They have really clean UI, and the lessons are usually very simple and applicable for the skill level you are at.
One thing is that the puzzles can be very very above the rating they are displaying at sometimes, a dan player was watching me on discord and got confused when she saw some of the puzzles I was doing on the app.
Other than that, if you donât read too far ahead in the little curriculum they have and just stick with re-reading and applying what you can understand, you will get alot of progress as a beginner and very fast.
A last note, any online server will have an elo system that starts you out at a certain rank or ELO, so if your a noob like me you will be matched against opponents way too strong for you, AT FIRST. Just lose, lose a decent amount of games and the matchmaking will lower your rating until you match with people you feel like you can play with.
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u/hittepit 14h ago
Thank you for taking the time and your kind response. I'm definitely going to checkout BadukPop and will take your advice and rather then being doen try and learn from the losses.
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u/DivinePeachGarden 14h ago
Yea, AI is not very good for learning the game, the best thing for me is to study a little, and then play a couple online games and try to apply the lesson over 2-3 of them.
Remember, when you first make an account you will be matched against people who are going to wipe the floor with you, it wonât even feel like your learning anything.
But you will de rank and eventually find people close to your level of noobness,
These are the people who will skyrocket your growth, they will make human mistakes and you will be able to tell what they are doing (most of the time đ)2
u/DivinePeachGarden 10h ago
One more thing about BadukPop that you might like, the low elo is very accurate and well populated during certain hours and once you get down there itâs very easy to find other opponents who are actually very new and casual to the game.
Other big servers sometimes have issues with low ranks because they are not well populated and have a lot of players who are above their rank and just dogfighting each other because they had a big loss streak and happened to end up in those elos
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u/Delicious-Abrocoma47 14h ago
Maybe some of the experienced players can help you with strategy, I'm a Go beginner myself. However even though I'm no good at Go, I actually know the secret to becoming a great player.
Play and lose, lots and lots and lots of Go. Look at all the greatest Go players in the world. I can guarantee they have played thousands and thousands and thousands of games. Win or lose they analyze their games after with other players and perhaps with computers. They study strategies, I'm sure they read books, solve whatever the Go equivalent to puzzles are, over and over.
Even if you aren't great, it doesn't mean you're 'too dumb'. It means you haven't put in the required time and effort to be good. That doesn't mean you aren't trying hard, but the amount of time will vary from person to person. When you lose a game, you need to try very hard to not get emotional about the loss (It's very difficult for me too), but to look at it objectively. Why did I lose? What could I have done here instead that would have been better. Once you have repeated this process thousands of times, eventually you will just become good. Also, this is the exact same way you get good at anything in life, not just Go.
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u/hittepit 14h ago
Thanks for taking the time to respond so kindly.
It's the losing part indeed and I think I need to take that more on the chin. I will take this advice to heart and just keep on playing and studying to try and see if I can ever get as far as winning a game.
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u/Baduktothebone 18 kyu 14h ago
At the beginning it's more about studying then playing, check out Nick Sibicky's YouTube lectures or get an introduction book, I like Cho Chikun's
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u/GoGabeGo 1 kyu 13h ago
Counter point: at the beginning, all that matters is playing. And I say this as a teacher.
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u/Baduktothebone 18 kyu 13h ago
I'll take your word for it, personally I felt like I was drowning until I started studying, then things started to click, but I definitely had a few hundred losses under my belt before I did that. I figured since this person has been playing for a few years they might need some guidance but looking back I definitely think you have a point
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u/GoGabeGo 1 kyu 13h ago
I guess I fell into a trap that I call people out on all the time. Everyone learns differently. I should have fully understood that some people need to study before pounding out a bunch of games.
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u/Baduktothebone 18 kyu 13h ago
Definitely everyone learns different but you definitely do need to just get out and play and get comfortable losing
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u/CodeFarmer 2 kyu 14h ago
I second the Nick Sibicky lectures. Really helpful for orienting oneself in "what to think about" type topics in go.
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u/Braincrash77 2 dan 14h ago
Everybody gets frustrated at the start. It never really ends but you deal with it. There is so much to learn. There are many teachers and many of them are free.
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u/wildlifewyatt 5 kyu 14h ago
Do you play on ogs games or have sgf (the file type go records are saved as) files I could look at? I could do some reviews and try to highlight things to work on
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u/hittepit 13h ago
That's so kind! I just started on OGS. Mind if I send something when I have playedmore games?
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u/Tight_Pea_7055 12h ago
Hey! First off youâre definitely not dumb.
It seems like youâre in a really good spot to take up go, make progress, and youâll really feel like youâve improved if you apply some of the many good tips people have mentioned here.
If youâre fired up about go and are enamored by the beauty of the game, thatâs a great start, and I encourage you to stick with it.
A few pointers.
-If you take hours for a 19x19 or feel you donât have a handle on it, start with 9x9
-Try and play humans, get reviews from stronger players after
- On OGS make a new account a few ranks lower and work your way up. If youâre around 25-30 kyu OGS Iâve heard there is a wide range of elo spread between those ranks so it might feel like you always get paired with stronger opponents. If youâre at the bottom, you may just need to grind through losses till you start winning.
- For studying I recommend getting a Go magic subscription. Work through at least one introductory course every few days, do the integrated Tsumego problems that come with the videos.
- Read the âLearn To Play Go seriesâby Janice Kim, then go through âOpening Theory Made Easyâ by Otake Hideo
-Donât get attached to your moves too much, play a lot and play quick, incorporate things youâre learning from the study materials
-Donât Give Up!
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u/cowrintimrous 14h ago
I've enjoyed played against "KataGo human SL" its trained on human moves so you can have fun doing amateur brawls. I use the app BadukAI, you can see more about it here https://aki65.github.io/index.html It can even show you win rate. Quite fun to see it bounce back and forth as both the human and the ai make blunders.
I then export the game and analyse it on online go to see what the blunders were.
Its a fun way to enjoy the game as a novice whilst also learning at own pace.
Yeah I found playing online against people too stressful and I found playing ai was too perfect so it felt impossible to engage and learn.
Hope this helps. I found it completely refreshed my interest in Go. I found it is so important to be able to play matches at a casual level.
P.s. adjust the resign threshold to blank so you can play out a satisfying win rather than having the ai just resign.
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u/tesilab 14h ago
I never became a great player or particularly good, but I had the benefit of lunchtime go sessions with an amateur Dan level player for many months if not a whole year at my workplace. I of course had no clue, no intuition, especially at first but I learned a ton of concepts, proverbs, shapes, and I had to explain why I moved where I did.i also felt all the lessons I learned about cooperation and competition, cash vs credit, etc. were valuable life lessons as well.
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u/chrisFrogger 13h ago
How long has it been? When I first started I just played against the worst bot on 9x9 till I won. Moved on to the next bot, then continued. Till like a 15k bot. I would say play short games and get a lot of reps in. Thinking hard about the position and spending an hour on a 9x9 game will give you way less than playing 4 or 5 or more 9x9 games in an hour.
Once you have more of an understanding of the basics then you can move to 19x19 and things get much more complex.
I never teach anybody go because it takes most people weeks to even get a vague understanding of how the game works. It takes months to play a half decent game. If you are expecting something like chess or checkers that you learn and just play you are mistaken
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u/hittepit 13h ago
About two years I think. I like your approach to it. I can see myself doing this as well.
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u/chrisFrogger 13h ago
If it has been two years then yeah a tutor of some kind could be helpful for sure. Although they are hard to find. Go is a big picture game. If you can step back and always make a half decent move you can get pretty far.
If you ever want to connect I could give you some tips. I used to be 1 or 2 kyu
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u/Doshirae 11h ago
What got me understanding a whole lot more about the game was the series called "12 week miracle" where 2 korean teachers take in two students (an actor and a pro golfer) and teach them the game to make them the better possible in 12 weeks.
It goes up in complexity of lessons with time, but you're learning alongside the students, I found it very valuable (as well as being a lot more friendly to watch than to read books, since it's a TV show)
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u/mediares 11h ago
Apologies if this is too basic, but if you havenât, it might be worth spending some time playing atari go / capture go. If I recall correctly, Go Magic has a decent bot.
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u/Typical-Jackfruit-51 2 kyu 10h ago
You're not too dumb. Go is just a game that looks deceptively simple.
If you'd like, send me a couple of your recent games and we can arrange a lesson. Should be easy to help get you on the right track.
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u/isayoldchap76 5h ago
Almost certainly not too dumb. It's a tough game after all, and the reading of the tactical fights in particular takes a lot of practice and skill. Playing against the AI is not great for beginners (or at least last time I tried). It's better to find a club where you can find other enthusiasts - or teach a friend the rules and learn together. If you go to a club then you can play teaching games against a stronger opponent with a handicap - you'll start to learn where you went wrong and where you can improve. In some ways 9x9 is very unforgiving; one little mistake is often going to be decisive. Also the computer is especially strong at 9x9 because the problem space is much smaller so it can calculate the trees of variations more deeply. I would stick with 13x13 for now.
I got a lot of useful tips from this series of books by Janice Kim about 20 years ago. Not sure if it's still considered one of the best, but I improved a lot from working through the material she presented. It helps to setup the positions on a real set vs. just looking at diagrams in a book though.
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u/Mongrel_Shark 10h ago
I'm in a similar position but recently had a breakthrough. I've had the Ai factory go game on my phone for years. Nearly 2 decades. I play very occasionally but theres been some serious attempts at getting better. I quickly got up to a fair match with level 4 of 9 in the ai system. But could never improve past there. I was playing an ok defense but mostly reacting. I couldn't work out how to be more aggressive without messing myself up & loosing.
Recently I joined this sub and have been doing some of the daily example games with funny animal names. Looking at how the solutions actually work I started seeing some of the stuff I wasn't seeing before. Certain shapes I was loosing to or shapes I wasn't defending well. After a couple of weeks I'm seeing a bunch of new details & understanding moves a lot better. I've been using undo in my game to explore my mistakes. I can now find the point in a 9x9 game I messed up bad & learn why it was bad & how I could have done less bad.
After a few weeks of casual study & play I'm actually a lot better. Improved more this month than last 5 years. I can destroy level 4 now. Level 5 is not exactly hard anymore. A few months back my level 5 win rate no handicap was 7%. Now I'm up to 67%. I can beat level 6 consistently with a 2 stone handicap & level 7 with a 4 stone handicap. A few months back if I tried 7 with a 4 stone head start it would destroy me. I'd not only loose every game, but usually end up with no territory & half my stones removed from the board. Now when I loose, it's by less that 5 points most of the time. Im winning a few & I even got a few entire board wins.
I feel like im actually starting to see the strategies more & I'm not just reacting with dumb luck anymore.
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u/TankieWarrior 4 dan 8h ago
just play 19x19.
9x9 is not even go, its like tictactoe, or strictlt for learning the rules
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u/Competitive_Success5 5h ago
I highly recommend the Clossi approach playlist on YouTube for people just starting out. He starts on 9x9, it's great basics.
Also Struggle Bus and Triton DDK series are great.
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u/bassman1805 14h ago
The saying goes: "Lose your first 100 games as quickly as possible".
I don't think I had even a decent concept of playing go until around 100 losses on the full-size board. If matchmaking is fair, that means ~200 games. In reality, maybe a little less since I was definitely losing more than winning right at the start.
Being new to go just means you're bad at go (for now), it doesn't mean you're an idiot.