What does Veeky Forums think of go?

Recently got into it, seems far better than chess imo.

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I am not a fan of pure strategy games. You are either better than your opponent and will win or they are better than you and you will lose. The only time they are fun is when you find someone on the same level you are, but that is kind of trickey unless you are going online.

About the best mix of luck and strategy in a classic board game IMHO would probably be backgammon which I prefer over Go and Chess immensely.

Go is much better than chess but takes longer to teach people who don't know it and fewer people you just meet on the street know it, so finding games is harder

Go has a detailed handicap system. There's a rank to you determined through your games (similar to elo). A difference of one rank is considered to be equivalent to a free move at the start. So with a difference of one rank, the weaker player would take black (which moves first), with a diffrence of two ranks, weak would take black again, but he could place two stones in the board instead of one before white plays and so on. This is officialy sanctioned and doesn't destroy the game like chess handicaps, which make the game play completely different. In case you're wondering, with equal skill opponents, the sides are random but white gets 6.5 points free (which is what the first move advantage has been calculated to be worth).

A good game that was handicapped in the west by terrible instruction. Now with more teachers starting with Atari Go on a small board and moving up it's starting to get somewhat popular. My own preference is to start on a 9x9 with first capture wins, then first to 3 stones, hold there until ties become more common than wins, then use most territory as a tiebreaker. After that introduce stone + territory scoring and they're up and running in 30 minutes instead of 3 weeks.

I like it. It's the perfect easy to learn lifetime to master game. It's basic rule principles are incredibly simple even compare to chess or even checkers.

The only trouble with teaching it to people is probably them think of it as 'Chinese chess', it's probably acquired a reputation for being something only weeboos or math types play. In the West at least, I would imagine most Asian young people considerate it something they grandparents would do.

> You are either better than your opponent and will win or they are better than you and you will lose

I'm pretty sure this is how any competitive game works.

In terms of pure mechanics it's easy as balls to teach and that's all you should really teach noobies.

No one plays Go unless there's Pokemon in front of it.

Well this begs the question: where is the best place for someone to learn how to play go?

>My own preference is to start on a 9x9 with first capture wins, then first to 3 stones, hold there until ties become more common than wins, then use most territory as a tiebreaker.

But that puts people in the mindset of capture stones over capturing territory. Who cares about setting up eyes when you don't need anything on the board? Though I do agree with starting on 9x9 board. If I were to change scoring I would change it so captured pieces don't score until they get a hand of it.

And now I'm going to look like a dumbass but I've seen people mention it both ways, do your captured pieces remove from your score or does capturing an opponent piece add to your score? I was taught the former when I was taught the game but other make it sound like they do the latter.

Dunno, Google it?

It literally doesn't matter. The margin of victory/defeat will be the same either way.

I prefer Chinese counting anyway.

Does anyone remember the hitman go games?

It wasn't walk around and assassinate people (thank god Think our Fox News would run with it) it was a series of go problems themed loosely off the game.

They did a whole series of them along with tomb raider go

I like it a lot, play it infrequently though. I need to git gud

No, plenty have luck factors involved.

Are you rolling dice? That would be an element of luck and can absolutely cause the weaker player to win in some cases.

For example, in the backgammon game mentioned above, if you are a bad ass player, you know all the best moves, when to make them, and have can really manipulate the board to your advantage.

You still have a 20% chance of losing to someone who learned the game an hour ago because the dice rolling involved.

It's much easier to teach than chess. The makes it complex is the sheer amount of choices available to you and how they impact the board, which is not something you should go in depth about with a new player. That's something people will study themselves by watching better players, reading articles and taking courses as they seek to improve.

I know it doesn't matter mathematically, just wondering what other people do.

You learn to care about eyes because you have to learn to protect your own pieces. It builds up a layer at a time starting with literally the most basic moves of placing, placing to capture, and placing to defend. In fact, it's only *after* the student has deduced the existence of eyes that you have the impetus to move on to territory to begin with.

if anyone wants to play chess i'm on chess.com
name: nixccc
still an amateur and wouldn't mind seeing what Veeky Forums's got

That actually makes a lot of sense. I stand corrected.

Thing about Go is that every conflict one finds in game seems to boil down to one player leading the other into a different 'closed gate' situation, or potential ladders when this state goes unnoticed. It's more a game of realizing where your investment is lost and when to spend your time working elsewhere, and trying to force your opponent to invest into long-term bad ideas..

Get some master games and play through them and analyse. Most important is play against someone at least as good as you regularly.

See if you can get a collection of tactics (puzzles where you choose the best move given a position). I know you can get them for chess and they are the number one most important thing for a beginner so I assume it's the same for go.

Luck having that much of an effect would put me off a game completely, that sounds like bullshit. Whether I win or lose in a competitive game, I would rather it be because someone did the best thing, not some bullshit dice roll. RPG's are different, but if I'm to play a serious game I want to know that the better payer will generally win. People still make mistakes, grandmasters can still lose. Besides, between handicapping and good old fashioned "going easy on you" there's no reason to have random chance.

I think go should require 4 passes to end, it would be a way better rule

Why is that? You want to bluff a pass or something?

>Why is that? You want to bluff a pass or something?
Its 2 per player not 4 per player, 4 consecutive passes (or 2 * amount of players if playing games with more than 2 player)

The reason is:
Just because you pass this doenst mean you want to end the game.
So if you pass and the player pass after you, the game doenst end.

At the first pass this doenst mean you wanted to end the game, so the other player may also want to do a pass that doenst end the game.
After it you do another pass again (the third pass in a row) to end the game.
But the fourth pass is needed or the first pass made by the enemy player wouldnt be able to work as a normal pass that dont try to end the game.

>Just because you pass this doenst mean you want to end the game.

I think that's a feature not a bug

Do any of you own an actual gaming set? I've seen very expensive offers on the market, and cheaper ones are 13x13 at most. I would settle with a makeshift cardboard with black and white beads, but several hundreds of identical beads aren't easy to come by either.

I've learned the rules a while ago. Games against AI are fun at times, because somehow it actually resembles playing with an opponent of the same skill. Playing online makes me buttmad after some time; it's not like losing a key piece in chess or a sudden checkmate, but rather a long series of bitch-slaps that drives me into a corner and then continues on until I have almost 0 territory. Handicaps do not seem to cut it.

I agree with it's a point of strategy, but only one you can take advantage of if you're winning or you hope your opponent wants to keep playing. You need to build better traps.

First result on google. I don't have this one, I think my set might still be at my parent's house across the country.

amazon.com/WE-Games-Wood-Pull-Drawers/dp/B0008EJXEW