Studying Tips

Learning from the Internet

Nutshell:
— Don't get overwhelmed!

The amount of Go-related material on the net is amazing. And it seems to be growing by the minute! There is no way for me to list all of what's out there, so instead I will just concentrate on the stuff I consider major. Stuff that in my view you, as a beginner, will benefit from the most, either by obtaining direct instruction, or by being pointed in the right direction. I hope you will find that helpful.

Sensei's Library

Check out Sensei's Library!

Probably the very best resource for studying Go on the internet is the excellent Sensei's Library. You can find pretty much anything about Go there, not in the least tons of other "starting points", links to other excellent pages, info about Go players. Explanations of Go terms, and insights into high-level strategies. And more!

Sensei's Library is a wiki page, which means that Go players around the world (which also includes you now) can add new content to the site and edit existing one. This makes it sort-of a colaboration work authored by the community of Go players at large.

Whatever else you do, please make sure you check this one out!
Its worth your time. :)

Problems

Do problems, problems, problems...

Solving problems is one of the most time-efficient way of studying Go. It forces you to think and come up with solutions. If the problems are designed correctly, you can't beat it! And the more problems you can do the better. So do problems, whenever you can, the more the better.

By far the most problems you can find on the internet (or in books, for that matter) are life-and-death problems, also called tsume-go. This is alright, since as I have told you in the previous section about Books, life-and-death is the first subject you should seriously study. So you are in luck!

Don't get discouraged!

For now, you will probably find most problems hard to solve. But remember - you are still a beginner. There is no shame peeking at the solution after a minute or two if you feel you can't figure it out. Nobody will even know! :)

The important thing is that you tried to solve them! And that you put some thought into it. Then, even if you fail at first, make sure you come back to the same problems next day or next week, and try them again. Even if you find that you just remember the solution from before, and don't actually solve the problems, this is alright too! As long as something remains in your head, your doing great!

During an actual game, when confronted with a life-and-death situation, it is actually more efficient to know (or remember) the solution than to come up with one on the spot. So don't be shy about looking up the answers to the problems you can't solve at first. We all do it! We just don't brag about it too much. :)

By the way, all of the above also applies to problems in books, and not only to those posted on the web.

Some Resources:

Games

The most "classical" way of studying Go is by re-playing and analyzing (or trying to analyze) games of strong(er) players. There are quite a few approaches to that task, some better, some worse, and some dependent on your personal preference. I will discuss this subject in more detail in the Games section. For now, let me just give you some of the internet sites where you can find games to study.

Some Resources:

You can find more links in the Resources section of my Go Links page.

Other

Well, lets see... we have covered Sensei's, games, problems, so what's left? Really, not that much! Other internet resources would include Go servers (which are covered in the Where? section of the Playing Tips) and other sites which Go instructions (which are covered on the Alternatives page.)

Well, in any case, here is some more stuff you might want to look into, just in case. :)

Some More Resources:
Feb.2006 (rb)