{"id":540,"date":"2011-04-21T11:32:45","date_gmt":"2011-04-21T18:32:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allaboutgo.com\/articles\/?p=540"},"modified":"2016-01-27T19:39:53","modified_gmt":"2016-01-28T02:39:53","slug":"free-useful-resources-for-go-players","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allaboutgo.com\/articles\/free-useful-resources-for-go-players\/","title":{"rendered":"Free, Useful Resources For Go Players"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was talking with someone on <abbr title=\"KGS Go Server\">KGS<\/abbr> recently who was interested in improving. As I mentioned all the different free, online resources I knew of, I was surprised at how few of them the new player had heard about. It occurred to me there must be many other Go players out there who simply aren&#8217;t aware of what&#8217;s available to them. In this article I will list some of the lesser- and not-so-lesser-known resources and websites that are both very helpful and free for you to use.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>First and foremost comes <a title=\"KGS Go Server\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gokgs.com\">KGS<\/a> &#8211; if you haven&#8217;t started playing on this free online Go server yet, you don&#8217;t know what you&#8217;re missing. When I started playing Go I actually played at the (rather frustrating) <a title=\"Go on Yahoo!\" href=\"http:\/\/games.yahoo.com\/go;_ylc=X3IDMgRtcANibARwb3MDNARzZWMDZ2FtZWxpc3QEc2xrA0dv\">Yahoo! Games<\/a> server for a month before I discovered KGS.<\/p>\n<p>There are lots of opportunities to improve your game on KGS:<\/p>\n<div id=\"wplist\">\n<ul>\n<li>Josh Allen, a 5-dan known as <em>Battousai<\/em> on KGS gives a publicly funded (by donation) lecture every second Wednesday at 17:00 Pacific time in The Enclave room (under Rooms &gt; Room List &gt; Social from the KGS menu). These are free to attend and are very insightful. He also uploads games and lectures to a <a title=\"Battousai on YouTube\" href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/dwyrin\">Youtube channel<\/a>. You can keep these lessons going by donating <a title=\"Donate to Battousai's Lectures\" href=\"https:\/\/www.paypal.com\/cgi-bin\/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&amp;hosted_button_id=9047747\">here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Lance, a 6-dan known as <em>Shygost<\/em> on KGS also gives publicly funded lectures. These usually happen on Saturdays at 10:00 am Pacific time in his room <abbr title=\"Lance's Go Dojo\">LGD<\/abbr> (under Rooms &gt; Room List &gt; Lessons from the KGS menu) &#8211; with one or two week&#8217;s prior notice. Check the room for the schedule! Lance is a great teacher with an interesting approach to explaining things in his lectures.<\/li>\n<li>The <a title=\"ASR League\" href=\"http:\/\/www.advancedstudyroom.com\/ASR\/\">Advanced Study Room<\/a> is a free league-format competition for serious players looking to improve. It&#8217;s a great chance to meet stronger players and get your league games reviewed!<\/li>\n<li>Although not free, a $5\/month <a title=\"KGS Plus\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gokgs.com\/kgsPlus.jsp\">KGS Plus<\/a> subscription is more than worth its value. Check it out!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p><a title=\"Life in 19x19 Go Forums\" href=\"http:\/\/lifein19x19.com\/\">Life in 19&#215;19<\/a> is another website it seems many people &#8211; stronger players and beginners alike &#8211; have never visited before. It&#8217;s a great community for discussing anything about Go. You can play and watch turn-based &#8220;Malkovich&#8221; games (where the players post a move along with their own thoughts for observers to see), and post your own games for analysis. L19 replaced <a title=\"GoDiscussions.com\" href=\"http:\/\/godiscussions.com\/\">GoDiscussions<\/a> when they started having server problems.<\/p>\n<p>Up next is <a title=\"Sensei's Library: Front Page\" href=\"http:\/\/senseis.xmp.net\/\">Sensei&#8217;s Library<\/a>, a wiki-style Go encyclopedia with over 20,000 pages on virtually any Go topic. It&#8217;s a great place to quickly look up a board pattern you&#8217;re unfamiliar with.<\/p>\n<p>Associated with Sensei&#8217;s Library are <a title=\"GoProblems - Tsumego\" href=\"http:\/\/goproblems.com\/\">GoProblems.com<\/a>, a website with thousands of free <em>tsumego<\/em> you can (try to) solve, the <a title=\"Go Teaching Ladder\" href=\"http:\/\/gtl.xmp.net\/\">Go Teaching Ladder<\/a> where you can request a review of your games by stronger players, and <a title=\"Josekipedia Joseki Database\" href=\"http:\/\/www.josekipedia.com\/\">Josekipedia<\/a> &#8211; a collaborative website for looking up <a title=\"Joseki Introduction on All About Go\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allaboutgo.com\/lessons\/intermediate\/lesson-4-joseki-introduction.html\">Joseki<\/a> sequences. <a title=\"EidoGo Joseki Tutor\" href=\"http:\/\/eidogo.com\/\">EidoGo<\/a> is another great website with a Joseki Tutor and a Professional Game Database.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re using a Mac you may want to try out the free <a title=\"Go Widget\" href=\"http:\/\/lesiteajulien.free.fr\/\">Go Dashboard Widget<\/a> available which lets you play quick 9&#215;9 games against your computer.<\/p>\n<p>This article is just the tip of the iceberg of all the Go gems available. There are plenty of free <a title=\"Go Resources on All About Go\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allaboutgo.com\/resources\/index.html\">resources<\/a> here on All About Go, and a <a title=\"Useful Go Links\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allaboutgo.com\/links.html\">links<\/a> page with more useful websites. What are your favourite online Go resources? Write a comment below or <a title=\"Contact All About Go\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allaboutgo.com\/contact.html\">contact us<\/a> and this article will be expanded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was talking with someone on KGS recently who was interested in improving. As I mentioned all the different free, online resources I knew of, I was surprised at how few the new player had heard about. It occurred to me there must be many other Go players out there who simply aren&#8217;t aware of what&#8217;s available to them. In this article [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allaboutgo.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allaboutgo.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allaboutgo.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allaboutgo.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allaboutgo.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"http:\/\/www.allaboutgo.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":761,"href":"http:\/\/www.allaboutgo.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540\/revisions\/761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allaboutgo.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allaboutgo.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allaboutgo.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}