Free, Useful Resources For Go Players
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 of them the new player had heard about. It occurred to me there must be many other Go players out there who simply aren’t aware of what’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.
First and foremost comes KGS – if you haven’t started playing on this free online Go server yet, you don’t know what you’re missing. When I started playing Go I actually played at the (rather frustrating) Yahoo! Games server for a month before I discovered KGS.
There are lots of opportunities to improve your game on KGS:
- Josh Allen, a 5-dan known as Battousai on KGS gives a publicly funded (by donation) lecture every second Wednesday at 17:00 Pacific time in The Enclave room (under Rooms > Room List > Social from the KGS menu). These are free to attend and are very insightful. He also uploads games and lectures to a Youtube channel. You can keep these lessons going by donating here.
- Lance, a 6-dan known as Shygost on KGS also gives publicly funded lectures. These usually happen on Saturdays at 10:00 am Pacific time in his room LGD (under Rooms > Room List > Lessons from the KGS menu) – with one or two week’s prior notice. Check the room for the schedule! Lance is a great teacher with an interesting approach to explaining things in his lectures.
- The Advanced Study Room is a free league-format competition for serious players looking to improve. It’s a great chance to meet stronger players and get your league games reviewed!
- Although not free, a $5/month KGS Plus subscription is more than worth its value. Check it out!
Life in 19×19 is another website it seems many people – stronger players and beginners alike – have never visited before. It’s a great community for discussing anything about Go. You can play and watch turn-based “Malkovich” 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 GoDiscussions when they started having server problems.
Up next is Sensei’s Library, a wiki-style Go encyclopedia with over 20,000 pages on virtually any Go topic. It’s a great place to quickly look up a board pattern you’re unfamiliar with.
Associated with Sensei’s Library are GoProblems.com, a website with thousands of free tsumego you can (try to) solve, the Go Teaching Ladder where you can request a review of your games by stronger players, and Josekipedia – a collaborative website for looking up Joseki sequences. EidoGo is another great website with a Joseki Tutor and a Professional Game Database.
If you’re using a Mac you may want to try out the free Go Dashboard Widget available which lets you play quick 9×9 games against your computer.
This article is just the tip of the iceberg of all the Go gems available. There are plenty of free resources here on All About Go, and a links page with more useful websites. What are your favourite online Go resources? Write a comment below or contact us and this article will be expanded.
Hey Nik I just found out about this site and it is amazing. I have also been trying to improve. I play on KGS and my account is KGS, although it has been a steady increase, I want to improve quickly. I have the Janice Kim books and read 4 of them (the 5th one I’m almost done with). If you have any other advice that would be great thanks.
Thanks, and I’m really sorry for this late reply. There are many more articles on this website which may be able to help you, at least in terms of motivation – try looking at these ones:
http://www.allaboutgo.com/articles/tag/goal/
Also, I would strongly recommend Toshiro Kageyama’s “Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go” which helped me see past some barriers and improve by two stones (6k-4k) in less than 2 months. You can read my review here:
http://www.allaboutgo.com/articles/review-lessons-in-the-fundamentals-of-go-by-toshiro-kageyama/
Let me know if I can help with anything else – I’m always up for a game on KGS or DGS (my username is “Nikolas73”). Good luck!
I like these resources you mention. However do you have other recommendations that are good but not necessarily free? thanks.
Once again I must apologize for a late reply. There are a lot of great services out there such as Alexandre Dinerchtein’s Insei League on KGS ( http://www.insei-league.com )
There are also many teachers offering private and group lessons – some can be found at http://senseis.xmp.net/?GoLessons .
I will try to find more things like this for a future post. Good luck!
Hi, It seems that your site itself is not quite known, 🙁 since this post has only 2 replies.
I want to suggest you to add GoGameGuru, https://gogameguru.com/ which is a great source for news, commented games and problems. They have a shop too. Books and sets are not free, but it worth the money 🙂
Pandanet http://pandanet-igs.com/ is other must for this list.
And even I am not quite good at English, I think that something in this post is not right. GoProblems is associated with Josekipedia, (you can log in with the same account) not with SL. I may be wrong, but for looking at a board pattern Josekipedia is the place too.
Hi, great suggestions! I have not updated this list (or this website) in a long time but will certainly do so when I am less busy. Thanks for visiting!
Ten years later: Is lifein19x19 still active?
I keep being told my IP has been banned…
Hey there, congrats on being the first non-spam comment here in years! 😃
How odd, I just visited L19 for the first time in a while and I also get the same error that my IP has been banned. This makes me think it’s some kind of server/database issue. The page on Sensei’s Library indicates some kind of issue since November: https://senseis.xmp.net/?LifeIn19x19%2FStatus
I might try logging in to KGS to see if anyone there has more information. I wonder if it’s time for a replacement Go forum 🤔