And if you haven’t played yet, what’s stopping you?
When I was a student, Deep Blue beating Kasparov was old news, but AI was still a long way from even shodan level. That fact came up in my A-Level Computing course and I learnt the rules. Once I got to uni, other people on my CompSci course also knew the basics so I got to play some games.
AlphaGo was obviously very interesting for me, so I watched a lot the of games and commentary as well as playing a bit online for the first time. I’ve picked up the game again lately, hopefully for good this time!
Family traditions, My grandfather played Go, my father, my brother, and now my niece and nephew.
Really cool to have that connection. I’ve taught my family and some friends how to play as well as a bunch of kids at a Summer program. A big part of the enjoyment of the game for me is teaching others. I’m not very good, but it is by far the best game I know of.
The culture and tradition of Go is very prominate here. Education of Go is also easier to access here, like although I know of the game because of my family (I was so young I couldn’t even remember a time I didn’t know), but I was trained through rigerous Go classes from very young age.
Jagex, the developer of Runescape, had a section on their site for other games including Go.
That’s so cool. I played Runescape back in the day, but had no idea about this
@ALoafOfBread like many people it was seeing hikaru no go around 2003 at an anime convention. spent a long time getting into it not really understanding the rules. only in the last years since the AI go revolution did i get back into it and finally start to understand the game as a whole. still stuck hovering above 10kyu though :(
@dantescanline @baduk
Hikaru no Go is awesome. I watched it back in my earliest days playing Go. I’m still right around 10k as well! Maybe a little better or worse depending on how much I’ve been playing.It’s so cool how AI has changed how we think about Go. Instead of us thinking of it as a “solved game” now that AI can beat all but the best players, we look at AI as the ultimate Go tutor. I think that really speaks to the spirit of the game.
A friend from Korea taught me. In retrospect, they were kinda weak, but that worked out okay because I actually stood a chance without a crazy handicap. Didn’t really get too much into the game then, but somehow I eventually heard about CGS going live, so I gave it another try. The environment that day was really fun: thousands of players from around the world all hopping online at the same time, the chat room scrolling like mad, lots of new players to match with on all board sizes, the server crashing under the load. Good times.
That’s really awesome. I was introduced to it by a friend whose family is from China. We were kids but he was weirdly strong even then - I think he was 1 dan on KGS in like 8th grade. Luckily we got others interested who weren’t quite so dominant lol
If you got rigorous training from a young age (normally started at the age of 6 or 7, from the 1st grade), normally you can reach dan level in a couple of years, before 10.
Dang. I didn’t realize progress was so quick. I guess it makes sense with how fast kids learn.