Chess: “oh my queen is hanging, I can resign.” Go: “oh I made a mistake, and I find out 10 moves later that it actually was a mistake and after 30 moves I realise it lost me the game.”
One could argue that it is the other way around. In Go, after most blunders you can still play on and try to turn the game around. There is no such thing as checkmate that ends the game immediately. What you describe (the mistake is not realized immediately) is mostly an issue that only beginners struggle with.
Just for anybody who wasn't satisfied by my explanations... I started playing Go less than 2 months ago, so I am by no means a qualified teacher (my 18kyu rank should make that apparent 🙂)
Go is an amazing game. It's odd how some chess players can "get it" and others can't. Even though the two games have a lot in common and really do use the same kind of thinking there's just enough conceptual differences to confuse some people. Some notes... The first game was using Chinese scoring. Chinese scoring is better to use for beginners because it doesn't punish you as much if you make captures that you don't really need to, The big difference that isn't in chess is the concept of "shape". Good shape is basically similar to positional play in chess, but it's SO much more important in Go. And there are levels to it because you have to think about the local shape but also there's a larger shape to the whole board. And sometimes the two can conflict. Oh, and he talked about joseki (openings) but didn't really answer your questions. Yes, they do name them but not with really creative names like accelerated dragon. The names are pretty humdrum. And small variations don't get their own names. But then in a real game on a full sized board you'll play four joseki openings at once, one in each corner. And the Ideas of how different corner joseki link up to each other leads to another level of opening theory called fuseki. And those get names too.
@@trucid2 not entirely. In Chinese scoring the stones you have in play each count as one point. But prisoners captured don't count at all. Mostly this balances out and ends up the same score, but if you play three stones down to capture a stone that was already dead then in Japanese you effectively lose 2 points but in Chinese you gain 3 points.
@@SumNutOnU2b You're missing the fact that the opponent also gets a point for each stone they play under Chinese rules. If you play an extra stone in your own territory while they play one elsewhere, they get a point too. You lose a point just like under the Japanese rules.
@@trucid2 yeah I know that. But I'm talking about complete beginners. And that's where you get the situation where one player just keeps passing but the other one thinks he's got to capture all the groups first. In fact that very thing happened in Eric's first game and it's pretty common among newbs. That's why I say Chinese scoring is better for teaching new players
But seriously, if you'd like a go lesson with a stronger go player (though not a streamer), I'd be happy to give you one. Some of Aakaash's advice was... suboptimal. :-) Actually your instincts are excellent for a beginner; your "panic" moves were all quite reasonable.
Not saying you're wrong, I can barely play go, but in chess some reasonable moves or even good moves can be bad for beginners and good for better players. I think you know this already but it can sometimes be hard for some people to grasp that even if it's a good move it's a "bad move" :P
"If pieces are surrounded, are they removed from the board or do they change colour?" "That's a great question" /*doesn't answer it* (They are removed) "When you say territory, does that mean more stones is better?" "Uhhh, yeah" (Territory is empty space, filling your territory with stones can actually reduce your score)
One great thing about the game of Go is that you can handicap it and a GM can play a 7-year-old and it can still be a good game. The same thing isn't really true with chess handicapping.
@@jeffk1722 even a time handicap is only okay for some cases as top bliz players will defntively still beat beginners/amateurs with an 1hr for each move
Also, your questions about scoring were perceptive, and actually get to the heart of the difference between Japanese and Chinese scoring. In Japanese scoring, your score is the number of *empty* intersections you surround, plus the number of enemy stones you've captured (including ones that are considered "dead as they stand" at the end of the game). In Chinese scoring, your score is the number of empty intersections *plus* the number of stones you have on the board, and captured stones don't count for anything. This sounds radically different, but actually if you do the math, you'll realize that they're *almost* equivalent. Since you take turns, if there are no captures, you will have the same number of stones on the board at the end (+/- 1 depending on who played last). So adding a captured stone to your score (as in Japanese rules) is equivalent to subtracting it from your opponent's score (which is essentially what you're doing in Chinese scoring, since if it was captured it is no longer on the board, and so doesn't count as a point in Chinese scoring). In practical terms, durin the game, it's simpler to forget about which scoring system you're using and always estimate the score as if it's Japanese scoring. Even Chinese players do this; it's simply quicker to count just the empty territory than to also count all the played stones (which can be quite a lot on a 19x19 board).
Another point where his question was quite perceptive was had they been playing by Chinese or AGA rules, White could play pointless moves to capture the black stone and not lose any points from doing that.
Awesome! As a long time Go player who recently got back into chess with your videos, seeing this video makes me super happy! Welcome to the community! :)
Hey Eric! If you want to keep learning the game, I'm a 7 dan Go streamer, it would be a delight to show you more. I've introduced literally hundreds of beginner to the game!
Man, something about go boards like the one in your pic is so beautiful. Sure, hand carved chess sets are great, but the simple style of the go board, stones, and the bowl is so elegant.
Eric’s voice is so soft and gentle that it makes me feel on guard, like he might say something completely outrageous, but his voice will be so smooth that I will just believe everything and be satisfied.
@@Rhobyn Haven't play Go before. But I hope the new people getting into this game is not toxic as everyone is saying what was happening a few years ago
Glad to see a video like this where you start learning Go Eric. It is my favorite board game I’ve ever played. The simple rules translate into beautiful complexity. I was on the chess team back in middle school and always enjoyed chess, but there is just something deeper in the complexity of Go that can’t really be captured in Chess. I look forward to seeing more videos from you about Go!
Me watching Eric’s chess video is like me reading an ancient book that’s in a different language, this go video is like me looking at Eric struggling to read a children’s book while me yelling at him
I just love the way you speak , so soft spoken. Its amazing and i would like to thank you for doing this video . I would love to see a series for go. Would like to learn along, i already know the basics i think but this is awesome
I am sad there aren't more videos of him learning go because how go came to the western world is from chess masters discovering Go, learning it and then falling in love with it. I felt like I was watching history recreated Lol
It's always nice to see chess masters taking an interest at Go. I started 2 years ago and it's been an amazing journey. The go community is also very friendly so don't hesitate to ask around.
Jonathan Schrantz did a similar thing a while back, I recommend watching his video if you're interested in learning. The teacher offered more explanation on different concepts and was just much more knowledgeable overall.
I am surprised that more people in the West don't play go. I have played chess all my life almost, but after learning Go i completely switched, it's a different level of problem, that you solve a bit of, every day. I guess it's a bit harder to get into initially.
I checked out the stream as well. Watching you guys work on the puzzles was really interesting too. I'm about 7k over the board. It was really cool watching you both work out the difficult one in the 'Beginner puzzles' but also figure out things like false eyes in the Cho Chikun ones. Great stream though to both :)
Wow didntexpect that but ilove it really started to get interested in go after watching the documentary alphaGo, beautiful movie about AI And Go actually made cry. Give it a try if you can
I remember trying online go out a couple years back. The interface was horrible and opponents were either super supportive and helpful or the most toxic and insulting people. Maybe I'll give it another go. (Pun intended.)
I think that the average online Go player is quite polite. If you want to find opponents who support you as a beginner, try to ask for a teaching game in the server chat. There is also a site called "open study room" which you can use to find friendly opponents.
@@derpepe0 What is a good client to play these days? I stopped playing a decade or so ago (I was quite bad), but I can't remember the client I used to play.
@@TemplarOnHigh I play on both OGS and KGS but OGS is more clean and easy to use. You can use it in the browser on any size board and you get rated quickly. online-go.com
@@TemplarOnHigh The most accessible for westerners is OGS (online-go.com), and you can play in browser. You'll have trouble finding games at certain higher ranks though. KGS (at shin.gokgs.com) now has a browser (and android) option in beta so you don't have to use a client but I don't really play on there so I can't vouch. Tygem is the most popular Korean server and Fox Go for Chinese. Both have clients in English but its a bit of a hassle.
So the final score is basically the number of “alive” stones plus the territory. The rules only slightly differ when an eye or territory is shared by both sides
trivia: the city of Kyoto (which became capital city around 794) was designed to resemble a "Go" board. from the old palace, east, west, southwards at least, it does resemble a grid/Go board/chess board.
Having played Go online I'd have to give this analogy. Winning in chess is like winning a boxing match by knockout. It is obvious and definitive. Winning in Go is like winning a boxing match by points.
The thing I find most similar with chess and go is that there plays/strategies of control all over the board and you sacrifice one area of lesser priority control to ensure dominance in another more important priority. and it becomes a game of whose priority was ultimately correct, such that your investment in that area was of higher importance to the one you sacrifice. thus you don't have to react to everything your opponent does. you can prioritize your own ideas and ignore your opponent's ideas and the other thing that is similar, there is a lot of forking (ideas) so if your opponent prioritizes the left you go right, if they prioritize up you prioritize down and you always have a way to play opposite your opponent's ideas. so you have a fork, where you win either way your opponent goes.
Oh in go you absolutely can ignore what your opponent is doing, especially near the beginning. In chess it’s really about you vs opponents pieces, but in go there’s still basic shape/territory “up for grabs” that isn’t necessarily an attack on what they’re doing.
Hello from 2024, I dunno why it was recommended to me but it was a fun newbie teaches newbie games. Hope you went along and tried to learn more (will check after this vid) :D
Finally I have been waiting for this for a long time. I am a 3 dan go player and just started learning chess. If anyone wants to learn go or teach me some chess feel free to comment.
@@musicalneptunian I play on lichess every day and I did most of their learning modules. I am playing at around 1500 on long games but I'm looking to progress even further.
btw. the starting points are i think called Hoshi, they are for plays with handicap. the Komi is meant for players of even strength, but if one player is much stronger than the other, the weaker player just plays black and gets some stones upfront on the Hoshi-spots.... means an absolut beginner could start with up to 5 stones on the (beginner) board, and then white making the starting move... like in chess when the stronger player plays without rook or queen, but much more common....
I'd love to give both of you a lecture because it seems fun to train beginner ^^ But I'd be so awkward in front of the camera. But even though Aakaash is 18k he did a good job at explaining the basics! He used some wrong terms but they're not that important at the beginning and you'll learn them eventually. All that is important for now is knowing the concept of capturing stones, keeping stones connected, building living groups with 2 eyes and maybe the fundamentals of using the edge and corner of the board to your adventage. There are some useful phrases you should remember like "corners before sides before center". These proverbs will make sense eventually as you progress. Please keep playing because Go is an amazing game with a lot of depth.
ha! ran into this, watching Eric's old videos. Quite enjoyable. I watched about 15 minutes. The black points are called "handicap points" and have nothing to do with the starting of the game (therefore the confusion with the middle point, later in the video). If you pursued this, probably you already know (I see this is 4 years old). If not, and if you are still interested, then you should read about handicap in Go. I will watch it to the end.
There is always 5D Chess with Multiverse Time Travel, at least you kind of know how all the pieces move. Actually you are better off re learning everything, due to the time and dimensional traveling mechanic.
This is pretty amazing! Although I don't play Go (professional Go board is 19x19) anymore (I play chess now), I was kind of a Go prodigy, I've played since I was 6 or something and I quick picked up, and was able to easily come out top in my region, and even beat competitive much older players. As Go is not a common sport outside of my region, it caught me by a pleasant surprise to watch someone on the internet play Go.
go is the only chess that ive learnt to play and none of the other chess games give me the same excitement. there is almost no rule on where you can land a chess in go. a bad looking move can be good, and vice versa. its all about strategy.
1D Go player and only 1060 chess.com player. Love your chess videos and cool to see you try go. I was 700 until watching you and got up to 1060 in the span of one month. Hopefully in a year I can make 1500! And be an average club player.
As a relatively strong Go player this is pretty painful to watch, but I welcome you to the world of Go. Eventually even without instruction you'll be able to quickly figure out why some of these moves were bad.
Question to the go experts: at the end when they discussed the scoring system, he explained how it was not advantageous for Eric to surround the a9 stone to capture it, which is why Eric passed at the end of the game. But wouldn't it be advantageous for black to keep playing and trying to make a group that is alive? Eric cannot ignore it and keep passing so he has to shrink his own territory. Even though Black's stones die eventually, giving Eric extra points, he also shrinks his territory. In principle you could have a situation where he needs more stones to surround Black's stones than he wins, so that he loses points in total.
How can black achieve life there unless white allows seven moves in a row? It will be entirely impossible if white plays C8. Any stone played with the goal of saving A9 is a purposeless gift to the opponent.
Yeah of course white would have to allow 7 more moves but my point was white would have to react and shrink the territory. I guess in this case after white passes, if black played A8 trying to save a9, White plays c8 and black has no hope. So white loses a point of territory for the stone on c8 but wins a point for A8 and it's therefore indifferent if black played A8 in the first place. At least in this concrete situation. I thought maybe there are more complicated situations where it's not clear if playing on was advantageous to one player but of course if they can fight it out as you said that's a way to find out.
I guess white could also wait longer and let black play a8 and b8 for example,winning more stones than placing own stones. Therefore it's not really indifferent if black played on, but really it's just bad to play on.
@@cengime Resume play is only a thing in Chinese and American rules. Japanese rules don't resume play, instead they consult the Japanese rule book on what counts as alive or dead.
Go seems to benefit from tutoring faster than chess. I speculate that it is because chess mistakes become intuitively obvious while go mistakes mostly don;t.
More territory does NOT mean more stones. Both players played the same number of moves and so they both placed the same number of stones on the board. Assuming no captures were made during the game, the territory would be deciced by how the stones are distributed not how many stones are there. A big part of go is about finding the best spot to make the most efficient use of your stones to maximize your territory or to atleast have more territory than your opponent safely.
Hi eric! Just for some tips in go stones diagonally have potential allow cracks in ur territory, it is much better to instead skip a whole gap and patch up if the person starts to invade lets say both of you are placing stones along the 10th and 11th line, it would make sense to jump from b11 to d10, as b11 to c10 allows c11, which can easily break into ur territory as long it is not close to the border
I don’t play much 9x9, but I believe tengen is actually a fairly good first move. The corner starts are more for bigger boards, while 9x9 is so cramped that tengen radiates influence into all 4 corners, making it difficult to secure territory without giving away a lot. 7:21
43:06 Based on the points and board display- this game used Chinese scoring, not territorial scoring. But it was territorial scoring being explained. They’re close to equivalent- (Chinise scoring gives points for your stones on the board but not for enemy stones captured and territory scoring gives points for enemy stones captured but not your stones on the board). But with Chinese scoring Eric didn’t actually lose points for playing in his own territory.
Go is in fact as a huge military operation with frontlines in where the individual stones can be seen as individual brigades, forming linked groups as divisions (two linked stones) army corps (three or four linked stones) and even larger, creating whole armies. And those groups can cooperate with other owned groups. Not creating groups (as if they are divisions and armies) by keeping too much stones for too long single is i.m.o. a huge tactical mistake. I see Go as a kind of a large strategic warfare operation with all these growing frontlines. At 25:52 the northwest, west and also the western part of the southern coastline, the 1st row of the game territory, is already firmly in white hands. In that white territory in the west is the black invasion in fact as a "bridge too far" airborne operation, fighting there already from the first beginning a lost battle. Instead of spending too much stones and time for such hopeless operation I think it was better for black to use his stones and time to defend already much sooner, on the 8th row in the north-east, his northern border after whites move E9 by the answer black G8. Stone black F9 is already lost, so to stop whites further advance at the 8th row to the eastern coast line, being the the J line, has in my opinion the top priority. By not doing that white shall finally conquer the north eastern coastline too, what could be before the black move G9 (in the hopeless attempt to save the already lost black stone at F9) prevented. With black G8, instead of G9, a group (army division) would be formed on the vertical axis G8-G7 and after that a black move F7 (or if white play's just before F7, black plays G6) black would have create a real black army to defend it's territory in the east as far to the north as possible. But at the begin, after the possible black move G8, I expect that white would answer with G9, capturing the black stone at F9 and acting against the risk of a next black move to G9. That would have saved black at F9 while the whole eastern coastline would come firmly in blacks hands. If I was the black player the most likely continuation after "white E9 - black G8" would be "white G9 - black F7" to create that black linked frontline from D6 via F7 to G8 and after that as fast as possible a further mobilization of the frontline from G8 to the eastern coastline, if possible to J8 else to J7. Finaly, passing in Go is not for free, it cost 1 point, to pass you must give your opponent the stone that you dont play in capture if the opponent don't pass either. A Go game ends if both players are passing directly after each other. At 1:01:30 white A7.. is i.m.o. a wrong move. Much better for white is the bolt move A5, why? After white A5 it has two liberties there and blacks next move A6 is no option because due whites countermove A7! capturing the black stone at A6. Then black will probably play defensive A4, else will white play that, for him offensive, move in his next turn. If that happens black is forced to play B3, else will white play that move, capturing two other black stones, being B4 and B5. So after white A5 follows probably black A4 and then white A6 to close off the front at the west coast 1 point further to the south as actually happens, forming the white group A6-A5-B6 with three liberties including the eye at C6. So if the white move A5 was played the end result would have been not 28.5 for white and 27 for black but 29.5 points for white and 26 points for black :) The reason why white have even 1 point more then 27.5 is indeed due the captured black stone at A9, giving white that extra 10th point at the A row.
What I found interesting in the second game was when Rosen was hovering over J9, because that actually loses the game for him. After J9, G8 is a forced capture on that group!
For all the chess nerds wanting to get started in Go!~ Here are some RU-vid resources! Nick Sibicky - THE name of teaching Go on RU-vid. Teaches at the Seattle Go Center and has super engaging lessons up, usually standing at the front of his classroom. dwyrin - Also known as Battsgo, a very skilled player and a long time RU-vid teacher; also streams on Twitch. In Sente - Just recently became active again after a hiatus; has a great selection of beginner-oriented videos. NYIG_GO - Run by professional go players Stephanie Yin and Ryan Li (they're married) from the New York Institute of Go. Also check out the reddit community at /r/baduk, give me a holla if you want help getting started!! I am about a 8 kyu.
To learn go correctly you are not supposed to start by just playing a game. Atari go is a good idea, showing the concept of 2 eyes is also super important
Only played a few times, but I remember those "diamond" patterns were easily attacked. I was always a bit unsure of how to properly play to create territories that were safe.
I've not played go but it seems to rely on instinctual pattern recognition in a way chess probably used to. Now with so much analytical theory it must be very freeing for some chess players to play, yet for those intrenched in theory it must be quite a scary world. Perhaps the next chess championship could be decided with a game of go instead.
Nice to see some go as well. It sometimes frustrated me how they're never talking about increasing the territory, even though that's constantly what Aakaash is doing while Eric is making eyes. But still a good start, and territory will hopefully be a bigger part of it next time :)
In fact, it's Eric that brings up the eyes making, while his opponents asks him to look for unsettled territory. I guess Eric did read something about eyes before.
@@keejj Eric brings that up because that's what he already knows about. Aakaash mentions unsettled territory, but not until there's basically nothing unsettled remaining. But yeah, although it was small, I was happy to finally hear it being talked about a bit, and now that Eric knows how count points, he'll probably understand its value soon!
