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Started that a couple weeks back 
It was interesting. I wonder if I would find more enjoyment watching go than playing go. That way I don’t have to invest time or be serious about it.
Professional Go is not as intriguing as watching Chess imo. Mostly because it could seem really random in the beginning, and then mid game suddenly patterns start to emerge.
I think the beginner learning curve is a LOT higher for go overall than chess. A chess beginner, after ~50 hours of play/study, can basically understand what’s going on (at least at a superficial level) in master games.
I have probably spent over 100 hours (200?) studying/watching/playing go so far, and yeah, even amateur 1d play is beyond me.
Go rankings go down from 30 kyu to 1 kyu, then up from 1 dan to 7-9 dan (amateur) then up from 1 dan to 9 dan (professional). 9 dan professionals are on par with the top Super-GMs in chess. Top amateurs may be better than 1 dan professionals, though, so it’s not distinct rating systems.
I’m about 10 kyu right now, and that’s probably on par with a 1000-1200 chess rating. It took me 6 months to go from rank beginner in chess to 1200-1300 on ICC back in the day, so 2 months to 10k is solid.
There are some good go YouTubers though that do some commented games. I was watching this last night while doing some work. Too Many Invasions! - OGS 6kyu - Back to Basic Baduk - YouTube
There was one game I watched though and the announcers were as energetic as starcraft ones.
I watch sc2 youtube broadcasts on the daily
I’m almost a 9 kyu it looks like. Played an 8 kyu in blitz yesterday and had a good position til we had mutual blunders for a bit in the midgame [we each missed the key point on multiple moves and he was the first one to find it].
I’d like to improve by roughly 1 kyu per month til I’m a 1 dan. That might be aggressive, but that’s my goal.
Up to 8k on the door of 7k on OGS (On-line Go Server). Provisional 7k on KGS.
On the GoQuest app I’m 3k in 9x9 and 6k in 13x13, but GoQuest seems to be inflated a bit.
I may try to figure out how to play on Fox Go Server, PandaNet, and Tygem.
To those vaguely curious, there are some Go apps that let you start on easy, against a stupid computer with a big handicap (free pieces). And then will bump you up a level whenever you win. The games are quick and fun.
I mean, as fun as candy crush or whatever crap you are playing on your phone while you should be doing something else.
And the final boss is AlphaGo?
Nope, though chess apps -are- just like that. My little kid likes to play with the “green arrows” turned on which tell her where to move, so using my phone she could easily beat Magnus Carlson. But then she cranks up the difficulty to superhuman also, and loses anyway.
I’m generally much worse against equivalently ranked bots as I am against humans, and always have been.
Most computer programs are programmed to make subpar moves periodically, but they don’t have flawed reasoning the way a human does.
e.g. if a human decides a 5 move sequence is good for them (and it isn’t), they’ll follow through the sequence to the end. A bot might play move 1 of the inferior sequence, then make a good move 2, abandoning the flawed sequence.
I’ve been playing a go bot periodically and it will just play two stones, I play the correct sequence to kill the corner, and it then plays clean moves to lose the game, instead of what a human would do, and play the inferior line and hope I make a mistake.
Up to 2k in 9x9 and 3k in 13x13 on GoQuest, but my OGS rating has stagnated. I need to play more live games and less correspondence.
I’ve beaten a couple 6k in 19x19 on OGS live and one 3k in 9x9. I can’t seem to beat bots better than 7k though.
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