Comic Strips

Great game, much like chess I have no one in real life to play it with and I lose interest quickly in playing random internet strangers, so it’s been quite awhile since I’ve touched it.

I think a thing that made a huge impact for me was finding a program full of life and death puzzles. It really helped to drill in what a “dead group” looks like, and helped me judge when to abandon a part of the board or continue fighting for control there. Unfortunately that was 15 years ago and I no longer remember the name of that program.

Otherwise I always found the idea behind influence on the board to be very powerful, if difficult to define. I always noticed that good players tend to start by putting pieces all around the board, generally hovering on the third or fourth line away from the edge. Even if they wont fight for those spots later, just that small presence is enough to disrupt how their opponent will play and gives an edge in defending or attacking that area later. I’m a novice player who hasn’t played in a decade so maybe its not great advice, but spread out early! I think it really helps. It makes it a lot easier to claim territory and also just push into your opponents, and hopefully they eat up a lot of space trying to defend that.