Youth Go Online

You may have little opportunity to play others without travelling, especially if you do not have a club at your own school. You might like to download a free Go program, Igowin from Smart Games, to practice against.

Of course, if you have internet access, you can use a game server or a Go server. However on some servers many of the users are very strong players and on other servers many of the users are people who have no idea of the rules. You probably would prefer to use a game server or Go server where you can meet and play against other young people.

PlayOK

One place where the Go players you find there are usually beginners and happy to play on small boards is the PlayOK (playok.com) game server. Amongst the many games it supports is Go - shown as "go-baduk" on their list. Click their logo above to enter their site.

OGS

The Go server OGS (online-go.com) has quite a user-friendly interface and it is used by many of our youth activities. One such is a friendly playing session sometimes held on a Sunday afternoon 16:00-18:00 in the British Go Association Youth group and also our online youth tournaments are held there some months on a Sunday.

To join our group get yourself registered on OGS and send us your user id by completing our application form, telling us something about yourself, if you want to be invited in to the group. After a couple of days, when you go onto OGS, you should find an invitation to join the group in the notifications.

KGS

The best Go server for improving players to use is KGS (gokgs.com). It is easy to find players slightly better than beginner level here and UK players are usually in the British room, where our official matches are played. See the Junior Calendar.

It is easy to use the java connection directly from the KGS web site. You can just follow the "Play Go Now!" link. However we suggest, if you attend doing this regularly, instead to download and install the Go Client program, CGoban3. This can be downloaded from KGS Download page; it uses Java Web Start (which is also available from there). This is better than the direct java connection, because the client program allows a teacher and pupil to look at a completed game on line, discussing it and trying out other moves, and you can use it to edit locally held game records that are in SGF format. Once you have installed the client program, it is easy to connect, you just run the client program and click its "Play on KGS" button.