i notice that my game is straight foward. i know some joseki, got some notion about the direction of play and some basic fundamentals, but it seems that i dont know how to make some moves that it will work at a long term.

is this called a “probe”?

or “tesuji”?

whatever it is, can someone tell me how should i trained my thinking in go.

how to think.

I'm in the process of reading this Japanese go book by Yoda Norimoto (“Yoda Note”).

He has 4 main themes that he think are central to playing go well:

1. Play the best point

2. Do not approach thickness

3. Preserve potential

4. Do not play out forcing moves

Each of these are pretty deep ideas that have meanings beyond the simple one that comes to mind quickly.

A good service is the Go Teaching Ladder. Do a google.com search to find the website. You send them an .sgf file containing a game of yours, and someone that is stronger than you will review the game and offer suggestions. Very nice service that is totally free.

what is a sgf file?

An SGF file is a common way of saving a record of a Go game.

It is easy to make an SGF file of a game played here. Look at the game in its current (or final) state, and click on the “TXT” link. This will give you a long line of stuff. Save this stuff into a file, and call it something.sgf. This is an SGF file of the game.

SGF files made from the text links here won't be exactly correct. That's why the Jago applet gives the wrong scores, diesn't display handicap stones, and shows the “accept” move as a stone.

fhayashi, i entered at go teaching ladder and saw many “sgf”.

can u recommend me a free, easy, simple and for windows.

:-) Please dont take it too seriously! :-)

To have pleasure in handicap tournament, u need to have grade (rating) corresponding to your strength. (u need to get so many handicap stones to have chance to win)

If u will reach your rating due to very deeeeep and loooong thinking, your grade will be better than u will think “quick”, BUT (!!!) for win in tournament u will need to think still deeeeep and looong (because your higher grade!).

If u play just quick, your grade will be lower BUT u will get more handicap stones! :-)

So dont think too much! U could get same number of win by less work! :-)))

Jago (the application, not the applet) and KGoban (the KGS client) are both good, free SGF readers. And since they're written in Java, they'll run fine in Windows. Could someon post the URLs?

The KGS client is CGoban2.

There are a lot of SGF file reading programs. Do a search for google. Otherwise, just get CGoban2, which is what I use.

Another nice program is Vizigo. It is a free program for IGS and the like available from sourceforge. Since it is a compiled program, it is much faster than the Java-based applications. Also, since it is under the GNU Public License, and the source code is available, it may be used on Linux, Windows, or whatever.