Yellow Mountain Imports Medium Magnetic 19x19 Go Game Set Board, 11-Inch with Single Convex Plastic Go Stones - Folding, Portable & Travel-Size Set

No se jugar GO pero voy a aprender, las instrucciones son un poco confusas. lo bueno que veo es la facilidad para llevar. El juego se cierra sin necesidad de una caja aparte y se puede almacenar dentro las fichas que vienen divididas en su contenedor separadas por color.

Great for game night

Nice little board for travel… I’d give it 5 stars except for two reasons. First - the plastic containers that hold the “stones” don’t seal very well and the lids to secure them are prone to coming off while traveling sometimes. The second - the stones are small (hence a travel game) but my large fingers have a little trouble picking them up.

I've always been fascinated by the game of go but I never had anyone to play it with. Two of my grandsons are now old enough for board games but I didn't want to spend a lot on something they might not like, so I chose this travel set. I really like that the plastic stones are magnetic (i checked and they don't fall off if the board gets jostled!) and come in their own sturdy little containers that fit inside the folded board. Wonderful set!

Good quality

As a "Traveling Portable" game set I knew I was going to be getting something significantly smaller than a full sized board. Since this was to be my first set, and I still wasn't sure I wanted to shell out the money for a full sized set, I thought this would be a good start (it wasn't, but more on that later.)First off, all the pieces advertised were included. I did expect for there to be a small instructional packet like the ones that come with the full sized sets YMI sells, but this was only a minor disappointment and the magnetic set didn't say it would be included so that was only my wishful thinking.The pkg arrived promptly, and was well padded. More so than I was expecting for something made of plastic, metal and magnets. The box the set comes in is actually very nice and I've decided to keep it as a carrying case, rather than have the board knock around in my backpack.The board holds closed pretty well and the bowls fit inside neatly with very little wiggle room. The stones all fit in the bowls nicely as well. The lines on the board are not completely centered (I notice that tengen is rather more on one side of the board if you assume that the split is centered).Some of the magnets on the stones aren't centered but this doesn't affect the game at all. The stones are smooth and have a nice feel to them but they are undeniably plastic and not particularly heavy. Most importantly though, they are small.The one thing stopping this from being a four star review has got to be the size of the stones. Again, I was expecting them to be somewhat undersized, this being a travel board, but reviews of OTHER travel boards (including a different board from YMI I believe) lead me to believe that the difference wouldn't be significant enough to affect game play. And I was wrong.The product info does include the size of the stones but if you're like me, and didn't give that quite enough attention, you'll probably fail to notice that 5mm x 13mm is actually MUCH smaller than the 7mm x 20mm or 8mm x 21mm that seems to be typical of the full sized sets.As a beginner, the stone size is far from ideal. If you've been playing go for a while and just want to be able to have a quick game at a moments notice this probably won't affect you as much and I do recommend this set for those purposes. Beginners should probably just settle for playing online and convincing their families that that a $100+ board game makes for perfectly acceptable Christmas/birthday gifts.

I have been playing GO for decades, using a traditional Japan made wood board with real stones. This board was way too valuable for everyday use especially away from home, so I picked up the travel set with magnetic stones, and steel board. Perfect for my needs, and at a very decent price. If you are just starting out playing GO I would recommend getting this affordable set, and if you enjoy the play, then invest in a wooden board.

I print out a bunch of TSUMEGOs (puzzles) , and use this travel Go board to set up the puzzle and have breakfast; coffee; dinner attempting to solve localized tactical problems. I use TSUMEGO dash HERO dot COM and also just Google for Tsumego pdf's (there's quite a few of them available). Richard Bozulich's "Get Stong at GO" series is also good.Do a lot of TSUMEGOs!!! here...Why Tsumego is so important (from above site)Many people keep saying that Go is mainly about territory, and that Life and Death is just important for stubborn killers, who use Go to escape their own aggressions but never understood the real game. I believe this is rubbish!At first, let me talk about Go-history and philosophy: In ancient China, people were not scoring territory at all, but instead just the stones on the board. So originally, Go was about "gaining life for as many stones as possible" instead of territory. Building a territory - i.e. an area where no opponent's stones are able to live - was just one strategy to secure life for many stones later. In other words, Go was just about life & death! When the Japanese changed the rules to territory scoring as they found this more elegant than scoring stones, the rules of Go were cut apart from the original idea, which lead to the widespread misbelief among amateurs that Go would basically be about just fencing in points. All professionals know better. Just recently Saijo Masataka 8p visited Hamburg, and while commenting on a game, he said: "In Fuseki and Middle Game, territory is not important, but strength and weakness of groups".Now the five-hundred-million-dollar question: How to improve your judgement of weak and strong groups? Hint: Look at the Headline. I think you are beginning to get the point. Be honest: How many of your last ten games were decided by just building territory, and how many of them by either killing stones or, if you are already a dan-player, by the implications of misjudging the strength of a group, for example being heavily attacked and therefore losing too many points by its implication? Voilà.There's maybe one more point to say: By doing much tsumego, your reading ability will increase in general, not just about life and death and tesuji. So you will have an easy time calculating endgame sequences and other stuff, so this will also be affected greatly by doing tsumego.