I love Go and have played it a lot in person, but I always struggle to get games online, even on OGS. Feels like the online community is very small compared to chess (which is now my boardgame of choice, basically for this reason). Has this changed? Are there better sites now where a beginner can find matches without waiting half an hour or more?
It's easier to get games on Pandanet https://pandanet-igs.com/communities/pandanet and Fox Weiqi https://www.foxwq.com. You can run Fox on OS X w/ Parallels or Crossover. It supposedly possible with Wine but I could never get it to work.
Do your settings allow for handicapped games? This increases pool of potential opponents.
My personal preference is to play non-handicapped games, but that's a good point, thanks.
There are more people on kgs and on fox go server
I wouldn't say so for KGS, especially for beginners. OGS is the go-to for western servers nowadays.
Fox, without a doubt. I recommend Weiqihubb for a quick-access app to asian servers on all platforms, with puzzles (https://walruswq.com/WeiqiHub).
Thanks, I'll check those out.
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To be clear, there are 140 active games right now. That 21k number is active “correspondence” games where moves can take a day and games can take months.