Can anyone recommend a similar app/site for learning go? That one feels so hard to learn, but it is so fun. the games really feel like a conversation
1) Playing lots of games (https://online-go.com and https://gokgs.com are good for this). I usually have a few correspondence games going and then try to play a normal speed game daily. Don't worry about winning and losing, just play. Begin to internalize how standard tactics reappear regularly on the board.
2) Do tsumego (life and death) a lot. But don't just try things and see what happens. Try to read out the entire sequence before looking at the answer. (SmartGo One is a good app). Cho Chikun's beginner ones are good [1]. Try to work on a subset of problems (<100) until you can just look at the formation for a few seconds and see the answer. Play out all sequences to really understand why they don't work. Getting the answer isn't really the point, it's that you internalize the tactics involved in all tsumego.
3) As someone who spent WAY too much time reading books about Go strategy and tactics before I could barely play the game: don't do that. Books become much more useful once you are a SDK (single digit kyu) player. Until then, just play and study life and death. Reading books isn't bad, it just isn't that helpful when you can get beat in a game because you don't have the basic tactics down.
But what if I don’t know how to do anything else? I’ve learned the basic rules but struggle really hard even figuring out what’s a legal move.
I can't stress enough the need to just play games. Have fun. If you don't enjoy it you won't keep doing it, so don't stress out about "doing the right thing." Just try stuff and see if it works. If it doesn't, oh well. Don't do that next time. I know I said "don't just try things" above, but that was specifically in learning to read life-and-death problems. At your level you should just be having fun playing games right now. Life-and-death problems can be boring (but necessary) for a lot of players so the important thing right now is that you enjoy playing. The other stuff will come along naturally as you develop the desire to get better.
Oh, and don't play against AI (even weak ones). They don't play like normal humans and will just confuse you more than help. At much higher levels, AI has been very helpful in finding new tactics and strategies that more optimal, but at your level, playing other humans will get you better much faster.
You should totally do the tactics and puzzles that you can find (that same site has a bunch), but there's a lot more strategic recognition and pattern-matching in go than chess.
I'm also interested to hear if there are better tools though in the last .. Christ, twenty years? I'm old now -.-
We both really enjoy playing the game at our absolute best when I start the game less one rook, knight, bishop, and two pawns. I'm not a great chess player though.
Anyway, more to your question, finding a way to play Go in person is such a game-changer, literally.
If looking for a book. Cho Chikun's life & death corner problems progress in a systematic manner from beginner to dan level.
Also https://senseis.xmp.net/?LoseYourFirst50GamesAsQuicklyAsPoss...