While I knew the rules of baduk from years ago, when I submitted myself to humiliating losses once every half year, it is only since a few months that I seriously looked beyond the basic rules of the game (meaning, I knew the aim was to surround, and I know how to capture, that was pretty much it.) The place where I actually got a taste of the true complexity of this game was at The Interactive Way To Go, a great website that not only shows you the basic rules, it goes into tactics and strategy.
The website is interactive (duh…) and gives you exercises using a little flash plugin. Overall, of course this makes it more convenient than dealing with diagrams in a book, though it tends to illicit the click-blind-and-see-if-it-is-correct behaviour. Also it uses flash or java, so if you’re trying to access it on a tablet or phone it won’t work. The lessons are intersected by problems catering to the specific rules that have been learned, and in some cases rules are learned simply through trying to solve problems; the problems are rated from 50k up to 34k by the last lesson… Though, a translation would be more like 35k to circa 20k (depending on how well you manage to apply the lessons), according to a lot of books and other tutorials out there.
What is great about this website is that it is available in a lot of languages… Arabic, Basque, Belarus, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Chinese (Simplified characters), Chinese (Traditional characters), Croatian , Dutch , English , Esperanto (!!!), Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian; I’m surprised they didn’t translate it into Klingon or Sindarin. Some use Java instead of Flash, not sure why, and there is no Korean… which is an almighty sin which will rain down fire and tear open the earth (or maybe I just find it a pity…)
The overall layout of the website reminds me of the days before Web 2.0, with html-only and flashy banners, and the absence of CMS; it’s kinda retro, and a plus is that it can be accessed over a slow internet connection.
My Cat Plays Baduk 