IGO Academy for iPhone, iPad, and Mac — Go · Baduk · Weiqi
Need a hand or found a bug? Email budzillajapan@gmail.com. Please include your device, OS version, and what you expected to happen. Most messages get a reply within a couple of days.
Open Learn. Eight short interactive lessons take you from placing your first stone to scoring a finished game: the board and stones, liberties and capture, atari, saving stones, illegal moves, the ko rule, life and two eyes, and territory and scoring. Every lesson step is played on a real board, so you learn by doing. After that, try the Novice problems and a 9×9 game against the Novice AI.
There are five levels — Novice, Easy, Normal, Hard, and Expert. Novice to Normal use a tactical engine with level-scaled randomness so they make human-like mistakes; Hard and Expert add Monte-Carlo tree search that reads ahead. The kyu/dan estimates shown next to each level are a guide, not certified ranks. You can also choose your colour, add 2–9 handicap stones, and play on 5×5, 7×7, 9×9, 13×13, 19×19, or 21×21 boards.
Problems has five tiers (Novice to Expert) with more than 100 problems each — capture, atari, escape, connection, and life-and-death. Black to play unless the hint says otherwise; tap the winning point. Every problem’s solution was verified by the engine, so each one is guaranteed solvable. Solved problems get a check mark and your progress is saved on the device. Use Show Hint if you’re stuck and Reset to try again.
Both Chinese (area) and Japanese (territory) scoring, with komi. Captures, suicide, simple ko, positional superko, and two consecutive passes to end the game are all enforced. Pick the ruleset when starting a game, or set your default in Settings. Undo is unlimited.
Scoring counts stones on the board as alive. If dead groups were still on the board when you pressed Score, they are counted as living stones — capture them (or agree they’re dead and play them out) before scoring for an exact count.
Check that both devices are on the same network (not a guest network, which often isolates devices), that Local Network permission is granted on both, and that neither is using a VPN. Toggling Wi-Fi off and on, then reopening the Online screen on both devices, resolves most cases.
Yes — press Export SGF during or after a game to save a standard SGF file that any Go program can open. The export includes the moves and the player names.
Yes. Playing the computer, problems, lessons, two-player pass-and-play, and local-network play all work with no internet connection. Only Game Center play needs the internet.
Entirely optional one-time thank-yous. They unlock nothing — every opponent, problem, lesson, and mode is free for everyone. Because tips are consumable purchases, there is nothing to “restore” on other devices. If a purchase went wrong, Apple handles refunds at reportaproblem.apple.com.
Open Settings (in the sidebar on iPhone/iPad; IGO Academy → Settings… or ⌘, on Mac) and choose Reset All Progress. Progress is stored only on your device, so deleting the app also removes it completely.
No. There are no accounts, analytics, ads, or trackers. See the Privacy Policy for details.
Email budzillajapan@gmail.com with what you expected, what happened, and a screenshot if you have one. If a problem seems wrong, include the tier and problem number shown on the problems grid.
© 2026 Buddy Kinder · Privacy Policy · IGO Academy is not affiliated with Apple Inc. Apple, Game Center, and the App Store are trademarks of Apple Inc.