People first familiar with Chess generally try for occupying the center when they first try Go. For the latter game, that is not an efficient use of your stones. Look at this way: to form a safe group in the center requires a minimum of 13 stones arrayed as follows (X is your stone, O is empty point):
X X X X X
X O X O X
X X X X X
On a side of the board, a safe group requires a minimum of 8 stones arrayed in this fashion:
X X X X X
X O X O X
In the corner, a safe group requires a minimum of 6 stones in this pattern:
X X
O X X
X O X
Of course, playing that close to the corner will give your opponent more opportunity to expand their territory, so you have to strike a balance between staking out ambitious territorial grabs and creating a safe group.
A word on safe groups that I’ve noticed many beginners have a hard time understanding: a safe group is one in which your stones are connected so that there are two separated eyes within the group. An eye is an empty space. Be careful about false eyes, one which looks like it’s connected within the group but really isn’t (it’s diagonally adjacent, which is not an actual connection in the game of Go).
Counting points in Chess is an art unto itself, really. The values of each piece fluctuate as the game progresses. A piece’s value actually depends on the position at the moment. If I recall correctly, the usual value for a Queen is given as 9, while a Pawn is given a 1. That might be accurate for the opening position of the game, but there may be times where the best move is to swap a Queen for a Pawn, thus showing the Pawn has more value at that moment in the game.
In Go, counting points is to determine score. I learned the old Japanese counting when I first learned Go. At the end of the game, you count the eyes your stones surround and then subtract from that number how many of your stones your opponent captured. The usual way of doing this is for the opponent to fill in your territory with the captured stones. When I learned, I found that to be part of the charm of the game. Another way of counting is to count each living stone you have on the board and each eye your stones surround. The American Go Association has explanations of the major rule sets (Japanese, Chinese, AGA, Ing, etc.).
You mentioned nets and ladders. Since stones do not move once placed on the board, the shapes groups form and the geometric relationships between the stones have special names. You probably do not need to commit many of these terms to memory at this stage. Two terms that are useful now are Joseki for a corner opening–this is the order the stones are placed in that corner; there may be plays elsewhere (Tenuki) on the board while this is happening, and Fuseki for a full board opening. In my opinion, studying fuseki is not all that helpful for a beginner because they do not have the experience yet to know why move 14 following move 13 is in a different part of the board. I would suggest just paying attention to the opponent and seeing what threats are imminent. Here is a list of terms from Sensei’s Library.
The links I’ve put here are all in English, but you can follow a printed game record in any language if all you wish to do is see how the game was played. The published game records do not look like Chess records. In Go, you are presented with a drawing of the board with the black and white stones on the board, each with a number. The number on the stone is the order in which the stone was played in the game. The publisher assumes the reader knows the rules of the game and thus does not give any indication of captures. This means that a later move can appear on the board where another stone was played earlier. This is shown by having the later stone with its number shown below the board followed by the previous stone with its number, read as, say, “Black 43 played at White 12”. Today’s games are on the Internet and you can see the game’s progress by scrolling through the moves as though you were watching it in real time.
Regarding self-study: You should not proceed to a following lesson until you are absolutely sure you understand the previous lesson. This means understanding what the move is, why the relationship between that stone and stones already on the board is important, what threats are available to the opponent if the stone were not placed there, and what threats are now available to the opponent. You should also be aware if the lesson is discussing strategy or tactics. In other words, is this move important in the game highlighted in this lesson, or is this lesson describing a tactic, a relationship between stones, or showing what a Go term means.
An aside: There are two fun and recent Korean movies related to Go. The first one, The Divine Move, is about a Go professional who wishes to avenge his brother’s death; the second, The Divine Move 2: The Wrathful, is about a guy whose father lost everything, so the protragonist goes through some vicious training to become “the Grandmaster of Go” with the intent on taking revenge on the world. If you prefer the written word, you can always read Shibumi by Trevanian–the hero of the book is an assassin whose life is pretty much informed by Go.