With the accessibility of the Internet, it's easier than ever to have go instruction from professional players, and in some cases, amateur players that offer teaching. From Yilun Yang to Jennie Shen, several names are probably familiar. In fact, many of the professionals listed on the AGA website (http://www.usgo.org/go-professionals-us-and-canada) have probably offered teaching at one time or another.

I made this thread to ask, who is your favorite go teacher and why?

Through this thread, I'd like to get a general sense of people's experiences in teaching styles from various pros (I know that some people like to argue that amateurs can be better teachers than pros, so feel free to describe amateur teachers, too).

Please refrain from any comments that might be deemed as offensive by any teacher that might actually read this thread.

_________________
be immersed

I'll start.

I haven't had much variety of instruction in go, but I have experienced two teachers. I'll describe my experience here.

Yilun Yang - I had a couple of lessons from Yilun Yang a little while ago. The method of instruction was to have two hour lessons, once a week. This would consist of playing two games, depending on how long the game took, and reviewing them. Before the game was over, he'd usually indicate that it was time to review. During review, he'd do his best to answer any questions. I feel that Mr. Yang had many generalized techniques - heuristics, maybe - for playing, and he'd use them for explaining how to play. He didn't talk a lot about joseki, or other types of set patterns. He'd recommend life and death, but we never did this during the lessons. Mostly, it was game playing + review, and during the review, he'd mention these tips.

Inseong Hwang - I am a member of the AYD. It's a nice program, and you can get a feeling for how it works by visiting Yunguseng.com. Inseong gives about 3 lectures on various topics each month. Topics usually range from opening to joseki to some sort of generalized theory. As a part of the program, you're required to play 5 games a month with other members. He gives reviews of all of the games you play. Every other season, he gives you a personalized go report, which describes more specifically what he thinks you need. I think that there is a lot of content in his instruction, and he is a great teacher. I would say that he covers more material than my experience with Mr. Yang. The downside is that, due to the nature of the program, you don't have one-on-one instruction. So he can't cater to any specific questions you might have, unless it's related to the topic being discussed (eg. during a review or lecture). That being said, the personal report is very nice.

_________________
be immersed

I have been taking off-line lessons from Kazunari Furuyama. He is an 8-dan amateur and former insei. His website is here:
http://kazsensei.com/

It talks about his teaching philosophy and gives his rates.

For each lesson I send him 1-4 games that I have played recently. I usually do this twice a month though the frequency is up to me. Kaz (as he prefers to be called) selects one or two of the games and provides a fairly detailed commentary on them. He also provides 30 problems centered on one or two themes based on the mistakes that I have made. Typically I get the lesson back 1-3 days after I send it in to Kaz. He also has answered general questions on study techniques (he has strong opinions) and questions I have on the game commentary or problems from previous lessons.


So far the problems have focused on basic shape mistakes and Joseki violations/follow-ups. Since he tailors the problems for each student, someone else taking lessons from him might get a different focus. Since I play as a 2-kyu on KGS I am still making a lot of fairly basic mistakes in my games and that is what he has concentrated his instruction on trying to eliminate. I have been quite happy with his lessons and still feel after a little over a year of taking lessons that I am learning from them. At least my KGS rating has been showing a general upward trend over the time period.

Okie

I found Minue 6d, full name Kang U Min, to be a fantastic teacher. Unfortunately his teachings seemed not to be enough to sustain his needs and he disappeared from the teaching scene, leaving us with a couple of thought provoking pages at Sensei's Library and a treasure of exercises that I've unfortunately lost in a computer crash. I've described some of it at http://senseis.xmp.net/?DieterVerhofsta ... gWithMinue . The main reason for my enthusiasm was that finally someone was able to explain the fundamentals of Go to me.

Before that, I took some lessons with Guo Juan. She concentrated on certain moves and patterns, while she also cared a lot about the correct attitude when playing and studying.

All of this is a long time ago.

For me, a teacher is as much an external source of discipline and motivation as they are treasure vaults of knowledge. I made the greatest breakthrough, from 2k to 2d, mostly by playing many serious games and analyzing them for myself, in a period of 6 months. I didn't need a teacher at that time to do so, a firm rivalry was sufficient.