Don't know if I should pot in a thread in this subforum as a beginner but I feel I have insight from that viewpoint on this issue. The person that teached me the game did so on a 19x19 board, he is also quite a beginner but not as much as I was/am but his argument was that of strategy and that he did not like the 9x9 at all. But we are heavy boardgamers playing both modern eurostyle boardgames and wargames, and magic etc and that might have had an impact.

But thinking through this and how we game now as this is still my most common opponent, I think the few weaknesses I fail to use fully come from thing he could learn more about from 9x9 play and problems, espacally life and death. On the other hand I need to learn to read more and most things, but I do use the 9x9 and the 19x19 around equally much.
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(Ot:)

I tried my best to just, go to sleep, but this sentence somehow hit my mind so hard that I couldn't just go over.

I assume that your 'they' meant East Asians, but here I would like to tell a little about a subset of 'they' namely Koreans, as I being within. I really don't know well about the others. China is just an (annoying) another world, and Japan is Japan.

Staying outside Korea for a while, I do strongly feel that Koreans are very much 'I win!! Yoo Hoo~, no excuses, please, loooozer!' kind of people. I was very surprised when knowing a lot of Dutch highschool graduates are actually 'willing' to go to Hogeschools, which are non-research colleges. In Korea, that sort of school is where the 'losers' go, 'Why would I be one?' and over 70% of Korean highschool graduates study in research universities, not even knowing what they're studying.

This 'the winner(survivor) is the best' principle lead this country to an extremely fast economic growth. In the early 60s, the goal of the controversial dictator Park Jeonghee (whose daughter is the current Korean president..) was to live better than Philippines. But now Philippines is such a crap (sorry to be too 'explicit'). So many times I can now hear the Samsung GalaxyS default message notification whistle all around, and yes I am proud of this situation.

So is everything going so well in Korea? Well, with respect to the economic statistics, still quite yes. But something interesting is that, I have never seen so much bunch of happy looking people before coming to Amsterdam in my whole life. The Koreans ARE too stressed. I didn't feel it so 'explicitly' being in there, but having it compared to other people who grew up in another culture, the difference is too clear.

But Koreans do know that they're not quite happy that way, but still, what's better? to win? or to lose? 'The result is not important, what you've done is..' okay, so what if your friend became so successful and rich while you're still 'there'?. It goes that way, on and on.

One interesting survey was held in Korea asking 'Which side would you select? The Korean team's world cup winning, or 1,000,000 KRW (about 1000 USD)?' more than 70% chose the money.

Sorry for going too off-topic in a go forum. I know I do this often. Perhaps this was interesting or perhaps not.

Good.. whatever.

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Wait, please.

Nothing quite like happy sweeping generalizations to warm the cockles of people's heart.

As we see in this discussion, there are merits to starting with small boards and there are merits to starting with large boards. Who comes first - the chicken or the egg? Either way the interested learner will soon discover the beauty of go strategy and the necessity of backing it up with technical prowess.

What are our aims as teachers? Some suggest that we foster an enjoyment of the game while others focus on how to build fundamental skills. (perhaps here is a point at which a discussion of culturally shaped values might be fruitful).

The "one size fits all" approach has its limits. My teacher (me) took one of the middle roads, but one heading more towards personal benefit than strength. I wanted myself to push my brain a bit, but also to have a pastime which offered both competition and a pleasurable exploration into the depths of a multi-faceted game. For me this worked, and perhaps a more demanding teacher would have turned me off to the game entirely.

Some people have more potential than others to become strong, and I think a teacher should take this into account, but there is a danger in focusing too much on strength. While it's possible to enjoy the game without being strong, it's also possible to be strong and find the game not fun enough to stick with. Then again, this may well be beyond the scope of the teacher.

Maybe we are looking at this question the wrong way around. Instead of focusing on what's best for the learner, it might be better to think about our own strengths as teachers. Anything I tell a student about how to get strong is basically just hearsay. Wouldn't it be better for someone like me to stick with what I know?

That said, one of the things that I know, is that I do many things wrong in go. Of these, I believe that the most significant is that I don't spend enough time considering alternatives and reading these alternatives out to the best of my ability. Recently, my teacher told me that I should go back to 9x9 until I've rid myself of this bad habit. Did the chicken come before the egg? Maybe, but that's a long discussion.

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Patience, grasshopper.

Many interesting aspects have been discussed in this thread, like teacher attitude, pupil attitude, small vs large board initiation, improvement vs joy... but I 'd like to gently nudge this back to the original statement, which Bill Spight was so kind to summarize as:



Maybe not all clubs should be dojos but I'd recommend that at least a few try to be and have
- a structured approach to initiation
- a structured approach to improvement

Without a structured approach, we indeed leave the whole question of how to acquire, retain and improve our people to the randomness of individual attitudes and approaches. I leave aside whether the initiation should be small board stone counting (which I favor), capture go or large boards with territory. Indeed, one size doesn't fit all, but you don't know in advance which size fits whom, so your random approach will not score better than a structured one. In business, they say: focus on the process not the result.

But there's more to the dojo idea. I've been part of the table tennis community. I've been in a small social club and in a large competitive one. The pattern I observe - from small samples, admittedly - is that size and structure are related. Perhaps size needs structure but I hypothesize that well structured clubs will grow larger. Here are a few reasons why clubs with a well structured offering will do well:

- newcomers will get the idea that this club knows what they're doing
- newcomers and avid pupils will be motivated by their teachers' conscious investment
- newcomers have an immediate confidence that they will not be left alone
- there's a sense of belonging to a structure
- there's a clear hierarchy and a vision on how to climb the ladder
- respecting a time schedule and a vision on the content, will induce respect for each individual member

Small social clubs are very nice. People are kind to each other, there's a lot of freedom and banter, but eventually, when it comes to the game, it's every man for himself. There's nothing the club really does for their members' improvement except offering an environment for play. You'll find that the sociable people, who got reasonably strong by themselves, will stay. The newcomers will drop out as will many who want to improve.

The Go community is a very kind and friendly one, but I believe this is one of the reasons why it stays so small. One doesn't observe this kind of freedom and niceness in most other sports clubs. Our clubs are more like pubs. In the end that can be observed as a lack of self esteem. Why would people take a go club or go itself seriously if our clubs don't take themselves seriously?

I've recently come across this talk about Esperanto.

The main metaphor (starting at 6:06 in) is that teaching Esperanto to children first (as opposed to some foreign language) is like teaching children to play the recorder first (as opposed to the bassoon, for example).



To me this sounds suspiciously like the stories of Chinese kids playing on 19x19 and having no real idea about fuseki, josekis, etc. but totally crushing Westerners who can't defend themselves against the advanced fighting skills of these children.

Basically I think these secondary skills (fuseki, joseki, "strategy") are much overrated in the West, which is seemingly why people argue for teaching beginners on big boards, when (at least to me) it seems rather obvious that small boards are pedagogically better.

(Herman already gave a few convincing arguments in favour of small boards. I have yet to see a single argument for the benefits of teaching beginners on larger boards.)

This is not my argument at all (maybe it is the argument of others here?), and I find the idea of trying to teach a beginner "strategy" kind of mystifying ...

To be clear, I have never said that either one or the other board sizes are "better" for teaching. I think both are tools which can be used well or poorly for teaching.

If a teacher cannot effectively teach a beginner who insists on playing on 19x19 (or a teacher who insists; either one), that is a mismatch between teacher and student. I maintain that fundamental principles can be taught regardless of board size.

But what do I know? I don't really understand fuseki, joseki, or "strategy" either, so anyone trying to learn from me won't get those topics anyways, beyond a few basic ideas.

I suppose my "teaching" method is more like peer study. I often learn quite a bit from those I'm teaching, and it broadens my game significantly.

True, if "teaching" means "setting up and showing". On 5x5 however, the only thing you need to explain is the rule of capture and the purpose of the game (more stones).

Then ko and seki happen. The likelihood is huge. No need to set up and show.

You can teach life & death on 19x19. But on a 7x7 two eyes are a matter of winning or losing. You don't need to explain. And there is no escape either: they can't tenuki, they must solve this riddle first.

You can teach territory on a 19x19. But on a 9x9 it happens in a matter of minutes. Beginners start to *feel* that a move inside that safe area is a waste of time. Instead, they move into disputed area. I've seen it happen time and time again.

All the basic concepts appear naturally, without a need for the teacher to artificially direct the beginner's attention to it, who also needs to accept that this is essential, while it seems to bear no relationship to that huge 19x19 board that's still to conquer.

The mistake lies in teaching ex cathedra. Teaching should maximize self discovery. In Go this is perfectly possible by starting on very small board sizes.

Excellent example, that gets directly to the heart of why I disagree small boards are inherently better. I've met a tragically large number of people who _hate_ being put on the spot with a logic puzzle. My wife is a competent go player now, but if I set up an easy tsumego and ask her to solve it, she often freezes and just can't do it. I don't know if it's performance anxiety or a bad third grade math teacher or what, but a lot of people have convinced themselves that they can't reason through abstract problems. The thing I struggle with most evangelizing Go isn't communicating the rules, it's convincing people that they're not "too dumb" to play it. 19x19 can certainly overwhelm them with complexity, but I've found 13x13 works well for keeping things quick but avoiding the game being explicitly about reading.

In terms of basic rules, Go is easier then, say, "Settlers of Catan". If somebody sticks with the game at all, they'll learn capture and ko and seki. That's why I think any rule communication is secondary to making the player comfortable.

I'm not talking about a difficult tsumego. I'm talking about the end stage of a 7x7, wich is often about making two eyes for the group. When it fails, and fails again, you can teach how to survive. Often, players find out on their own, usually they find how to kill first.

If you are unable as a beginner to move through this stage, then moving on to other stages is just makebelief. This is precisely the source of players preferring 19x19 and being frustrated that more aggressive players live in "their" territory. They learn that the game is about surrounding empty points, while it is in reality about making alive groups.

If someone freezes up when the opponent lives in a place where they shoulnd't, at a basic level, I'm afraid they're effectively too dumb to play go, or maybe we've allowed them to stay dumb by skipping the L&D chapter and move to fuseki right away.

We are going to have to agree to disagree on this. From my own experiences, some people will require you to "set up and show" regardless of board size, while others will get the idea themselves with very little prodding (again, regardless of board size).

I feel like you are advocating a "one size fits all" approach to teaching, and my personal experiences across various disciplines (as both teacher and student) tells me that this simply isn't correct. We aren't talking about a production process made up of 18 Therbligs that pumps out go players here, and that shouldn't be our goal when teaching.

I don't reject your teaching method outright, of course. I think there are great gems there that can be incorporated into a good teacher's repertoire for go. I need to explore these ideas myself and see what works in individual instances.

Why do we jump too quickly to fuseki and middle game study? Because it's fun. Why would I care if that's 'makebelief', if the beginner can't back his moves up with reading? I think it's 100x preferable that a beginner leaves being intrigued by the game then thinking its all logic puzzles if that's not their cup of tea. And don't get me wrong, most players are fine with logic puzzles. Some love that aspect. But not everybody.

Scrabble is primarily about 2-3 letter words and managing access to bonus squares. I'd never disparage a player for just wanting to play cool words.

Look at popular games: settlers of catan, dominion, ticket to ride, scrabble... most of them have better or worse moves, but rarely 'bad' moves that lose a game outright. I've seen players content to lose a game of go by 60 points with slow moves but devastated to lose by 10 from a group dying. In the fuseki a move can be wrong, but still buy you a couple points of territory. That's different than life & death where the right move lives and the wrong move loses.

Just because somebody freezes up when they have to reason out the 'right' solution, doesn't mean they can't fall in love with other aspects of Go. And if they fall deeply in love, maybe Go can help them get over that fear, and that would be one of the greatest successes I can imagine teaching Go.

There's a beautiful moment where Go clicks with somebody, sometimes 2 games in, sometimes 100 games in. They get a glimpse of this intricate system, of the beauty of the layout of stones, whatever. Suddenly it makes sense. Ok. Great. Now I can convince them of the importance of tsumego and show them the path to dan and beyond. But I just want to keep a beginner from losing interest before that point.

And frankly, if they can figure out not to eat the stones, they're not too dumb for Go. I just want to share the joy I find in the game. If they rise to 6 dan, great. If they play occasionally at 25kyu for the rest of their life, great.

L19 is a great place for self-discovery. I realized that I don't know how to play from viewtopic.php?f=10&t=10549, and now I find out that it's because I'm effectively too dumb to play

I totally disagree about “dumb” here, while strongly agreeing with your concept of learning to survive = building alive groups. It rather shows more about some discrepancy in set and setting of the people involved, perhaps of their expectations or such. There are things that can frighten us even if we are strong and intelligent people.

I think this whole thread shows that teaching Go (or better “introducing to Go”, as somebody has called it elsewhere in the forum) should probably best be “flexible”, like our play.

Even though I have my preferences for games with people who are learning Go from/with me (smaller boards first, a few rounds of Atari Go (aka Capture Go; sometimes even returning to Atari Go later, just for fun, after a “serious” game), using Handicap Stones), it all depends on “set and setting”, and in this case not only the mindset of one person but of two (or perhaps more), clearly to be seen when teaching kids. Same with Atari Go and using Handicap (aka Capture Go).

I have met people who don’t like these settings, and then I usually accommodate to their wishes. And sometimes it happens that, after some time, they concede. I dearly hope this is not because I have become unbearable when accomodating, but rather that they have understood my reasoning.

BUT anyway, I don’t view anything I said here to be a generalizable rule but rather as a statement about my personal preferences, and I guess they even say more about my teaching competence resp. incompetence.

Cordially, Tom

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

Not only was your post generally great, but this bit cracked me up. This will now be my response to anyone that worries about how complex the game looks.

I apologize for the harsh reusage of that phrase: no one is too dumb to play go. I'm just being angry with teachers who throw their pupils into the vastness of the 19x19 game, blaming their falling prey to aggressive invaders on the complexity of the game. No it's the blame of omitting the basics and the makebelief of finding beauty in the randomness of killing dead groups or misreading ladders.

Read hushfield's account: laoshi repeatedly says: no go.
Perhaps i am biased by the many forum attendants screaming "why cant i improve". Surely people are allowed to find beauty in randomness. Sociable clubs are plenty. We could use a few more dojos though.

To me that sounds like a totally separate issue for the teacher than the size board they played on.

To me, a club is meant to be a sociable way to find games, not a dedicated improvement factory. When I was young (and foolish) I was a member of a chess club for about a year that probably had 100 or more members show up any given week. You were assigned a game based on your club ELO, but apart from that, there was no dedicated instruction or anything, it was a vehicle for games and the opportunity to be with other people who were interested in chess.

Now, chess doesn't suffer from the same lack of players in the general population, and with a smaller club, it makes sense that the games may be more informal. However, if your goal is improvement beyond what games like that can get you, it's on you to study or to find a teacher to help you. If you're lucky, there may be such a teacher at your club, but it seems odd to impose that obligation on all clubs.

There are certainly clubs where I live that you could think of more as go schools. Yuan Zhou, for example, has a "club" which is more of a training academy of sorts, from what I understand, but it's really an extension of his teaching and individual lessons with students. Unsurprisingly, he also charges for his lessons, and I have no objection to this. However, it's a very different animal from the other sort of club, and certainly doesn't appeal to all of the players in our area. Calling this a dojo to distinguish it from the more social club sounds like a good idea, but I certainly wouldn't want to insist that all clubs must be dojos, or vice versa.

I think it's also harder to gather the number of serious students AND strong teachers to form a dojo in any given area, and that's not going to go away until there are many more go players in the west than there are currently. In the meanwhile, I think the best way to keep new players is to have a friendly and fun atmosphere to engage with the game at the level they like and raise awareness of it. Improvement, after all, requires engagement, but the reverse isn't necessarily true.

That's the problem with page 3 of a discussion. Your arguments are often being pulled in all different directions, and it becomes hard to reiterate your point without being pulled into all the subdiscussions. I care a lot about sharing Go with people without an abstract boardgame/mathematical/computer science background, so I pulled the topic that way. But if we focus not on what Bonobo accurately termed 'introducing' Go, but on those who understand the game and actually want to improve, I suspect we're in closer agreement.

Looking at the groups that seem to produce top results, I see the following commonalities
1) There's usually a single, strong coach who expects excellence.
2) People usually pay to be there
3) There's often external, public performances: concerts, tournaments, etc.

The third parameter isn't universal, but usually the previous two points are then more true: I'm thinking here of workout instructors.

Paying seems to be surprisingly important. It kind of cements the relationship of who is in charge, and gives the teacher the leeway they need to be harsh. I think it also creates guilt in many people when they don't practice, since they're paying.

Of course pay without a coach demanding improvement doesn't seem to be sufficient (see gym memberships).

And external performances seem to be useful for adding urgency to the proceedings. Giving hard deadlines the coach can use to ratchet up the workload expected.

The viability of a paid Go dojo, though, is probably questionable in much of the world. I don't think there's enough interest to support one around me. There have been some online efforts, which some people swear by but probably isn't right for everyone.

In the dojos I've visited or read about, most of the "teaching" happens in games between students. The teacher only rarely interacts with the students one-on-one. So it seems that the main motivating factors are the students' desire to improve and the competitive drive to get ahead of the other students.

It is quite possible to have a "personal trainer" type go teacher on line. There are several pros who give on line lessons. Those have the "pay to play" motivator and the instructor who demands excellence. In my experience, though, such pro instructors tailor their expectations to the level of the student rather than demanding an essentially unattainable excellence which would be frustrating to the student.

I've known go clubs that had teaching nights in which one of the high-dan players would give public reviews of members' games or discuss joseki, etc.

But I think most amateurs don't keep up a passionate program of study. They are content to accept the slow rate of progress that comes from just playing semi-serious games.