Of beginners who are 'afraid' of the game, I've found about equal measures intimidated by the size of the 19x19 and the closeness of the 9x9. Some are stricken by analysis paralysis (I can go anywhere!), but lots find that liberating (I can go anywhere!). I remember one guy who found his first snapback to be a quasi-mystical experience, but I've also seen them panic when the stones start to get entangled and they realize that, yes, Go really does involve reading out ahead. It's a very rough rule of thumb, but if the beginner is a boardgamer or logical individual I'll start on 9x9, but if they're more art-y/literar-y I jump immediately/quickly to large boards and stress intuition and visual understanding more.

I stumbled into an unusual approach that works surprisingly well. We'll sometimes have a couple over interested in learning the game, but I only have one board. So we'll play rengo with the new players, my wife and I each teaming up with one of them. For the beginner it keeps them in a roughly sane board shape. They've got a stronger player with them trying to transform their moves into good moves. Sometimes my wife and I will just play out the endgame when they start to get too confused by all the stones, avoiding that issue all together for the new player. And actually, it's a lot of fun as the strong player in the pair. With absolute beginners you invariably start to spiral into unusual complexity as your partners repeatedly skip necessary moves, creating lots of opportunities for groups to go back and forth between living and dying. We don't tell our partners anything about where to play, perhaps just pointing things out in retrospect now and then.

You can avoid considering them, but it is hard to avoid them on review. The most basic question is always "where should I have played now?", and answers like "that's beyond your current skill level" or "don't worry about it, just play wherever" are not very satisfactory to the beginner. But at the same time, actually answering such a question accurately requires you to delve into those subtleties.

If you can't satisfactorily explain a significant fraction of moves, why play that part of the game? On 9x9, the review is 99% "did you notice you could have captured this stone?", or "you should cut here, it will be hard for your opponent to live then", or "can you figure out how you could have killed/saved this corner?". Those are tangible answers, which can usually be demonstrated with a short sequence.

I don't think 19x19 should be avoided entirely, but I do think 9x9 should be preferred.

tl;dr

Two reasons why I prefer small boards for quite some time when introducing to Go:

• faster realizing what life & death means

• faster learning how to fight and survive, or to abandon and survive elsewhere

Now that I read what I wrote, it actually seems to be one and the same thing.


Greetings, Tom

_________________
“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?

You are being too polite. This belief annoys me to no end.

In the US, our go clubs are not dojo.

And we're pretty nice to our beginners, too.

I learned on a 19x19 board, but I like small boards for teaching beginners. Games are over quickly, and usually have one or two points for teaching. Like, "If you make an eye, you will win the fight."

I also like the Capture Game for teaching absolute beginners. The game has a well defined object based upon the basic rule of go, capture. When it come time to talk about dead stones, the beginner can usually see how they could be captured. Also, as you move from Capture One to Capture Two, Capture Three, Capture Four, and Capture Five, the game becomes both progressively harder and more like regular go.

I used to worry that the Capture Game put too much emphasis on tactics, and capture in particular, leading to bad habits. But the Capture Game is more strategical than regular go. For instance,

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$ Small Life
$$ ---------------
$$ | . . O X . . . |
$$ | O O O X . . . |
$$ | X X X X . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------[/go]

The White group is alive in Capture Go, even though it has only one eye, since it has two eye points. That means that it is easier to live in Capture Go, so the tactics are easier. And that means that strategy counts for more.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$W Life
$$ ---------------
$$ | . . . . . . . |
$$ | . a . 1 . b . |
$$ | . . . . . . . |
$$ | . X X X X . . |
$$ | . X O O X . . |
$$ | . O . . O O . |
$$ | . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------[/go]

has "a" and "b" as miai for life.

E. g.,

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$W Life
$$ ---------------
$$ | . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . 2 1 7 3 9 |
$$ | . . . 6 5 4 . |
$$ | . X X X X 8 . |
$$ | . X O O X . . |
$$ | . O . . O O . |
$$ | . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------[/go]

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

At the end of the day, the pedagogical differences between 5x5, 9x9, 19x19, capture-go vs. regular-go are all, in my view, overshadowed by the question "does the beginner want to play again?"

If you get two beginners playing each other who have no idea there's even a concept of a living group, but they're having fun, you've succeeded. If you get them spotting atari and keeping stones alive and at the end of the night they say "that's neat" and never return to Go again, that's a failure.

So really, tailor the teaching to the student. Some beginners just want to put stones on a board. Some want to see the path to mastery carefully laid ahead of them. I really don't think there's a right approach. There's right approaches for individuals. If somebody just absolutely feels that they have to play on the same big board as everybody else, the benefits of 9x9 might not be worth the antagonism of forcing them onto it. If they panic seeing a 19x19 board, there's no need to rush them. They can play 9x9 for the rest of their life if they want.

Not so clear cut.

To label "success" and "failure" this way is too narrow, too and , too binary.
It forces a continuum into a simplistic yes-or-no.

For many human activities, there is a bell curve.
At the far right of the spectrum are people who are very enthusiastic;
toward the other end are those who never return.
In between lies a whole gamut of people with varying degrees of interest.

For Go, the curve may be shaped such that the majority will never return.
In which case, that is not a failure at all, but simply the norm.

@Ed: True, but if they don't return specifically because of the teaching style, then that can be considered a failure.

I completely agree.

Once again, we run into a continuum of teaching: from the far left (terrible teaching) to the far right (top level teaching).
With infinite varying degrees in between.

Say an excellent teacher with the best intentions introduces Go to a beginner,
and they try it, say "That's neat," and never return to Go. Hey, at least they are exposed
to this wonderful thing in their life. Then they decide it's not for them,
they dedicate their precious time on earth on other activities. But they've found out
there is this nice Go club, so maybe in the future they'll mention it to other people
who might drop by and stay. That could be considered a success, for all parties involved.



___________________

Simplify, simplify, but don't over-simplify.

Only a Sith deals in absolutes.

My feeling is that the attitude of the teacher is more important than the board size, though I believe starting on 9x9 is the right way to go for almost everybody. On a 19x19 I've had beginners play nobi after nobi on the second line "making territory" and that can go on for a long time. As for the people who want to play "real" go or insist on finishing the game, they may have an attitude problem themselves. These people often don't want to place a large number of handicap stones or they even insist on playing with no handicap. I never consider a game with a beginner as a real contest in which both players are trying to win. I stop and explain things close to when they happen and I deliberately make sub-optimal or poor moves to create situations where certain concepts occur. To me this is just good teaching.

In some clubs there are members who probably shouldn't be teaching beginners because they have a need to show the beginner how weak they are. They play to win and, sometimes, to humiliate the weaker player. This often results in the beginner not coming back. Club members who are recognized by the club "executives" as being good teachers of beginners might volunteer to be available one night a week or one night per month to teach beginners. If there were a schedule like this, beginners could come back for additional lessons with the same teacher. Having a beginners' night is also a good idea since beginners can play each other and get help if strange things happen. Part of having a good attitude to teaching is to recognise and give appropriate praise when a beginner does something that a strong player sees as utterly trivial but which represents an advance in understanding by the beginner.

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.
----------------

(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.

_________________
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.

_________________
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.