A couple of days ago, I posted two videos from Bob Stewart’s set of videos designed to introduce beginners to the game. This post adds two additional videos that takes beginners a bit further and prepares them to continue playing and studying.
If you missed the first post, you can view it here >>>
Here are the additional videos:
Part IIIa is geared towards those beginners who have now tried go out a bit and are now ready to learn a bit more. This video will help you understand better what you are seeing on the board, prepare you to be able to better discuss go, and better understand go lecture and study materials.
Part IIIb covers additional concepts that beginners need to be aware of, such as : the phases of a game, attack & defense, thickness, connections, tenuki, planning, go study,
Do you have other resources for beginner’s that you can recommend? If so, leave me a comment and I’ll check them out and post links to the best ones here on my blog.
While Browsing YouTube for go-related content, I ran across a series of videos that are meant to introduce new players to the game. They are very well done, covering all the major points that a new player needs to get started, including the actual rules.
So, if you have a friend that you’ve been meaning to introduce to the game but just haven’t found the opportunity, rather than waiting any longer, send them the link to this page. They’ll thank you later by saying something like, “Thanks for introducing me to this stupid game . . . Now I can’t find time to do anything else!”
The videos you’ll see below were produced by Bob Stewart. Bob, has many hours of experience in introducing people to the game of go through Asian cultural fairs. His approach to teaching is based on working with complete beginners in this type of setting. I have been thinking about doing something similar to this, but when I saw Bob’s videos I knew I didn’t have to worry about it.
I’m going to post Bob’s four video in two installments to make it easier for those beginners who watch them. Parts I and II can be watched in about 20 minutes and will serve as a quick introduction to the game. Parts IIIa and IIIb go into slightly more advanced go concepts and go terms. These will do the viewer more good if they have played a game or three before they watch them. I’ll post these separately in a day or two.
Bob has graciously given his permission to replay those videos here. I encourage you to point all your would-be go-playing friends to this page and get them hooked!
Here are the first two parts:
Part I introduces new players to the game and covers basic rules such as capturing, life and death, eyes, and scoring.
Part II introduces the concept of ko, how to end the game, alternate methods of scoring, rank, handicapping, and finally how to approach a game.
Do you have other resources for beginner’s that you can recommend? If so, leave me a comment and I’ll check them out and post links to the best ones here on my blog.
Lydia plays her first game of capture go
I had the priviledge of teaching my youngest daughter, Lydia, how to play go today. First we played capture go, a version of go where the only object is to capture stones. She was brutal! I let her move twice for every one of my moves. I figured I could survive for a while. No way. She killed my groups right away. Ha! Infact, she naturally discovered ladders and caught me in one. What kind of a go-monster have I created here?
After several games of capture go, we played a 5H game on a 9×9 board. With just a suggestion or two from dad, Lydia won with a result of B+5. I was impressed with how she intuitively connected her stones.
Capture go is a natural way to teach new players how to be aware of their stones and to begin to think in ways that will lead them to capturing sequences and defensive plays as well. Capture go is a powerful teaching aid for children because they don’t focus on the fact that they are learning, but rather they are caught up in fun.
Lydia's ladder
There are several places on the internet that you can learn how to use capture go as a teaching aid. I used a booklet from the American Go Association (AGA).
For our 9×9 game, I gave Lydia a five stone handicap and sat back to watch what types of moves she would make. Yes, she dove in and tried to capture like most new players. But she quickly learned about being captured herself. To her credit she also quickly learned to drop back and defend. She enjoyed learning to count in the Japanese style and was pleased to head for bed wih a 13-9 victory. We’re both looking forward to playing more go soon!
B+5 - Lydia's first game result. Congratulations!
Filed under: Go Journal, Go Lessons, Joseki | Tags: Guo Juan, Opening Theory
I’ve decided to try Guo Juan’s Internet Go School. I read about the group lesson’s on Terri Schurter’s blog. So, I decided to take a look. The winter session of the group lessons was already underway. So, I decided to check out the audio lessons, which are actually more than audio as they are full-fledged screencasts showing board positions for all of the exercises.
Guo Juan, 5 Dan Pro and Internet Go School Proprietor
I was a bit surprised to read in the study guide section that Guo recommends that all kyu level players begin with the 30-20 kyu lectures. I thought that I was surely past this level of instruction. However, after dutifully watching the first lesson on opening theory, I believe she is correct (Good of me to agree with the 5 dan pro, eh?)
Even in this first lesson titled Opening Training A1, I was able to put guidelines to what had for me become educated intuition, meaning that I made a number of the right moves in teh ecercises, but I would have struggled to tell you exactly why I made them.
For example, this first opening theory lesson, which runs a bit more than 45 minutes for about $1.60 (1 euro), focused on ensuring that extensions maximized territory without sacrificing security. I always wondered when to use two, three, four, and even five space extensions. This is the focus of this first lesson.
Because this is my go journal, I’m now going to summarize what I’ve taken away from this lesson. So be warned that there may be spoilers here for those wishing to view Guo’s lectures with any hints.
Opening Training A1
Never more than 5 spaces: By limiting extensions to five spaces, your opponent is denied adequate space to make a two space extension after an invasion. This also limits your opponent’s own safer extension from his stones and maximized territoy for you.
Enclosure shape: When considering corner enclosures, a deeper shape is worth more than a flatter shape. Extend appropriately based on this knowledge.
Jump out: After an extension, if your opponent does take the small extension from his own stones, jump out toward the middle from your extending stone and being to build your moyo.
Extend two from a single stone: Don’t overextend from a single stone and leave an easy invasion for your opponent. Use longer extensions when building off of a corner enclosure.
Empty moves: Try to avoid empty moves. These are moves that do not make territory. This is good to consider when choosing between potential moves.
Finally, here is a nice invasion joseki that came up in this lesson that I wanted to preserve for later study.
Invasion Joseki
