Most go players I know are pretty committed to promoting the sport in the English-speaking world. Right now, we have a few pockets of players but without a real cultural presence, it’s hard to find a fresh set of opponents. The internet makes the situation livable, but it has its downsides. One of the big downsides I’ve found is that the online communities and clubs consist almost entirely of players who are strongly dedicated to learning the game on their own. There are few people who “play a little bit of go” in my area. I would contend that we need these players. People who play “a little bit of go” are as important to promoting the game because they help fight the stereotype that go is a fanatic’s game. When somebody hears the amount of time I spend reading books and playing go, they get the wrong impression. Naturally, I don’t always speak to this detail, but it’s important that people in our communities see go as something that can be picked up time to time and revisited. Fanaticism can come at a later time, or not at all. In addition, these players ensure that there is a wider range of talent in the community; dedicated players tend to progress beyond handicap range of true novices fairly quickly. It can be disheartening to pick up the game, only to find that every opponent is more than 9 stones stronger than you.

My brother-in-law is one of these occasional players (I’d put him around 23 kyu), and having had the opportunity to play a few games against him this last week. The last game we played looked like this by the end:

Ryan took four stones (a fair handicap would be larger), and he placed them on the center star points (rather than the corners). Although there were a few points in the game I was tempted to offer advice, I found that in general he preferred experimentation.

If you haven’t seen Ben Go Zen’s article on teaching newcomers, you should check it out. It’s great advice, and I think the most important is this: don’t capture everything. If any player has negative points, it should be you. Against an occasional player, some capture is, I think, unavoidable. However, it’s good practice for counting to try to win by a single point rather than a landslide. In my case, I counted wrong and paid the price. It wasn’t a bad arrangement, though.

I’d offer some other advice:

First – when you see a weakness, set up a trade. I call these “sensei’s trades” because they basically offer the opponent to either capture something of yours in exchange for losing something of theirs, or to let you live somewhere while they fix a weakness. It’s hard to simply ignore a weakness. Not only does it create a lot of pressure on you as your opponent’s weaknesses pile up, but the new player won’t learn without seeing why a particular shape is bad. Of course, if you keep punishing every weakness you see, you’re going to win by 60+ points. I’ve found that playing very heavy and plodding around the board gives my opponent the chance to do one of two things – they can fix a weakness and I’ll fix mine, or else they’ll capture my stones and I’ll capture theirs in kind. Either way, the game remains even and the opponent learns to spot weaknesses without getting crushed.

Second – seriously, try to win by one point. Ryan likes to take four stones handicap, because to him, anything more isn’t really a game. It’s no fun for either of us if I don’t do something to keep the games interesting, and I think uneven handicaps are a great chance to train the stronger player’s counting ability. Because my counting is sometimes too optimistic and sometimes too pessimistic, I see myself winning only half my games against Ryan. As I noted above, he won the last game by 7 points.

What I’d really like to see the teaching community produce are “teaching tsumego” – go problems that, rather than life or death, task white with setting up an appropriate trade. Allow me to show mine:

White has invaded black’s territory in preparation for a sensei’s trade. Black can kill the invasion and thus allow white to punish a weakness, or black can go back and fix his own weaknesses while white’s invasion lives.

Black has damning weaknesses at 1 and 2. In the real game 4 would have killed the group, but on the display board above it of course does nothing. 6 should not live against an opponent used to killing groups, but it has the chance to live against a new opponent who does not do much life and death.

These types of problems don’t test our skill at playing the game (I think 1 would be the best move in an evenly-matched game), but rather our skill at creating a learning opportunity without creating an unfair advantage in the game. In the final board, two of Ryan’s groups died, he saved the other two, and my invasion died. The game was nearly fair and ended with a slight edge for him.

A note on One Liberty Short

I know this blog has barely published. I feel especially disappointed in myself for the slow follow-up, especially after seeing only positive reactions to the concept. I’m working on some long-form material (including a neat concept that builds on a book review). On top of that, we’ve moved, I’m in grad school, and working full time. I am, however, interested in cultivating a community of teachers interested in promoting the game to a broader audience.

So, set up some demo boards and show us your teaching game problems!