Stone Counting As Teaching Method

   

Benjamin Teuber:

As far as I know, most teachers in asia just explain how to capture at the beginning. But they don't use Atari-Go. Instead, they just continue teaching capturing methods until kids are able to understand simple life & death and then territory. I don't like this so much, as the kids can't play themselves in the beginning, so I thought a while about alternatives to Atari-Go.

Then, a few months ago, I was very astonished when I recognized by myself, that Go actually is not about territory on a basic level, but actually about providing life for as many stones as possible (recently I heared that Ing stated this before).

That made me think of a different game for beginners to play directly after learning to capture:

   Real Go Using Stone Counting

That means that both players try to get more stones on the board than the opponent.
Rules of it are very simple:
Instead of playing a stone, players are allowed to pass. After both players passed in a row, just stones are counted and the one with more wins (if you dislike the idea of not counting the two eyes each player should leave, you could also point out that stones plus they liberties are counted, which is equivalent to normal chinese rules).
After hearing this, of course people start exactly as in Atari-Go, as it's obviously good to reduce the number of enemy stones on the board. But as they don't have capturing as official goal, I could imagine that the idea of "must capture/must escape" is not burned into the beginners mind as much.
In the first game, the player with less territory (just gained by capturing) will probably put himself into self-atari first and therefore lose big. When the teacher points out that it's better to pass then to put yourself into self-atari, they can figure out eyes and life&death alone.
After this, you can introduce territory as a new strategy without changing even one rule. Just tell them that it might be good to build yourself a kind of "house", where each intruder will be caught and therefore many own stones can be put later.

In my opinion, it should work out very nice, as it is as easy, encouraging and straightforward as Atari-Go without being a game different from Go and hiding something. Also, as players continue until pass, life&death will become self-explaining by this.

What do you think about this?

Mef: This sounds pretty interesting because it doesn't focus on capturing, but doesn't avoid it either. Also it avoids trying to explain territory to people (that always seems to be one of the concepts that eludes beginners). I'd be interested in hearing what kind of results this has.

Anonymous: deg wrote a beginner's pamphlet using a stone scoring variant, and the [ext] Strasbourg rules use straight stone scoring. So yeah: other people think this is a good idea too.

(Sebastian:) Yes, I think it's a great idea. This seems to be the same way as it has been done in ancient times. (Or similar - don't ask me about the differences people discuss on that page.) Often it is easier to start with the way people did it historically.


Dieter : Agree completely. I have been a fan of atari go as a teaching method but lately, though not through the practice of teaching, I have become more prone to its limitations. Not as much the "obsession with capture" but rather the dullness of the game and in particular its being different from the real game.

Your proposal is actually to have the game played in its simplest form, postponing the Japanese beauty of omission for the greater sake of simplicity.

Another big argument for this teaching method is that you don't have to worry about when to pass. In conventional go, the beginner's question "When does the game end - when both pass - when do you pass - when you think there is no good move left ..." is very frustrating to both beginner and teacher. Here, it is plain to see when no good moves are left: the only available points lead to self-atari.

Consequently, the idea of two eyes is introduced very naturally. It will take only one big capture due to auto-atari for the pupil to understand the idea once and for all. In this way, life will become a unified concept, regardless seki, eyes or seemingly false but real eyes.

Yes, that's the way to do it.


Robert Pauli: Fully agree, Benjamin. Already expressed the very same opinion on Teaching Go to Newcomers / Discussion myself. BTW, maybe that's the better place to discuss it.

Bill: At his [ext] ''Internet Go Cafe'' site a fellow named Iehiro presents his method for teaching go. Instead of seeing Atari Go and Stone Counting as alternatives, he uses both.

Briefly, he starts with having the winner be the first player to capture a stone. He progresses to requiring the capture of 5 stones to win. At this point, when the game ends because one player has to fill the second eye of one of his own groups, allowing it to be captured, he switches to what he calls Zaru Go. In Zaru Go you count captives, not stones on the board, but it comes to almost the same thing.


This is a copy of the living page "Stone Counting As Teaching Method" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2005 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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