Dieter Verhofstadt / Teaching experiences

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A few examples from my own experience to illustrate that there is not one single teaching method for all situations where someone is to be instructed in Go.

Table of contents

1. At the service club

The audience was a group of people belonging to a service club. They were not expecting to be able to play after the session. Their expectations were to learn about this oriental game that they knew to involve important strategic principles?. The session would take a whole evening after working hours. No second session was planned. We were two lecturers for an audience of about 20 people. Our intention was to spread the word of Go.

We took turns, using the magnetic supersize upright goban, me to talk about the history and culture, my colleague to explain the rules and some strategy. The choice for emphasis on culture and strategy was warranted by their expectations. Obviously their understanding of the strategy was restricted by their lack of playing ability. In the second half of the session we had them play against each other on 9x9? as we would usually do with newbies (see below). We also took a laptop with IgoWin and a few Oriental attributes such as fans, in order to appeal with variety.

2. At the games event

Here, the audience were passers-by at a games event. Some of them will take the whole day to learn just a few games. Some of them want to superficially learn about it. Our intention clearly was to have some people interested enough to stick with the game.

There were the three of us to a varying number of 0 to 10 trainees. We would use the atari-go method for newbies to get them play as quickly as possible. Cultural or strategic information was almost absent. We used small boards only and gave away cardboard gamesets to people who stayed about for a certain amount of time. Ko was introduced to those people who discovered it after a few short games.

3. Newcomers at the club

When newcomers arrive at the club, their interest is usually already raised. They will know something about the rules and probably intend to come back for more. In this one-to-one situation, one can spend more time teaching and rise to the tactical/strategic level somewhat sooner. We would have newcomers be instructed by the strongest player present, or by our "official instructors" who received lessons on teaching Go by our federation.

Ideally there were two of them so that they could play against each other, capture go or real go depending on their knowledge. If there was only one, we would team him/her up against our weaker players so as to keep the gap in strength to a minimum.

In my experience, newcomers come back much much more often if they have peers. This is actually true for many levels.

4. An introduction at work

First session

On 19/11/2004, I had a very satisfactory introduction session with 6 colleagues of mine. Well, I was satisfied, and they were at least very positive about it in speech.

I started with about 5 minutes telling the emperor tale, the spread to the rest of Asia and the popularity there (big) and here (moderate but rising!). Next, I explained the rules, with stone counting.

  • Empty grid of arbitrary size. We'll use 9x9.
  • You take turns and play on the vertices (points).
  • Who places more stones, wins.

Then I said "If this were to be the only rule, then it would be a very dull game and Black would always win, since there are an odd number of points.Then I explained the capture rule? in my usual style, asking each particpant in turn for the number of liberties of this or that stone or chain.

One guy who had some notice of the game, asked about suicide. "Yes, I said, it is illegal". Another guy said "So that structure you have there after you captured a stone (he pointed to the ponnuki), none of these stones can be captured ever?" So I explained that capture goes first, then only the legality of a move is decided. They nodded. Another guy, who already played against the computer, said "So if you have two such surrounded spots ..." I cut him short and said "I know what you're about to say, but I deliberately avoided that issue, because it is not a rule, but a concept that follows from the rules. I'd rather have you discover that for yourself.

After which we started to play. It was interesting to see how all kept a balance between putting live stones on the board and trying to remove the opponent's. Halfway the game, they started realizing some stones were lost anyway and not worth saving nor capturing. Soon they understood there were areas controlled by either player, unworthy of investment. Within the course of one game they were developing strategies. One player made many diamond shapes, but he commented himself that he could have done better economically. Another player had a firm grasp on the concept of Take 'n Give and tried to control the larger share of the board, fencing in his opponent towards the side.

Two players resigned their first game ever, because they understood they were never to get more stones on the board than the opponent. All players had understood the concept of territory within one game. All players were enthusiastic and surprised by how much there is to the game of Go. They had an idea of what lied ahead of them.

This introduction session exceeded my wildest expectations, if only for the fact that all participants had discovered territory and two eyes all by themselves. No more atari-go for this guy and no more explanation of territory.

Second session

One other colleague attended the second session (25/2/2005). He had previously been explained the rules but admitted he didn't have any notion of steering the game. I explained the rules again with "more stones on the board" as game objective. As a prolific gamer he understood very fast and I put him up against the best player on the first session. They played a very decent 9x9 but demanded a correct compensation for White. I didn't really know so they decided it should be 3 points. The game ended in a draw.

In the meantime I played two games 4H 9x9 against another guy who had been there at the first meeting. He needed some more time to understand the concepts of territory and life. In the first game I made one big group cutting him into 4. In the second game he connected 3 corner stones but failed to play aggressively. So these were his two lessons: connect yours and attack the other.

The (White) winner of the other game played a 4x4 game against me and I abandoned early. At his third game he beat a 2 dan with 4 stones on 9x9. He admitted he used a lot of his overall gaming experience. Still, I found his style impressive and I can't help but thinking the teaching method contributed to that.

5. My daughters

Well, my girlfriend's daughters, actually. Encouraged by the succesful sessions at work, I used the same method to teach the girls how to play Go. They are 6 and 8 years old. I had them started on 7x7. On the upside, they did not hesitate to put down stones and they understood really well how to capture. On the downside, they kept playing until they put themselves into atari. I felt I had to explain the idea of two eyes by the third game. Curiously, the elder wanted to play on the larger boards as soon as possible, probably because of aestethic reasons: two newspapers look ugly as delimiters.

6. A very young kid

A friend of mine's kid is 5 years old. I showed him how to play the stones on intersections. I explained capture of one stone. And I said: who gets more stones on the board, wins. As his parents were on a visit, I did not care to explain much more. He played his sister of 2,5 whom I guided by taking her hand at the first few moves. While they played, he struggled to understand the idea of connection (which I didn't explain before) but he grasped it rather instinctively. He focused on capturing, whereas the girl, who didn't know about capturing, focused on building chains, inadvertently making her groups safe, much to the frustration of her brother.

But as the game progressed, the limitations of the "alive stones" approach became apparent. They slowed down, didn't really know where to put them and started filling their own last liberty. So I felt compelled to explain the idea of territory and eyes while that was exactly what I want to avoid with the "alive stones" approach, both to hasten the end of the game and to prevent them from killing their own groups.

7. The Korea Times featuring Nam Chi-Hyung

I was very enthusiastic when I learnt about the Korean Times article series about Baduk ([ext] link). In particular, I was thrilled by the idea of Nam Chi-Hyung, a professor at the Baduk University (yes, they have 20 freshmen at university studying Baduk in case you didn't know) explaining the game of Go. In her first three installments, she outlines the fundamentals of Go, i.e. the rules. To my surprise, the rule of capture has not been explained until the fourth installment, despite the appearance of the concepts life and territory in the first three. So, even in Korea, even at university, they deem not necessary to build up logically from the ground. So maybe it is a Western sort of idea after all, to build concepts from the bare definitions.

Also noteworthy is that large parts are devoted to the cultural references, stories and anecdotes, ... The rules do not take more than half of the allotted space. Perhaps this is due to the media: it is a newspaper. Still, it makes one think that, if you want to explain the game to newbies, or make them interested, you should talk much more about other things than only rules and concepts.

8. Beginners, getting experience at our local club

In 2005, I have been mentoring about 5 relatively new players. When they started, I used the stone counting principle, to derive all basic concepts. I have been emphasizing to connect and cut (on a large scale), and to avoid being enclosed and enclose the other. It seems that for these players, the disease of defending territory does not cause such devastating damage as to us, who were bred with territory. Until late in the game, they focus on connection and cut, foregoing the enclosure of a few points. When reviewing their games - they have improved to about 9-12 kyu within a year - I must often recall my statements about some move being "small" or "neutral", because it effectively cuts or connects on a large scale and emphasizes longer term thickness. Of course, emphasizing connection has the drawback of playing slow, on neutral points, when large territory can be taken. I think it will be easier to shift from thick to territory, than the other way round.

9. Reviewing games

Lately (2005), I have changed the way I review games of weaker players. I tend to ask questions, rather than presenting my answers. Of course a review is also a source of new ideas, so I occasionally drop a technical suggestion, or a strategic principle. But the bulk of the review I hammer on strategic principles I have long explained and on known techniques. This way, I try to transmit attitude, rather than knowledge. I offer a few key moments to reflect upon and a few alternatives to calculate. I do not calculate for them, because that is useless. Instead I ask:

  • Who has influence to where? Who has territory? Whose groups are stable? Which groups still have defects? Which dead stones have lingering potential? And last but not least: who has the initiative? Given all these considerations, who has the advantage in the exchange?
  • Calculate possible continuations, starting with a, b or c. If you cannot handle branching, take what looks like the most natural answer each time. Evaluate the result.

Ideally, we go into Q&A mode, but that hasn't been the case very often. I don't know whether this method works out that well. It could be that people are more comfortable with presented answers. Maybe human learning goes more by imitation than reasoning anyway and I will have to get back to the old tutoring approach.


This is a copy of the living page "Dieter Verhofstadt / Teaching experiences" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2005 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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