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Atari Go Setup
When teaching with First Capture / Capture Game / Atari Go / whatever folks at your club call it, a few things make it smoother and more effective.
These are the setup stones Bill Camp and Jon Boley showed me. It's Black's turn in all of these.
This lets the student learn about ladders. Start closer to the edge. After Black captures White a few times, move a line or two away from the edge. When Black is bored with this or always captures White, move to the stone setup in Dia.2.
Playing with this setup teaches the student about nets. Once Black can recognize ladders and nets more often than not, start playing with the stones set up as in Dia.3 or Dia.4.
A little more challenging for Black. When Black beats the teacher in most of the games, start using the cross-cut setup in Dia.4. If beginners are playing against each other rather than against the teacher, then use the cross-cut setup in Dia.4.
Here's the meat of the Capturing Game. It's best if beginners play each other. Pretty soon most games will end in a draw, with neither player able to capture any stones. Then introduce the idea of sacrifice / nakade, and have the winner be the first one to capture five or more stones, or the one who captures the most stones. After several games, the players will start to make living groups on their own, without you trying to explain what an eye is or why groups need two of them. You may have to answer questions about seki and ko. When most games are again ending in a draw -- nobody captured anything -- you can switch to your favorite counting procedure to determine the winner. Presto change-o, your students are playing go (and with a firmer understanding of life, death, eyes, and false eyes than I had for the first 6 months I played). How long does all this take? In my experience, for most adults, a couple of hours to a couple of days. Some young children can happily play Capture One for weeks or months before moving on to Capture Five / Capture Most / Real Go. This leads to fears that inefficient habits, such as a preoccupation with capturing, will become ingrained (see also Atari Go As A Teaching Method). -- TakeNGive (9k) This is a copy of the living page "Atari Go Setup" at Sensei's Library. ![]() |