Way of teaching Go

by Jan J. Lubos - based on a method of Yasuda Yasutoshi, 9 Dan

Translated by Krzysztof Grabowski

A way of teaching Go described here is based on a method of Yasuda Yasutoshi, Professional 9Dan, which I get accustomed with a year ago. It is also based on more than ten years of my experience of teaching Go to children with traditional methods, and reviewing the results of this teaching. A comparison of the new method with traditional ones gives the results definitely unfavourable for the latter methods.
I am describing here a 9-month cycle of teaching Go to children. This method may and - in my opinion - should be used also for teaching Go to adults, with much quicker results. The conclusions arising from this method are very interesting, being also an important contribution to the discussion on unified rules of Go.

Traditional methods of teaching Go, based on explaining all the rules in the very beginning, are much to inefficient and also require many efforts of a teacher to attract children's interest. Playing Go even on a small (9x9) board forces beginners to simultaneously overcome many barriers, both notional (territory, ko, seki, dead but not taken off the board stones) and technical. To simplify the way of teaching Go several measures are exerted which enable to overcome the difficulties step by step (typical example is teaching to kill all the stones inside the one's own territory - which according to Chinese rules does not change the result of a game). However, these additional measures greatly hinder the process of understanding a real goal of the game. The children's interest often diminishes and is maintained by personal virtues of a teacher, rather than the game itself. Another great problem is connected with starting to play Go on a bigger board. Children who can correctly play a whole game on a 9x9 board stop to understand its meaning on a big board, because they are not able to give their attention to the whole board. Consequently, their game must be supervised again by a teacher.
As a result, only a small percentage of children pursues learning Go, and many people wishing to learn Go are not able to achieve this task, notwithstanding the teachers' efforts in copying the acknowledged method of teaching. Also a teacher is not able to teach and supervise a correctness of playing Go by a bigger number of children.
In May 1998 I met Yasuda Yasutoshi, 9 Dan, and became acquainted with his method of teaching and popularisation of the game of Go. In September 1998 Yasuda sensei visited Poland (among other countries) and showed the game of Go (or rather its simplified version - Ponnuki-Go) to several children during short lessons in some Polish schools.

Ponnuki-Go (or Atari-Go) is based on teaching how to encircle (kill) the opponent's stone. Necessary knowledge is:
1.   stones are mutually (Black - White) put on lines' intersections,
2.   an opponent's stone (stones) totally encircled with our stones is taken off the board (is killed), what finishes the game.
A short introduction allows children to play and compete, and a teacher can restrict himself to perfunctory overlooking their play.

I carried on lessons with big groups of children. They all attended the further meetings with great inclination - this was a result of simplicity of Ponnuki-Go, the game easily understood by children. Additional attraction were often organised "tournaments" - children love to compete with themselves. When you are using the Yasuda method, you can start such a competition during the first or second meeting.

Ponnuki-Go tournament: on a 9x9 board, children play a game and a return game (with reversed colours) as long as the first stone is killed. A player can earn 2, 1 or 0 points. Children with similar number of points are paired against each other. During one hour a winner can be appointed even in a big group of pupils. Small prizes - souvenirs are advisable. Sometimes I did confer "stars" as a sign of achievement and some gradation of skill, which were highly priced by children.

As a rule, one should not hasten the teaching process, especially with small children. New skills should be taught slowly and - at best - during a game with the teacher. Very effective and popular amongst children is a method of "prompting" as a method of acquainting them with apprehending and solving elementary problems during a real game.

"Prompting": during the game a pupil makes a mistake. Depending on its skill it may be overlooking atari on one's own stone, allowing the teacher to play double atari, or allowing him to play geta, shicho etc. The teacher who is to play a stone asks the pupil to show him the best move. This method raises a lot of interest amongst the observers and a hot discussion when the problem is not so easy.

Very soon skill levels of pupils become differentiated. A good way of keeping their interest is a small change in rules. The number of stones that should be killed to win the game is changed - equivalence of handicap in regular game of Go.

Handicap in Ponnuki-Go: better skilled pupils have to kill more stones to win a game. The teacher (after some time - the players themselves) sets up the rules before each game, e.g. a White player has to kill 3 stones and a Black player - only 1, or 5:2, 10:1, etc.

Children take this change as natural and fair. Both pupils are satisfied, the better one - as a sign of his achievements, the second one - because he gets a chance to win a game. More advanced pupils start to play up to five or even ten killed stones. This is a right moment to show elementary techniques based on sacrifice of one's own stones and other techniques of killing opponent's groups. The "prompting" method facilitates the process of remembering the just invented techniques and allows the pupils to develop the skill of solving practical problems arising during real game.
The pupils start to see that they are lacking free space on a 9x9 board, so a necessity of playing on a 13x13 board arises. All the pupils start to play on bigger boards at the same time. It does not hinder the weaker pupils and the stronger ones get a chance to kill a bigger number of opponent's stones.

All the time the only governing rule is the rule of killing stones. From time to time a "seki" is formed during the game - as a consequence of this sole rule. The players avoid "ko", because it leads (by mutual killing) to a win by the player whose position was more profitable in the beginning. The only known way of finishing a game is to kill a previously defined number of stones.

Many children discover that the best method to win is "not to lose a game". Children start to play more cautiously, they start to connect stones in bigger groups.
The best pupils playing together (e.g. to 10:10) fill all the board with living groups killing only small number of stones. In a natural way, without their intention or knowledge, "territories" are formed (which they treat as spaces where each opponent's stone will surely be killed) BEFORE they kill a number of stones necessary to win the game. It forces them to put stones into "safe spaces" (one's own territories) as long as one of them MUST put his next stone into the space controlled by his opponent because he is lacking his own "safe space". As a consequence, such a player loses the game.

After a number of such games, most often with very uneven division of the board into "territories", pupils DISCOVER that the player with a bigger space delimited by his stones must win the game, so there is no need to continue it. This is the end of "Ponnuki-Go" - in a natural way they crossed a frontier to "regular" Go. The only (!) artificial rule - a rule of "ko" - may be explained only then and it can be assimilated now with no problem.

Of course a teacher may and should stimulate the process of overcoming consecutive levels of skill. In many cases he should also show the futility of continuing a game (Ponnuki-Go) after formation of territories. The next step - playing on a regular 19x19 board does not pose any big problem to pupils.
The way of teaching Go described here does not require any special predisposition or skill from a teacher, it does not absorb too much of his effort either. It also allows a big group of children, irrespective of their age (groups taught by me consisted of children 7-14 years old) or sex, to learn Go together and compete on friendly terms. Their progress is of course dependent on intensity, frequency and length of the lessons, and on the age and individual predisposition of children. It seems that the perfect frequency is 2 meetings in a week, each lasting 1 hour (for children in the age of 7-14 - for older pupils 60 minutes becomes very soon to be a too short time). However 1 hour a week during several months is also sufficient for some children to acquire a level which enables them (according to the European custom) to play in tournament games, that is some 20 kyu.
As a finishing touch to the elementary stage of teaching Go we (PGA) are organising a 1-week Summer Go-School for Children, for which we are preparing a special program. It is based on a recreational competition between children and comprises some elements of theory and practice, playing Go amongst children and with teachers.

The way of teaching Go described above leads in a natural way from simple killing of stones (Ponnuki-Go) to regular Go. A pupil does not need to overcome any barriers connected with rules difficult to understand by a beginner. Even when skills of pupils differentiate during the process, it does not hinder the possibility of continuing the teaching in one group, and one person - a teacher - can control even a big group of pupils with no special effort.
Very interesting conclusions arise from the observations how pupils start to play and understand regular Go. I do not know, and I think nobody knows, how Go was created and how it developed. However, it was enough to invent (in the method: to recognise) a rule of killing stones, and as a natural consequence the pupils come to the understanding that the winner is a player with BIGGER SPACE DELIMITED BY HIS STONES.
For children learning to play Go it becomes more important how big their territory is, rather than how many stones they can put on a board.
It is astonishingly contradictory to the experience of teachers using the traditional methods of teaching Go and preferring Chinese method of counting the game as more understandable to children.

Copyright by Jan J. Lubos 1999
Published in: Polish Go players discussion list
Date published: July 1999
Source file: 01-07-99-go-teaching.doc