Hey Folks,

I started thinking today about teaching methods and came to the conclusion that, while capture-go is the ideal way to get someone started and playing, the gap between capture-go and territory-go is wide.

So I got to thinking, maybe there are a series of transitional variants that would allow additional rules to slowly percolate in, and I came up with this.

I call it "Lead Go".

It has two versions, one which is closer to capture-go, and then one which reduces to territory-go (with a slaughter rule)

Rules (VERSION 1):

1) Rule of Capture
2) First player to reach a 15 stone lead wins (So the difference in stones captured is what's important)
3) Can't repeat a position (basic ko rule)


Rules (VERSION 2)

1) Rule of Capture
2) First player to reach a 22 stone lead wins
3) Can't repeat a position
3) Passes are implemented, and require a pass stone.
4) 2 successive passes ends the game, the winner is the person who is ahead on captures

------------------------------------

The reason why I came up with this was to find a way that students could start internalizing concepts of sacrifice, life and death, and dead shape.

If you're merely in a race to be the first to capture, say, 10 stones, sacrifice is extraordinarily dangerous.

In these variants, sacrifice is acceptable, provided you end up capturing more than you give up. In the first variant, dead shapes up to and including 4 stones can be taught. (With a dead shape of size 4, they give up 10 stones to get considerably more)

In the second variant, dead shapes up to and including rabbity-six can be taught.

--------------------------------------

Note that the second variant becomes very close to territorial-go when played correctly (With the one difference that if you ever end up with more than 22 captures than your opponent, you just win outright).

If they each end up with large "territories", the correct play at the end is to keep playing where your stones are safe until you can't anymore and then start passing (handing a stone each time). This result is exceptionally close to that of the go we play.

As a teaching aid, this introduces the concept of territory without ever having to present it verbally. (Territory is a place you could play to have your stone be safe, but where your opponent's stone would not be safe)

They get to keep playing capture go, but the deeper strategies of life and death and territory are there (hiding a bit, but something that they can discover).

If the students start getting to the end of the game, where 2 passes are required. Then they are ready for territorial go.

Thoughts?

EDIT: In both variants, suicide is legal

EDIT 2: It also becomes considerably more exciting, as they can stage comebacks and fight back and forth.

_________________
Tactics yes, Tact no...

shapenaji, that's interesting. My experience with the basic capture Go with beginners
is after a while, many or most of the games ended up with a tie (zero captures; everything alive).
So I'm curious to see how your two variants work. Good luck!

This is pretty interesting.

I like that it's based on a gap in scores, rather than absolute score (although, I think it might take awhile before the distinction becomes apparent).

I would have to see this actually played out though, probably a few times, to get a handle on how to actually use this in a real teaching game. Right now, I see myself just approaching it like regular capture Go (just start a fight from the get-go, and go until the requisite number of stones have been captured). Either that, my attempts at a normal Go fuseki would be ignored, and once again, it devolves into slaughter everything. :S

As for suicide:

I think my personal approach to that, if I were to use this variant to teach Go, would be to either let the server decide whether suicide is allowed or not (if playing online, and thus based on what the default rule set is), or explain the situation about suicide to the person I'm teaching (after they have a firm enough grasp on everything else), and let them decide if they want suicide to be allowed or not (or maybe decide semi-randomly, before the game begins, to allow a bit of experience with both tactical situations).

The reason for this approach is because I feel like teaching that suicide is ok from the get-go will then just create undo hardships when they start playing online, and find that the server won't allow them to make a move that they had previously been taught was ok (unless they get a game with NZ rules).

Either that, or I just wouldn't allow it, as it's a rule I don't care for.

If you play Capture Go with no passes, you have to keep filling territory until one of the players goes down to one eye. In this way beginners understand, once it's almost impossible to outright capture stones, that the safest thing to do is secure as much space as they can to fill with stones later.

I do like shapenaji's idea. I can imagine it as a much smoother transition into the Japanese ruleset.

I don't understand why people are so adverse to passing or counting territory in Capture Go? And I've never ended in a tie -- once the borders are complete, and there have been no captures, then usually one player or another has more territory than the other. And since we're now down to just counting territory -- there's my segue into regular Go.

Doing this initially on a 5x5 or 7x7 becomes much more obvious much more quickly.

(Ninja'd by xed_over)Phoenix, oh, interesting, but I've never done it with no passes, and it never occurred to me that way.
And now that I think about it, it's not a good idea.

Until Phoenix's and xed_over's post above, I had never heard anything about no passes in capture Go
or that some people are averse to passing in capture Go -- what a weird concept (to me).

xed_over: once I see it's a tie, I call the game finished and that it was a very good result
for the beginner (as opposed to losing); I don't go into scoring territory at all --
because the concept of eyes and living groups have to be introduced first.

It's an interesting idea, and it might work nicely. One thing I think could be a drawback is that some students are going to say "wait..where the heck did 22 come from?"

_________________
Occupy Babel!

We all have our methods, but it's interesting to note that in the original Chinese rules, the idea of territory was just this: to store enough empty spaces so that your opponent would run out of them before you did. Thus you would have surrounded and captured your opponent. This is another interpretation of the term Wei'Chi.

There's a fantastic article about the history of Go rules at NewInGo here.

I especially like the section about the 2-point 'group tax', which is tied to the concept of each group having to form two eyes in order to not be captured. In reality, in Capture Go, a group is 'alive' as long as it has one eye with two points inside of it.

This naturally transitioned into 'Let's just count the spaces without playing it out. Whoever has the most obviously wins'. Minus two points for every separate group. This is of course assuming the other old rule of playing an even number of moves throughout the game.

In short, I prefer this method because it justifies the whole "The player who controls the most empty space wins" concept, as well as introduces it organically. Most people who learn no-pass Capture Go learn the concepts of 'two spaces inside a group' as well as 'control more space to win' on their own.

The reason I like your idea, EdLee, is that sacrifice is so ridiculously important in Go that it should be included as soon as possible. I think it's possible to transition from the no-pass Capture Go model by simply eliminating the sudden death rule, but I would need some lab rats to test this.

Heh, yeah. Although, it allows you to hint significantly to the student that it's important

Mystery is a great motivator!

_________________
Tactics yes, Tact no...

It's possible that after a while they'd end up playing very safely, but if that's true, then it's time for the next variant.

And the second variant is regular go with a group tax if there are no captures... so if they get through one game of that, you should be able to easily say "Remember all those spots where you were putting stones so that you didn't have to pass? Now those are points too"

_________________
Tactics yes, Tact no...

Nah, I don't think so. Eyes and living groups are just a natural consequence to not being captured (cause if you get captured, you lose). In order to not get captured, you just have to create an uncapturable group -- that's a living group.

Otherwise, you mostly only need one eye in capture go (as long as its at least 2 spaces, with some exceptions of course), so talking about eyes just seems to be unnecessarily confusing at this stage. I usually wait til we're playing real go on a larger board (9x9 or larger) before talking about "2 eyes" -- but again, I feel these work themselves out naturally by creating uncapturable groups

We're having some mis-communication or cross-communication here ; we're not on the same page.
I don't discuss eyes at all in the very first introductory lesson.
I completely agree with you: eyes are very confusing, and completely unnecessary, for the first lesson.
I play capture Go with them -- with passes, and I don't talk about scoring.

Do you use pass stones? (OC, if you only have to capture 1 stone, then you are playing a form of no pass go.)

Shapeaji's point about territory, which I have also made, is that capture go leads to the same basic concept of territory as regular go (with a group tax, OC ).

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Correct, we don't pass stones; we don't pass anything -- whoever captures first wins;
so for some beginners, with a bit of instruction, they figure out to just play certain solid shapes, which quickly leads to a tie (no pass Go, yes ).

There is this Japanese guy, Iehiro, who uses Capture Go to teach beginners. Here is his site: http://www.vimage.co.jp/~iehiro/cgi-bin/gocaffe/

He starts with capturing 1 stone to win, then moves on to Capture-2, up to Capture-5. Then he moves on to Zaru-Go, where your score is the number of stones you have. See http://senseis.xmp.net/?ZaruGo

Hmmm. It might be better to play Capture-1, Capture-2, Capture-4, Capture-7. With Capture-2 you need two eyes or a three point eye to guarantee independent life regardless of the rest of the board. With Capture-4 you need two eyes or a four point eye. With Capture-7 you need two eyes or a five point eye.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Quickly leads to a tie? Doesn't Black have an advantage with no passes?

BTW, the main point of using pass stones is that when you play Capture-N, where N > 1, the territory concept is still like regular go.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I like zaru soba.