My five year old nephew saw me playing Go one day and wanted to play too so I explained the basic idea of liberties and we began to play atari Go. To my surprise, he actually understands the idea! He can recognize ataris and knows when he needs to extend and what not as well as how to atari back. I haven't even mentioned life and death to him but one day, we were playing and I had closely surrounded a group of his and, totally on his own, he looked at them and said "these aren't gonna' survive" and proceeded to tenuki. Now don't get me wrong, the kid cannot PLAY Go. I'm just really impressed that 1) he would even find it interesting, and 2) that he would even remember to place stones on the intersections. I've even taught him some basic tactics such as the tiger's mouth (which he loves to make because of the name) and the idea of approaching corners as well as extending to strengthen stones before a fight and invading when he sees me get a large territory. So what's a good place to start with someone who can't even read a book? I have no children of my own so I'm curious, at what age is a child usually ready to start understanding the actual game (such as life and death, ko fights and threats, seki etc)? The most basic thing I'm trying to teach him right now is to always look at my move before thinking about his own. He likes to have his stone in hand ready to place it as if it were a race and I keep reminding him to wait for me to move, look at where I went, than think about his move. I'd like to continue to work with him because I feel like learning Go is like learning to play an instrument: Starting at a young age when you're brain is in initial development will give you an edge that people like myself that started as adults can never achieve
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