Life In 19x19

Bill Spight wrote: Another go game that in effect uses territory scoring is the Capture Game.

I do not recommend capture go. Not even for beginners. Yes, capture go is a fun game, but from a teaching point of view, it is not advisable, IMHO. Why to have beginners learn capture go (which isn't 'the real thing') when they then have to 'unlearn' it to play regular go?
Bill Spight: I also think you contradict yourself. You introduce Capture Go as being simple as easy, and then complicate and confuse people by going forward to capture 2 and capture 4.
Also, as you know, the essence of go is not in capturing.
I think beginners are best helped if they are not confused with capture go. It is a different game. Remember: they are already confused about eyes and eye shape, scoring methods and the like. Better to teach them proper go (IMHO).

( Hi Joe, here's the said heated discussion. )

From my experience, there's no one-size-fit-all for beginners, or for everyone for that matter. Capture Go is good, from my experience, for many beginners. Obviously, I cannot say "for all".

Both human learning and machine learning involve constant Un-learning, as well. ( Even AlphaZero had to constantly un-learn previous "bad" moves as it trained itself over millions of games. )

Many of the so-called josekis the past few hundred ( or even thousand ) years, painstakingly developed by top human pros, were now shown to be wrong by AlphaGo over two years ago.

Even top pros have to unlearn a huge chunk since AlphaGo.

Sorry if some people had "non-good" experiences with Capture Go for beginners. I wasn't there, so I don't know what happened. I can only speculate the "problem" lied not with Capture Go itself, but with the teaching.

Beginners ( and most of us, too, for that matter ) are naturally confused about a great many things. The teacher tries to minimize the confusion. Capture Go is merely one tool, among many. Its effectiveness depends on the skills of the user. From my experience, Capture Go doesn't necessarily, inherently confuse beginners; bad teaching does.

Questions:
- In an un-supervised environment, how is Capture Go for beginners? I don't know; I don't have the data.

- With good guidance, how is Capture Go for beginners? My empirical
evidence: I've had only good experiences with Capture Go with hundreds of beginners, over the past 15 years.

Hello Joe621,
Welcome here. Good questions, good examples. People here are mostly (slightly, like myself) more experienced. Problem for more experienced players is they may have tended to forget the earliest beginnings. I hope you won't get confused about the replies given here, all with good intentions.

Another thing: go is what some say is a total, open information game.
In this regard, I have a question: does your grandfather also read this forum and this topic?

I hope you and your grandfather will enjoy the game many times, for a long time.

sybob wrote:

Bill Spight wrote: Another go game that in effect uses territory scoring is the Capture Game.

I do not recommend capture go. Not even for beginners. Yes, capture go is a fun game, but from a teaching point of view, it is not advisable, IMHO. Why to have beginners learn capture go (which isn't 'the real thing') when they then have to 'unlearn' it to play regular go?
Bill Spight: I also think you contradict yourself. You introduce Capture Go as being simple as easy, and then complicate and confuse people by going forward to capture 2 and capture 4.
Also, as you know, the essence of go is not in capturing.
I think beginners are best helped if they are not confused with capture go. It is a different game. Remember: they are already confused about eyes and eye shape, scoring methods and the like. Better to teach them proper go (IMHO).

sybob, I used to think pretty much as you do. Despite the fact that Capture Go has been used for a long time as an introduction to go. But then I ran across a site that uses Capture-1, Capture-2, etc., as way of playing games that are more and more like regular go. I also learned, in part through study, in part through play, that Capture Go is a very strategic game. It does not teach bad habits, like simply trying to capture a stone or stones. It is, in fact, a game of territory, where the player with more territory will win, because the player with less territory will have to either play inside the opponent's territory and lose a stone or stones, or put one of his own groups in atari and lose that way. The players do not even have to play the game out to the bitter end; they can stop and count territory to determine the winner.

Remember: they are already confused about eyes and eye shape, scoring methods and the like.

Right. The scoring method of Capture-n is obvious, and, as I illustrated with Capture-4, the players can learn that the square 4 eye is only one eye. They can also learn that the Farmer's Hat eye can be one eye or three. They can also learn that diagonally connected stones can be captured if they are not defended. Etc. The Capture games avoid and/or remedy such confusions.

As n increases, Capture-n becomes more like regular go. Capture-4 is already pretty close, so that the transition to regular go is fairly easy. Capture-1, Capture-2, and Capture-4 (and Capture-7 if people want to try it) are stepping stones to regular go.

As I said, I once thought that Capture Go taught bad habits, but now I understand it better and appreciate it more. It is an established way of introducing people to go.

EdLee wrote: From my experience, there's no one-size-fit-all for beginners, or for everyone for that matter.

Well worth repeating.

Playing the Capture Game with an adult friend of mine, he found the following play in a similar position.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Capture game seki
$$ ------------
$$ | 1 . O X . .
$$ | . O O X . .
$$ | O O X X . .
$$ | X X X , . .
$$ | . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . .[/go]

makes a seki in the Capture Game. And my friend figured that out by himself. I did not have to teach him about seki.

Furthermore, in Capture-4 if White has not captured a Black stone, kills the White group, as it does in regular go, because Black can sacrifice three stones to capture it. This is something that Black can discover for himself, just as he discovered the seki. (BTW, it is also why I skip Capture-3.) This illustrates how Capture-4 is closer to regular go than Capture-1, Capture-2, and Capture-3.

Hi Bill,

Tonight at Coffee Bean, I tried capture-2 for the first time with a walk-in beginner, on 9x9.( They just closed 7 mins. ago at 10 pm. )

Okay so we just finished a game tonight are the intersections highlighted in red territory points?

Thanks.

Yes.

Territory is empty space surrounded by live^(*) stones of one color.



^(*)Live: cannot be removed from the board by the opponent.

EdLee wrote:Yes.

Could you possibly show me where the wall is surrounding those territory points?

Hi Joe,

Top right boundary: all the surrounding stones, plus the top edge, and the right edge.

I removed all dead stones ( at the 'X' spots ).
You still have an unfinished ko at (a).

Otherwise, is the boundary clear to you now ?

The and boundary:
( all dead stones removed; unfinished ko remains at (a) )

I have copied the board position and marked points of territory and dead stones. To get the final score you need to count prisoners, as well.

Note that the game is unfinished. There is an unfinished ko on the board. (As Ed has pointed out. )

Hi Joe,

Just for your information:
area scoring may be more clear to you in this example.

If wins the ko, this is final score:


And if wins the ko, this is the final score:

Hi Joe,

Hopefully, with this example, you understand better about territory scoring versus area scoring.

Please feel free to ask more questions if things are still unclear.