Life In 19x19

Hey all. I'm fairly new to the game of Go. Me and my wife played it the other day and it clicked instantly!

Here's the issue though. We are both total novices and have no idea what we're doing. We looked up a couple articles on how to play the game of Go(https://gamehungry.com/how-to-play-go/), but really don't know what proper strategy is.

Recently our kid (8 years old) has shown he really wants to play the game and wants us to show him how. Is there any absolute beginner guides for Go that would help us understand enough to teach our 8 year old basic strategy?

Any help is very much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

It's a pretty old site, but I kind of like this one: http://playgo.to/iwtg/en/

I think the best strategy for now is to get a good feel for the dynamics of the game. You can do that either by doing problems or just playing a lot. If you play online or on your computer, you usually don't have to worry about making a mistake and not following the rules (e.g. forgetting to take a captured stone off the board).

Anyway, experience is a good teacher - oh, and kids can learn fast if they're interested.

Since you and your 8 year old are total beginners, may I suggest that you start out playing the Capture Game? You can play on a small board like the 9x9, but I have a friend who enjoyed the 7x7, and it's a faster game on that board.

The object of the capture game is to capture a stone. OC, you still win if you capture more than one stone. You also win if your opponent does not have a legal play. For instance,

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Black to play
$$ ----------
$$ | X X X O O |
$$ | X . X O . |
$$ | X X O O O |
$$ | X X X O . |
$$ | X O O O O |
$$ -----------[/go]

Suicide is not allowed, and anywhere Black plays would leave that stone without a liberty, so Black has no legal play, and loses.

Capture games are quick, so you and your son can play a lot of games. They are also strategic, at least on 7x7 and larger boards.

You can also play Capture 2, Capture 3, Capture 4, and so on. The more stones you have to capture to win, the more the game is like regular go. You also quickly get the idea of which stones are dead or not, a question that beginners often have. The life and death of stones is very important, and there are many problems with that theme.

When you start playing regular go, you may enjoy the 9x9 board. The games are relatively quick, and the 9x9 is not a baby board. Even pros sometimes play each other on the 9x9.

The 19x19 is great, OC, and the scope for different strategies is enormous. But, as always, life and death are very important, and most of what you learn on the 9x9 transfers well.

Welcome to the world of go!

Bonne chance!

Oh. Here's a capture game problem.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Black to play and win
$$ ----------
$$ | X X X O O |
$$ | . . X O . |
$$ | X X O O . |
$$ | X X X O . |
$$ | X O O O O |
$$ -----------[/go]

Enjoy!

----

P. S. At Capture Two Black loses.

If you're interested in books, I always recommend Janice Kim's Learn to Play Go Volume I & II for beginners. A lot of beginners run into a wall early on, where they know the rules but don't know what to actually do in a game-- I think volume II fills that gap better than anything else. (There are 3 more books in the series but I would skip them for now).

My 6 year old also likes to do puzzles on an ipad app called BadukPop. It has really cute animations and the level 1 puzzles are a good difficulty for him. As a bonus, the app only gives you a limited number of puzzles per day. I assume they did that to sell upgrades, but for me as a parent the time limit is a feature

May I suggest Boom Your Sense Up?

https://boom-sense-up-baduk-lessons.webnode.com/

This is a series of beginner go videos by Seunghyun Lee 7 dan and Choi Dongeun 1p from cyberoro/wbaduk/Korean Ministry of Culture and Tourism.There are many more cyberoro videos if you want to take your go studies further, I can link to them.

They seem to be for young children, but i think you will enjoy them as well. It is designed to take someone from seeing a go board for the first time to sdk. You would have to play games and either do badukpop, wbaduk tsumego, or the graded go problems for beginner as well to improve that much though.