Teaching Kate

Finally! The day arrived that one of my kids actually is interested in go. Kate is still very enthousiastic about playing, let's hope that it will last.

Interesting concepts are popping up while teaching her. She knows about ladders, but I never had shown her geta (net) yet.



I put this on the board for her, and asked her to capture the W stone. She immediately made a ladder and captured it that way.

Next question I posed to her, 'What if I play a ladder breaker?' We first checked whether and how the ladder breaker broke the ladder.



Then I asked her whether she could find a move to capture the W stone, even if there was a ladder breaker. She came up with those two.



and



Not bad, Kate, not bad. And fascinating to see what she came up with. Both her moves worked great. I showed her the basic netting move in addition to those, and she immediately grasped why it worked. So cool!

She has her own KGS id now and is enjoying playing me and some friends on line. When she plays me a lot of her kibbitz consists of 'DIE DIE DIE DIE!'. She sure has the trash talking down, I wonder where she got that ^^

She was playing a friend on line and it was funny to hear her talk while playing. Some quotes:

• I must take my territory!
• Uh oh! He has more territory, and I can't solve that! Wait! With my handicap I can! Here i can make one eye and here another one! He made me TWO eyes!!!!!!!! (after generous non-killing play by W :)
• Uhoh, mommy! He is invading again! Oh no you won't! I shall kill you before you even live!
• Oops , I played a bad move, oh well!
• See! I just sacrificed a stone!'
• Wait , I'll do the same trick, sacrifice! (while trying to kill)

She figured out a snapback (W set it up for her) 'Hmmm, if i play here he can take me, but he would only have one liberty left' This impressed me, until the next game she missed a 15 stones capture of W stones in atari ^^.

She started against him in a 9H game on a 9x9 board. She was very impressed. 'WOW! I didn't know you could do something like that! I got EVERY single bit, grass, silver, gold!!!' (I have told her that the Chinese have proverb saying corner is gold, side is silver, center is grass.

Can you tell I am excited about her playing go? I realize it might not last more than a few weeks, but I am enjoying it as long as it will last. She told me 'I learned a lot about go by playing capture go. I never wanted to play real go, because I thought it was boring. But now I see how much fun it is to grab lots of territory!!!'