At what age did you start teaching your kids Go?

It could be teaching them yourself, or getting another teacher to teach them.

And how did it turn out by teaching them at that age?

  • 0~2 years old
  • 3~5 years old
  • 6~8 years old
  • 9~10 years old
  • 11~15 years old
  • 16 years old and above
  • I don’t teach my kid(s) Go
0 voters
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I was about 55 :stuck_out_tongue:

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Not your age :joy:

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I gave my niece a Go set before she was 6, and my nephew, two years younger at 4 who is more interested than his sister at a younger age. (he is now taking programming lessons as well)

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O I don’t have any kids.

(But if I had any I would wait until they approached me about it.)

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I didn’t vote because I do not have any kids, but friends and relatives do.
Judging from those kids I wouldn’t venture to try to teach them Go before the ā€œ6-8 ageā€ bracket in the poll for two reasons:
a) The stones might be a choking hazard for younger ages.
b) They might not be keen to learn the rules
c) They might not follow the rules, even if they do know them.

I put ā€œcā€ in its own category because I’ve noticed that modern parenting increasingly involves a ā€œlet the child do whatever in order to win, so that we can avoid a tantrumā€. I’ve sat in tables and played board games with such parents and children and it was not fun, at all.

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On my side, I started to get him involved past 10, and plan to do the same to my other minion, but this is personal IMHO and I think is related to the kid’s character.

In my situation, I tried to teach him but he just wanted to win, and get angry and cry if loose. Sum to thath, I don’t have too much patience :smiley:

Then, I just let it go and wait for his interest. Past 10 told me he wants to participate on a tournament I traveled. He did, and lost the 5 games, but something changed over the tournament, he didn’t get angry, and just wanted to play with everyone out of rounds, and look how others play. The dark side started to grow on him, and since then, he comes from school, go to the computer, play games on OGS, asks me to review and when is the next tournament we will go.

My smaller minion is under 8 now, and has no interest, yet…I hope in 1 or 2 years, if he wants, asks me to learn and play, but who knows what will happen. I will not force, I prefer what I did. Just wait for the real interest to grow inside him.

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I tried teaching my step-kids go when they were around 6-13, but unfortunately none of them showed any interest on the game :<

Which is kinda weird, since two of them became really enthusiast chess players. The oldest one is already much stronger chess player than me (my elo peaked around 1600), and the other one is pretty much equal with me.

Maybe its because they don’t have anyone to play go with except me, and its not fun to brag about being good at something, if no-one at school knows what it is >__>

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My kids (11 and 7) learned the rules at around 5, and played from time to time. The younger one only wants to capture stones; the older one made some progress but recently dropped go altogether… (in favour of programming lessons actually)

I never push but am always ok to play a game, mostly on the mid-sized board. So is their dad but he’s too strong and not good at fitting his style to their level, so more frustrating for them.

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Sounds like a typical dad problem :joy:

Did you try to lose?

Similar experience, sons interested at a much younger age (2-4 years younger) than daughter

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No, I don’t, I just give a big handicap. Like 4 to 6 stones on 13*13 board. It’s a fair fight then and it’s important for the child to see their effort matters and they may either win or lose.

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As for the first point, children are often able to handle small objects (with supervision) by age 5. However, an approach that I took to introduce my kids to Go was to have them tap around on a virtual board on a smart phone screen.

The second and third points were not even an aim for this early introduction. I made no effort to teach them the rules or get them to strictly follow them. However, the virtual board that I used automatically alternates turns, removes captured stones, prevents suicides and simple ko.

The main point of this early introduction (which was motivated by my son showing interest from seeing me play on my phone) was just to give them some exposure to some basic concepts, such as taking turns with alternating colors, and to see how captures work through exploration. Scoring and determining the winner were completely omitted from these early lessons.

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There was a time - about 10 yrs ago - when I wouldn’t stop talking to anyone and everyone about Go - how amazing it was, how they should learn it immediately, etc…

Pretty much nobody in my immediate circle of friends or family was remotely interested, and it took me a while to get the message that I should stop bugging people about it, because my enthusiasm for the game was perceived as an unwelcome nuisance…

I tried telling my daughter about the game when she was about 6 years old - no interest…

I tried again when she was 9 or 10 years old, and getting into other board games / card games - even less interest…

Now she is 16, and really smart - but again - after having grown up with a Go-playing dad, and feeling like she has to keep disappointing me with her lack of interest, she is even less receptive…

So despite my best efforts - I was never able to begin teaching my kid Go ĀÆ_(惄)_/ĀÆ

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I started ā€œexposingā€ the game of Go to my daughter when she was just 3. Not trying to teach her, simply being around playing stones of the goban, and raising her interest, and letting her place stones as well.

I think if one parent spends some time weekly with the game, that will raise interest into the game.

Then at 4, I started to actually teach her, using various methods, but without success. We are in China, so I brought her to the local to school, they told us it’s better to wait until she is 5. During that time, I just kept with exposing her to the game (showing how to properly hold the stone, play on intersection, letting her draw shapes on the goban).

Then when she turned 5, I started showing her a Chinese anime about Go named Weiqi Shaonian (囓棋少幓), and a few weeks into the anime, enrolled her into the local Go school.

So basically, I spent some time and energy to make playing Go appears as some sort of totally reasonable activity or games, and that’s easier in China indeed, where the game is well known and respected.

The school recommends to start at 5, so I think there is no more risk at that age (regarding chocking on the stones).

She has been attending the school for about 6 months now, still haven’t learnt the complete ruleset. They mostly play variants of first capture Go instead, even had a national online tournament. So the progression is very slow. About one year until they know all the rules to play a complete game and do the scoring I guess.

As she will soon turn 6, we started watching Hikaru No Go to keep the motivation up, but it’s harder for her to understand than Weiqi Shaonian. We do the school exercise every day (through the school app), it takes us about 15 minutes.

With Go being that much more featured at home, the 1.5yo sister is receiving much more exposure, and is really willing to be part of it as well. I started the same process (just simple exposure) but I am expecting she will end up being more into Go than the elder sister.

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