Doing the quizzes on OGS. Black is to play. I answered “Real” and this was flagged as wrong response. Why? If black would play A it would be immediately captured so this would constitute suicide and hence this is a real eye, isn’t it?
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True, if Black would play at A that would be suicide. But what happens if Black plays at B? What then do you think will happen to the eye marked with A?
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Since the white stone to the left of A is not connected to anything if black can atari that stone then white must connect or die hence it cannot be an eye.
Suicide isn’t allowed.
So at its simplest A just ataris and white connects, no eye
Black can even ignore and if white pushes repeat the atari
Even if White goes for tricks and does not connect
Black then captures at A white can instant recapture at F1 and Black simply connects at E1 for the same result
In this example Whites best chance is to push up a little further on the right to make points and eye space
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For some reason lots of people struggle with this exact problem, it’s been asked on reddit at least 2 times.
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I think one of the big reasons is that when it was first introduced in the lesson, it gave a “definition/description” as “Point A is surrounded by white stones; it is called an ‘eye’. Black can not play at A (self-capture).”
And the section 2.14 Eye is right after 2.13 Self-capture, where the “reason” why the concept of eyes is useful for Group Alive has not been introduced yet (it is introduced several sections later at 2.16). For someone who just follows the lessons, and has no idea why they are learning the concept of “eyes” they could easily believe that it was just a terminology for describing a point surrounded by the same color of stones that have the property of cannot play self-capture/suicide stone inside immediately.
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The way I learnt it (probably not the first time, but the definition that resonated with me at the end) is you need to have all sides and majority of diagonals of an empty space for it to be an eye.
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That’s what I learnt initially and I believe many others learnt the same way. The only exception is a double headed dragon.
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My logic on that one was for it to be alive you need 1 eye in each side of the shape anyways, in which point the shape has 2 eyes anyways.
It’s hard to define precisely what is an eye and what is a false eye. Perhaps a less confusing question would be: is the group H2 capturable if Black is allowed to play several times in a row?
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I think the lessons sort of introduce this in 2.17 two eyes, and 2.18 Capture Group, just that they are after 2.14, hence they kinda have to go back and forth in the lessons. It is easier for us who have already made this a second nature, but not for students who haven’t even been introduced to living groups yet.
I’ve taken a look at the ‘Learning how to play Go’ section because of your remarks and I have to agree that the chosen order in which the chapters are organized is a bit odd. Besides, the whole concept of Ko is not explained but just embedded in some excersises. I wonder if a beginner can have a clue of what ‘not really defending’ is all about.
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Well this is bad. It uses the wrong terminology. It asks them to capture the group, but then says correct when you make a placement to kill it, but didn’t capture it. Teaching materials should use language carefully to avoid confusing people.
Who made these exercises?
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I’ve been using these exercises to teach my son and I think they’re very good. The capturing/killing distinction is very important to keep distinct when you’re teaching go in a theoretical way, but if you look at the beginner exercises, they escalate capturing stones > capturing chains > capturing groups before formally teaching a concept of life and death. I think it’s appropriate
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From a teaching perspective, it really depends on who the students are, and the length of the courses (and how they are segmented). Teaching general concepts such as in the lessons example in Chapter 1, is probably fine for very short sessions, with limited examples. However, it should probably avoid any descriptive/definitions/terminologies, and more general concepts, to at least draw attention and have a big picture of what the game is all about, including how stones eventually have to live on the board to count, no matter how many stones you placed, if they cannot live, they don’t count, thus making capturing one part of the story (the other part is how to keep them alive), the same as connect and split, then eventually conditions for life, then true eye helps or false eyes, and how to falsifying eyes, much later.
And lots and lots of examples, and keep reminding them from the easiest examples to the harder ones, eventually exceptions, etc.
First things first: What a wonderful community! Came back here after a good night’s sleep just to find this in depth and very helpful discussion; thanks everyone!
I agree that learning styles are different and there probably is not one single best practice approach.
However, specifically with a game like Go, precise language and disambiguated instructions are key. And some parts of these lessons are not 100% precisely written.
For me - and this might just be my way of learning new concepts best - it would be better if the lessons would first introduce the broader goals and concepts.
If in the first part, the sub-goal of “groups that live or are dead” would have been introduced, a lot of the “ways to get there” e.g. by building eyes, would have been embedded into more context.
Not sure whether there’s a way to grab the authors’ attention to maybe incorporate this feedback.
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I can recommend the free course made by Go Magic. I think it’s an excellent way to get introduced to the game. The basic rules and principles of the game are explained in a video and excersises in a comprehensive, step by step way: Go Magic Interactive Beginner’s course
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That is more difficult as how it looks. From my own practice it’s more about to find the right point or balance between the conciseness and the understanding. In most cases if you want to be precise you break this by giving too complex info, you need some adherence from the listeners.
That’s not always so easy, as you can’t introduce some concepts without some practice of the game at first. Here too, adherence helps (by trusting what is taught) but usually will need some experimentations too.
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I think you are spot on.
I say this because there are no such things as “eyes” - real or false - in Go rules.
“Eyes” - real and false - are just ideas we use to understand the implication of the actual rules about “groups that are alive or dead”, but they are imperfect, as the above discussion shows.
They’re part of the open source code of the site.
So one way is to raise an issue.
The github user TCGWim did a lot of recent work on that section. You could @ mention them in the issue and it might draw their attention (sadly I don’t know who that is here in OGS)
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