Insights into the Beginner's Mind

I played a 13x13 against my fiancée (who has not been bitten by the GO bug). It is interesting to see the concepts a completely new-to-GO person struggles with.

• Lack of clarity between the definition of a liberty and an eye.
• Eye/liberty confusion leads to the inability to determine if a group is alive or dead.
• Without confidence to determine which groups need added defense or eyes, it leads to killable groups that are a shock for the new player to lose.
• This leads to complete frustration with the game. It seems almost arbitrary which groups live and die.

If this is you, or someone you hope to help start up in GO, see if they understand better after doing the following:

1. Surf over to The Interactive Way To Go. This is a great interactive starting place for learning GO.
2. If that format is comfortable, set up a beginners problem set at GoProblems. Click the black go stone at the top of the page that says "Problems" and create a set of puzzles rated from 30 Kyu to 25 kyu. (Kyu is a rating of GO skill. 30 kyu is a beginner rating and 25 kyu means you are a bit stronger. So, this creates a set of the easiest problems on the site.)
3. Once the basics start to make sense, try some 9x9 games by downloading Igowin (for Windows) or GnuGo (for Mac).
4. Next step is to take off the training wheels - start playing against people! Either live face-to-face games (on smaller boards) or by using an online GO server (where you can still start on small boards).