These are some of the most recent teaching results of offline lessons:
Rowan, 23 kyu player, who took 8 lessons from me and is now 13 kyu.
Fred, 19kyu player, who took 3 lessons from me and is now 15 kyu.
Marek, 8 kyu player, who took 7 lessons from me and is now 5 kyu.
You can read recommendations here:
My goal is to make my students strong. To do so, I do the following unique services.
- I ask my students about his / her background. ( I do this because there is a huge difference between students who started playing Go as a child and those who started as an adult. I have to teach them completely differently. Also there is a clear difference between adults who started learning Go in their 20s and those who learned it at the age of 35 or older. I have to teach them differently. )
- I ask my students to send me 10 latest games and analyze their games, write down all the weaknesses, shortcomings, and strengths.
(Before the internet, I could not see their weaknesses, shortcomings, and strengths until I gave my students 10 lessons or more. But now internet allows me to examine my students’ 10 games before the first lesson. So I can get right to the most important points from the 1st lesson. Internet made teaching Go so much easier and effective. ) - I make tests based on their weaknesses, shortcomings, and then send them to my students to further understand their misunderstandings and why they make mistakes.
- Based on the answers to the tests, I make many problems and send them to the students.
- For adults: In my unique problems, I always explain how to think deeply for adults. I’ve been teaching Go for many years. I’ve listened many adults and learned that adults think completely differently from pros, top amateurs, and children. So I have to explain in a way that adults can understand. Naturally my problems contain a lot of explanations.
- For adults: In my unique problems, I always try to make real amateur game situations as oppose to problems in Go books. This is because in real amateur games things are far more complicated. But books usually try to present a simplified situation.
- For adults: In my unique problems, I always present “common amateur mistakes” and “common amateur misunderstandings”. If my students read these, they will try to avoid that. I also show how to take advantage of “common amateur mistakes”. In Go books you hardly see “common amateur mistakes” because very few Go books focus on “common amateur mistakes” and “common amateur misunderstandings”.
- For adults: In my unique problems, I always present easy-to-read answers. For example, I make many variations. Many Go books use “A”, “B”, and “C” to explain. I avoid using “A”, “B”, and “C” as much as possible; instead I make variations. This is because it’s much, much easier for adults to follow variations rather than imagine “A”, “B”, and “C” situations. Top amateurs and children can follow “A”, “B”, and “C” situations easily, but not adults. Go books use “A”, “B”, and “C” because if a Go book showed all the variations, it becomes a 400-page book, and the cost of books becomes twice as much. (Doing this will take me a long time to make problems and answers. But I do that because I really want my students to learn and improve fast.)
- For weak kyu players: In my unique problems, I always try to show many followup moves in my answers. For example, when I present a ladder, I usually show all the way to the end. Many Go books do not show many moves because if there are many moves, it’s hard to follow. But many weak kyu players cannot see all the hidden or implied moves. In my problems, I show as many moves as possible.
- For weak kyu players: In my unique life-and-death problems for weak kyu players, I present impossible trick moves which some strong players use in order to trick weak players. Many of them cannot respond correctly and end up losing a big group. But when my students learn those moves, they are much less likely to be tricked.
- For adults: I teach a 15 kyu player 12-15 kyu level basics. I teach a 8 kyu player 5-8kyu level basics. I teach a 1 dan player 1-3 dan level basics because without learning basics, amateurs will not get strong. Please read this, too. http://kazsensei.seesaa.net/article/251428407.html
- I can remember my students’ weaknesses and bad habits for more than a year. So when I see my students’ games, I can easily point them out.
- don’t teach pros’ games unless a student asks me strongly. Top pros can read more than 200 moves accurately in a minutes. I certainly cannot. All amateurs cannot. So following pros’ moves is very risky without having the ability to read many moves in a flash. Equally important, pros play many exception moves, not basic moves. They learned basic moves when they were little. So they don’t have to play that. But many amateurs have not learned basics.