I have been playing Go with my friend (who has a Chess background) for a while now. We started on 19x19 boards but he found it really overwhelming and struggled. He wanted to switch to 9x9 and we have now played several 9x9 games.
These games are just for fun and I don’t think he has much intention of ever playing seriously, so it doesn’t really matter, but I feel like the skils developed playing 9x9 are really not all that applicable to a real game other than just basic life/death, some endgame stuff, etc.
I started on a full sized board, and I ran a successful club where we started beginners off on full sized boards, so I don’t really know how others do it. What do you think about starting beginners off on 9x9? When do you think they should transition to larger boards?
I’ve started feeling like playing on 9x9 boards and even playing handicap games can be a bit of a roadblock to learning too. There’s obviously stuff that’s applicable in both cases, and the speed of 9x9 games is super appealing… But it’s different enough that it’s hard to jump from 9x9 to 19x19 in the first place without more direction. And handicap games give you a fairly artificial board at the start, but I think more importantly it adds a bit of noise to the game right away which makes it harder to see patterns?
I’m a pretty mediocre Go player, though, so take what I have with a grain of salt. Sometimes I wonder if I could get better much faster by playing bots or much stronger players too… I think when you’re learning and playing against weaker opponents it’s easier for you to get away with bad habits because they’ll never be punished… But Go is pretty hard for people to get started with in the first place, and getting crushed isn’t always very fun (and often not even enlightening), haha.