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Our Go
The way anyone teaches, learns or plays Go is "their Go." The words on the manga/anime Hikaru-no-Go can be translated as "Hikaru's Go," and it is not dissimilar from this that we do attempt to teach "our" Go to others.
The Go that The Glowing Stone teaches is, in terms of game-play, a moyo (or area-based) style of play, using influence on the board to build toward the endgame. Because we are affiliated directly with the Canadian Go Association, which is itself directly affiliated with the Japanese Go Association (Nihon Ki'in) in Tokyo, we primarily use Japanese terminology when teaching.
The way we teach Go is to spend 3/5 of our time emphasising good shape and the connectivity of stones on the board, encouraging forethought and careful deliberation. This process requires 2/5 of our time to focus on "fighting" techniques, problems of life and death, tactics and clever plays (tsumego and tesuji respectively). Fighting in Go is an important part of the game, but we try to enstill the foundational theories of cooperation and respectful play into our students.
Our philosophy can be best explained, as one player once said, as: “Backgammon is man against chance; chess is man against man; Go is man against himself.” We, at The Glowing Stone, play Go as a means to better ourselves...and this is the philosophy we teach.
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