Teachers

If you have decided that you want to progress faster than you would be able to on your own, and your local area does not offer strong, amateur dan players or professional players who give lessons, you may be ready for online lessons.

I have recently taken this step. Therefore I offer my own experience for your consideration. The teacher I chose is Mirel Florescu from Romania. He studied at a professional Go school in Japan before beginning to teach Go. He has created an internet Go school and teaches students from all over the world. The following is from his website:

I left Japan in September 1998 after almost three-and-a-half years of intense study. Now I am 6 Dan and I decided to dedicate the rest of my life to spreading of this wonderful game. I want to share the things I learned with everybody..."

"I am very pleased with my experience with Mirel's school and his personal teaching style. I look forward to each of my lessons. Perhaps the greatest compliment that I can pay Mirel so far is that even on days or weeks where I am mentally burned out and not even in the mood to play Go, I can Go through a 90-minute lesson and rather than emerging from this even more tired and burned out, I find that I am re-engergized and excited about playing and studying more Go.

If you would like to learn more about Mirel's school, visit: http://learngo.world-go.org/menu.htm

As I mentioned above, there are other teachers. Unfortunately, I cannot personally recommend any others, as I have not studied with them. However, typically prices for professional players will be higher than strong amateurs. Frankly, for most new players, a strong amateur is a much better value and will allow you to have more lessons and reviewed games. In case you are interested in looking into teachers other than Mirel Florescu, you can visit some of the following sites:

• http://gobase.org/studying/schools
• http://kgs.kiseido.com/en_US/teachers.html