Students

Yuan Zhou is currently open for Go students. Yuan Zhou offers private lessons, group lessons, teaching games in person or on the internet.  If you are interested to become Yuan Zhou's Go student and/or take lessons from him, your Go rank is 9k and above (this condition can be waived if you are referred by Yuan Zhou's Go students), you are a serious Go player who wants to learn, improve and enjoy Go, please contact Yuan Zhou at yuan.zhou@zhouyuan.com for details regarding lesson schedules, fees etc.

If this is the first time you contact Yuan Zhou, to better know you, please include the following information:

1. Your Name.

2. Where are you from?

3. How did you know Yuan Zhou? (Friend referral, read Yuan Zhou's books, attended Yuan Zhou's workshop and / or teaching lessons, internet website, etc.)

4. Your current Go rank.

Yuan Zhou is also currently teaching group lessons in person at the Washington DC Go center. Please see the teaching section for details.

Yuan Zhou has taught many Go students over the years. Here are some of their comments regarding their experience:

Like many, perhaps most American players, I learned the game of go through other amateurs, aided only slightly by the often puzzling advice from the few books in English translation. Unguided by any foundation in the fundamentals of the game, often unaware of a whole-board overview, we drift into battles by setting up random positions and then are content to engage in our little fights when tactical situations arise. We enjoy the game but wonder why we never progress.

The teaching of Yuan Zhou has offered me insightful lessons that have changed my whole approach to the game. Trained by professionals in China, and himself one of the top go players in the U.S., Yuan has a ready insight into the heart of a position and can discern, and explain clearly, the key and essential moves and areas of emphasis. Yuan's method of teaching by reviewing the student's actual games is most helpful because it focuses on our particular thought processes and identifies our individual weaknesses. Both his lessons and his workshops are full of humor, patience, and above all the goal of developing the student's full potential. For me personally Yuan's lessons have offered a whole new dimension of appreciation for the beauty of the game.

--- Charles Alden

There are many ways to learn Go skills: playing games, looking at pro games, practicing problems, reading books, attending lectures, etc. However it can becomes increasingly difficult to improve one's game unless one has instruction from a more advanced player. The situations one encounters in games are unique and applying lessons learned from a book or pro game can be challenging, especially as one's skill increases.

Lessons with Yuan Zhou have fundamentally advanced my understanding of Go. We are able to go in depth into different situations, seeing not only the correct moves, but why they are correct. Yuan Zhou has seemingly endless patience, working through situation after situation and staying with you to assess those situations competently. He is able to do this because of his great enthusiasm for the game, which as a student inspires me to work harder and enhances my enjoyment of the game. His explanations are clear and precise, elucidating without being harsh or judgmental.

I encourage anyone with an interest in Go to take lessons from Yuan Zhou. The insights so gained are truly a revelation!

--- David Felcan

Learning go can be a rough experience for some of us. I came to like go very quickly and sought out a local club, started to play online, and even played in my first tournament within the first months of learning the game. But there was a lot of frustration, too: every mistake I made felt like a personal indictment of my character. And lots of the feedback I got was very negative: that's wrong, this was a bad move, ph! that was a wasted move. I don't think anyone intended to be unkind, but I began to associate go with anxiety rather than pleasure. Right as I was on the cusp of reaching the single-digit kyus, I stopped playing.

The one thing I kept doing was going to shifu Yuan Zhou's monthly group lessons. In the games he would replay and analyze for us in the mornings, I experienced pure, calm happiness. There, it wasn't about how strong I could get or how few mistakes I could make: go was a language that helped me participate, for however brief a time, in an immortal event that was epic, glorious, and beautiful. At the end of one of these workshops, shifu asked me if I were going to one of the upcoming tournaments. I briefly confessed that I just didn't feel very enthusiastic about playing, that it had become a mostly negative experience, and that one of the few places I still enjoyed it at all was in the warm atmosphere of the group lessons. He replied, "Well, friendship is important in go, too."

It may sound like a small thing, but this attitude is reflected throughout his lessons. He teaches go history and culture along with strategy, emphasizing the importance of the long traditions associated with the game and how much they have to teach us about the rest of life. He told me later that among the reasons listed in the ancient Chinese go bible, none of the reasons to play go have anything to do with winning. His compassionate response changed my whole experience of go, and I began playing again in earnest. Not only did I start getting stronger, I began to enjoy the game itself again. The monthly go workshops are still my favorite part of go, but they're no longer alone.

--- Nate Eagle

Yuan Zhou is an outstanding go teacher. The foundation of his strength as a teacher is his deep knowledge and love of the game, honed from his professional training in China, and his respect for its traditions and its stature as an art. He peppers his lessons with stories from go history, and he communicates go strategy from a commonsense, human perspective, relating it to lessons from life.

From the first lesson he emphasizes looking at the full board, counting territory and understanding how the players stand, in order to learn what the biggest priorities are. So many go players could benefit from this approach, as they often miss the big picture, getting bogged down in local complications. Working from a large-scale strategic objective can make a difficult game much easier to understand.

--- Matt Bengtson

For me, the attempt to reach Shodan was an epic struggle. Since learning the game in college, I had leisurely gained about half a stone a year. But then I hit a roadblock. I spent a few frustrating years bouncing between 1 an 2 kyu and was beginning to get frustrated with my Go. And I was not getting any younger. Finally, I decided I could not make the breakthrough to Shodan on my own. I had the good fortune to choose Yuan Zhou as my teacher.

Not long after I began lessons with Yuan, I started to see that many of the things I thought were correct, were really wrong. Not long after this, I began to put the lessons I had received from Yuan into practice. Over the course of about a year, I went on an amazing winning streak, amassing 20 tournament wins with only three losses, including winning my section at the wonderful Cherry Blossom tournament in Washington, D. C. This winning streak finally enabled me to achieve my goal for many years, the attainment of the rank of shodan.

Yuan's lessons are multifaceted. Yuan provides insight into the meaning of joseki and standard tactical techniques, while at the same time making sure the student does not lose sight of the whole board. In addition, Yuan's teaching is patient, open to questions, and has an engaging philosophical aspect that connects go lessons to situations in the larger world. I thank my teacher, Yuan Zhou, for helping me to breakthrough the haze that was clouding my vision of the game we all love.

--- Paul Celmer

Yuan is a remarkably talented teacher. In the first place, he is endlessly patient and does not complain about going over the same points many times for slow learners. More importantly, he has an amazing ability to understand what the confusion or misunderstanding is that is leading his student to make bad plays. Explaining this is vastly more helpful than merely stating that a play is bad and pointing to the correct point to play. In addition, his upbeat and supportive attitude makes lessons a pleasure. And perhaps most important, when I started studying with Yuan I actually began to get stronger, as well as enjoying the game more.

--- William Cobb

"If I had to tell you about my shifu (Yuan Zhou), I would use a metaphor in order to describe him : I experience him as a candle in the dark. My lessons with him make me realize how little I know about Go, meanwhile, step by step, my understanding of the game is increasing. What is remarkable about shifu is that he always makes you think about your play. He is not only showing you what is doable or not, but he also takes the time to give you a deep understanding of the differents concepts behind the shapes seen in your own games, which means that Yuan gives his pupils acces to the purpose behind their different moves. Furthermore shifu has the talent of being able to quickly analyse the personality of his students, and he adapts himself to their real needs, this allows him to give his students a better comprehension of themselves as well. Last but not least, he is one the most gifted teachers I have ever met, and I have seen a few... As it is my own profession."

--- Marc Stoehr

Yuan Zhou's workshops have helped me see Go in a whole new light. Before I started attending the workshops, my game was stagnating. I played often, but I felt like I was playing the same game again and again without advancing. Yuan Zhou helped me see how much I was missing. His monthly group lessons have offered a broad perspective for analyzing the game. What is really remarkable about his teaching is its accessibility. Shifu is able to strip away the complexity of all the individual moves to expose the underlying flow of a game. The games become much more meaningful. He provides clear, understandable principles that can be widely applied. Each time, I walk away with some new insight that I feel I can apply to my games. The workshops have restored the joy of learning the game rather than merely playing. Yuan Zhou does not just know how to play Go; he knows how to teach it to others.

--- George Wilson

One of the most important elements of winning go is a solid understanding of the fundamentals. Even if a player is able to make tremendously brilliant moves, it does him or her no good if these moves are offset by equally abysmal blunders. These players are often consumed with the romantic notion of making flashy, unheard-of moves that somehow manage to destroy the heart of their opponents' plans.

However, the truth is that simply being able to play a consistent, solid game is a huge accomplishment for any player, and reflects a deep understanding of the game. When I first began my lessons with Yuan Zhou, my feeling for even the most basic concepts of go was terribly weak and sketchy. However, thanks to the teaching of Shifu, Yuan Zhou, I was able to rebuild my entire knowledge of the game. Though I have many ages to go before I can match the consistent, high-level play exhibited by my teacher, I feel like I am finally able to grasp some of the fundamentals of this game. This has helped to deepen my enjoyment and love of go.

In addition, Yuan Zhou is very nice guy and one of the most honorable people I know. He has a deep respect for this game and for the individuals that play it. He genuinely cares about his students and tries very hard to help them succeed.

--- Juan Pablo Quizon