Yilun Yang is a professional go player and teacher who gives lessons on the internet on the KGS internet go server.  He also gives workshops at locations around the country.

I have been a student of Mr. Yang for the past ten years with the exception of a period of four years from 2003 through 2007.  I started lessons in January of 1998 after having attended a workshop with Mr. Yang in Highland Park, New Jersey in June of 1997.  We started lessons on IGS, moved to NNGS, and finally in 2000 I was the first student to bring Mr. Yang over to the KGS go sever where he currently teaches many of his students.  I was prompted to make the hard decision to discontinue lessons in 2003 when I realized that I was not playing or studying enough to get the most from my lessons.  In October of 2007, after retiring from a career in education, I decided to start studying with Mr. Yang again on KGS.

Currently I am taking a two hour lesson once every two weeks.  We play and review two games each lesson, unless we review my games from a recent AGA tournament.  In that case we can generally review four games in the course of a two hour lesson, since it takes about thirty minutes to review the average tournament game.

Although I take my lessons privately, I have recently begun sharing them with a small group of spectators by replaying the lessons in the Wings Go Club Room on the KGS go server.  Because I want to keep the group small and intimate I am not advertising the time, yet the demo game is public at this point.  I might go to a private review if the audience grows too large.

The review is aimed at a strong double digit kyu level.  I have found the review process to be of value not only to those who watch the review, but also to myself. I take the time to go over the game record in advance placing markers, making notes, planning questions to ask, and thinking about which parts of the lesson might require elaboration for my target audience. I review one game per week, so I am able to give a review every Thursday night.  The reviews have been running about 75 minutes in length on average.

To those who might wonder what Mr. Yang would think of my replaying our lessons, this is his response to an email in which I detailed my plans and asked if he had any objections...

Dear Terri,

You did a lot of nice things to many Go players, I have no objection to your plan. Hope you have good time with your friends.

Best,

Yilun Yang