Thinking about it some more, this game has a big flaw. One of the players has a simple winning strategy by mirroring (actually 180 degree rotation) the other player's moves. On an n x n board, the 1st player wins if n is odd (by starting in the middle), and the 2nd player wins if n is even. Changing to a rectangular m x n board, with m+n odd, doesn't help. The 1st player still wins by playing on one of the 2 central points followed by mirroring.

While this flaw prevent Avoid Contact from being a good game in its own right, it still seems to make an excellent introduction to Go. Praised be those students that can discover the mirroring strategy by themselves. And then they will appreciate Go all the more as they learn how to defeat the mirroring strategy there...

The next chance I get to teach someone Go, it will be in this order:

Avoid Contact -> Capture Go -> Go