When I'm not messing with go rankings, I'm semi-obsessed with league of legends. "Snowballing" is an important strategic idea in league and I was thinking about how it applies in a go context.

The basic idea is just that when you get a small advantage, you leverage it as best as possible to get more loot for yourself, get stronger, murder harder, and basically become unstoppable. For example one common piece of advice in League is "after you win the fight, take an objective", meaning if the team is on the back foot, use that opportunity to destroy part of their base, take an important neutral resource like dragon, etc. Don't just kill them and happy to have the kill.

Now imagine a Go game where your opponent made a joseki mistake and you capture some stones in the corner. You've made the kill, now take an objective. Did that capture give you nice thickness there? Can you force your opponent into fighting you there, while you have the advantage? Then maybe you can saddle him with a weak group and make more strength until you are so fed they can't extend from their base without dying.

Maybe this idea already exists in some way but I find it interesting to think about. Is there something like this in the way we think about go strategy?

Well, your second paragraph makes no sense to me as I don't have a clue what this other game is. But your third paragraph seems to described exactly what go is about. Between top players, if one gains an advantage early it is almost always conclusive for the reasons you describe.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

I'm pretty terrible at League (and not super great at Go either), but I feel like snowballing isn't as applicable to Go. The thing is that League is inherently snowbally because given equal skill, winning a fight and getting a kill makes the next fight easier for you since you are stronger and your opponent is weaker. In Go, that's often not the case because a lost fight often has more remaining aji for the side who lost the fight, so playing more aggressively just because you have won a fight might not necessarily work out (maybe like trying to fight against while your summoners and ult are down while opponent has them up). Of course, there are cases where you won the fight so decisively that they don't even have much aji left and you have thickness outside, in which case it would allow you to play more aggressively, but I think it's rarer in Go compared to League.

Also, in League you have to play until one of the nexus is destroyed or one side surrenders, and there is an eventual plateau in strength. So if you don't capitalize on a lead your winning chances will eventually come back to 50% (since one fight in late game can determine the result). In Go it is possible to sit on a small advantage throughout the game, so there is less incentive to end the game as quickly as possible if it is more risky than playing solidly.

I agree with illuck here. In Go a fight at one corner doesn't give you advantages all over the board, but, if any, only at a part of it (opposed to League of Legends were you take your now stronger characters to all places of the map). Besides it is quite risky to think that you can gain even more after a won fight and you might invite a comeback. I think Go has more the idea of gaining an advantage and steadily manage it, which wouldn't work for League of Legends a 2k gold lead is worth much more in minute 5 than in minute 30.

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This is a provisional account because I can't login into my main account (memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=2028) currently

It could be that it applies better to Shogi

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I am John. John-I-Am.

Agreed.
I'm no expert at Shogi either, but I got an explanation on why the joseki in Shogi seem so cowardly and defensive is because once you fall behind in Shogi, it's extremely hard to turn the table. So people start off cautiously.

On the other hand, the snowballing concept exists in most competitive games, including Go. I think if a competitive game doesn't have a snowball mechanic it would be quite dull. The example in Go is when you win a fight and force the opponent to live in gote in the corner while you gain nice outward influence. That influence in turn will bind your opponent's choices, forcing him to play submissively around that area and let you gain actual benefits there.

The same situation in LoL is when you win a skirmish and get 1 kill. You then immediately rush Baron/Dragon to either force your opponents to 4v5 risking more deaths or accept further gold/buff disadvantage.

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The similarity between Go and computing is the seemingly infinite number of possibilities.

I think in Go, snowballing is more about limiting the chances or possibilities for your opponent to attain victory rather than increasing a marginal lead in points. Kind of like what AVAVT said, when you gain an advantageous board position and then simplify the board, it's similar to taking objectives in LoL that widen your gold lead and make it harder for the enemy team to win. That said, there is the item cap and the issue of scaling in LoL that doesn't really apply to Go, as in Go there is limited gold and both team comps are the same.

I've heard that professionals advocate the importance of forcing a fight if you've got thickness: you invested stones for that thickness, now you'd better use it. In their games, you also see them set up great endgame tesuji during early fighting: if you miss the tesuji, then the setup moves were too slow. So there's certainly a concept that advantages must be pressed.

And snowballing is very common locally: I played a game recently where my opponent was overly casual about giving me well placed ponuki's: I had to invest net 3 stones to get the ponuki's, but the resulting strength let me dominate the local board regions. The difference from him extending out of the atari looked small in the short term, but the repercussions reverberated down the game.

9x9 often feels snowball-y. There's some opening exchanges, somebody makes a mistake, and the consequences unfold. I think the size of a 19x19 board just creates many opportunities for each side to create local advantages that counteract each other. If you played some sort of 19 vs. 19 league of legends, I suspect something similar would happen: you'd still press an advantage to pull further and further ahead in the local context, but somewhere on the map some of your allies will have fallen behind, and at some point your local advantage would just vanish as you get pulled over to help them or reinforcements started arriving.

this is possible if you're aware of your advantage and are strong enough to maintain the situation.

however, it's probably not doable at any amateur level.

the simple example is a common phrase that "a 10-30 point in the opening might not exist at all". people make such horrible misplays that they're not aware of in the midgame that the opening advantage/disadvantage rarely carries through.

That assumes that the person with the opening advantage plays more poorly later on.

That is true to some extent, because if you have two shodans, one of whom is better in the opening than the other and typically comes out of the opening 10 points ahead in their games, the other player is very likely to catch up, or they would not both be shodans. That does not mean that, if you are trying to improve, you should blow off the opening.

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The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Maybe related: watching Haylee's videos on youtube, I noticed she tries very hard to make use of the opponent's aji, maybe not immediately, but before they have a chance to patch it up or before plays nearby can render it irrelevant. Partly her reading is very strong so she can identify forcing sequences (also when her opponent tries to force but it's not sente, she will immediately tennuki). In some way those aji represent advantages that have a timer, if you don't take advantage in time the game will change and you may lose your edge. Timing is very different in go of course, it's easy to make forcing moves that help your opponent, wasting the aji by trying to attack too soon.

You'd be suprised. Ryo Maeda definitley seems to push this idea. He's definitley given me one or two disapproving glances when he sees me try and crack open a joseki book.

I talked about it ad nauseum here: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=10983

Simply put, the opening is important, but if you're fighting strength isn't good enough to either break your opponent's plan, protect your own plan, or just know how to fight if it's necessary, then all the beautiful concepts/joseki/fuseki won't save you.

Joseki is different. People try to memorize them without understanding.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

OK, let's take two 5 kyu players who are evenly matched from move 51 onward and let them finish a game where White has gained 10 points up through move 50. As 5 kyus they are pretty skillful, but not so that they can consistently break their opponent's plan, protect their own plan, or know how to fight. So Black will win a fair number of games. Komi is 7 points. Do you think that White will win most of the time, and if so, by how much on average (the median)?

My answer below.

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The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

This isn't meant to be combative, but your situation/question is sort of a non question.

What does "evenly matched" mean anyways? That they're the same level in attack defense, shape, concepts, endgame, reading ability, etc etc etc? It is such a hypothetical situation that it might as well not exist.
Your rank is an average of all your strengths and weaknesses and is a fluidly changing thing. If someone makes a mistake or perceives a mistake, they might play differently. They might value certain things differently. Their mental state might be completely different. To say they are the "same" doesn't mean anything.

Also, what does a "10 point" lead mean? Does that mean in territory, in general board strength, weak group strong group ratio, thickness?

Komi doesn't matter much either, especially at an amateur level. Huge endgame swings are possible due to misreads, valuing certain areas more than others, or possibly just letting the opponent getting all the big sente moves.

My teacher once said of my game, that when i perceived i was behind i would go crazy and play moves that made no sense. I thought that was what you were supposed to do, pick fights when you're behind and the such. However, my teacher's point was "No, at all times you play proper Go and wait for your opponent to make a mistake. If they don't play a mistake that means they played a good game. But if they are at the same general level then mistakes will happen"

Given the same starting point, board situation, same players, and with white having a lead the result is still a massive toss up. Someone might end up winning 8 out of 10 times, or be generally even.

The thing is, that there are so many variables and things that happen in Go that you can never pin point to just one "thing" that made you win or lose. And especially at an amateur level, there isn't a thing that happens that you can grab and lead with and "snowball" into a landslide victory.

You are overestimating the randomness of amateur play. If what you believe were true, ratings systems would break down. (IMO, they are not worth much below 15 kyu, but work pretty well at the SDK level and above. )

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The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

No, i'm pretty sure you're underestimating the randomness of amateur play.

If we took two players with solid ranks, it doesn't mean the win loss will be 50/50. One might have a consistent advantage over the other based on where his knowledge lies compared to the other. Rating systems only work for people who play a wide range of people for a decent amount of games.

For example, if we had an aggressive 5k who likes to fight and a passive but solid playing 5k player, the aggressive person might have a hard time playing against the passive player and have a lower win rate. That doesn't mean the "solid" 5k is a 4 kyu or that they aren't evenly matched, it just means he can do well against that one player.

You are using the randomness of amateur play to denigrate improvement in the opening. There is such an effect, but it is small. For bots that play completely randomly (as long as moves are legal), for instance, proper komi is 0. The randomness wipes out the advantage of the first move. But for pros the komi is only around 7 points. That is the maximum average penalty for randomness, in practice. It is true that much larger blunders are possible, but even human beginners do not play randomly. The large swings do not eliminate the value of the first play. Nor do they eliminate the value of the other moves in the opening. They reduce it by a few points on average, that is all.

If you are 9 stone stronger than someone and you see them come out of the opening with a 10 point advantage, or even a 15 point advantage (for instance, if their opponent took gote instead of sente), you can easily spot how their opponent could have won the game later on. But that still is not an argument against playing a good opening. Just because the game is not over until it is over does not excuse earlier bad play.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

No, no, and no.

I will make this my last post on this subject. You disagree and i don't care, but here is my rebuttal.


No, I am using the randomness of play to say that there really isn't a way to "snowball your advantage" as laid claim by the first post.


No, komi is not penalty for randomness. Komi exists to even the playing field due to advances in opening theory for pros.


No, the large swings show that you can't really "snowball your advantage". What good is a 10 point lead in the opening if you play a 40 point mistake in the midgame?


If you're 9 stones stronger than someone, it's a given that you are probably going to win due to being better at aspects of the game, not just because you were ahead by 10 points, otherwise handicap wouldn't make sense.
Again, all of this is being viewed through the perspective of "snowballing your advantage".


It doesn't, but it shows that just because you have the advantage does not mean you will have a better statistic chance of winning, especially in the game of Go.

We agree on that.



That's what we disagree about. That does denigrate skill in the opening.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.