In a recent thread, there have been different opinions on the perhaps oversimplified statement "lose 100 games as quickly as possible".

In our table tennis club, it is suggested to keep younger players away from the trickery in adult competitions, because they will get accustomed to losing against players with bad technique and their motivation to keep proper form will be affected. They should acquire as much self confidence as possible by winning with proper form, which is more likely in youth competition, where the opposition is usually well trained too and has no influx of mentally strong but technically poor adults. Only when this confidence is well established and the technique is harnassed into muscle memory, and they're objectively better than the tricky adults they will encounter, it is advisable to unleash the fragile youth into such competition.

The analogy with go is probably not there. But I'm often reminded of this when I see players complain about losing despite training. I have developed an antidote to that, which is training the things that matter most in the kind of matches one is playing in the beginning.

I believe one should play with the objective of winning and train what matters most. Losses can then reveal failure in vital aspects. I don't quite believe in the aggregation of knowledge from 100 losses in games for the sake of having gone through that stage.

I think that proverb arose when new players were likely playing face to face, high handicap games against strong players. In that context, expecting to lose a lot while learning the game makes sense. Unless you are getting teaching games with reviews from stronger players, it makes a lot more sense to play opponents with a handicap that lets you win at least some of the time. If you're losing every game without a review, it's likely that the level of play is too far above you to properly learn.

The proverb still has some value by reminding new players that go is hard and losing is a normal part of the learning process, but it is so easily misinterpreted that I wish it would stop being passed down as remarkable go wisdom.

I don't know where the lose 100 games saying came from, but let me guess. In the West a lot of players learned to play without receiving a proper handicap, so they lost an awful lot of their first games, but they persevered and got past that obstacle. Then they advised new players to follow in their footsteps and not worry about losing at first.

There are a couple of things right about the saying. One is not to worry about losing. Another is that you learn, even when you lose.

However, there are a couple of things wrong about it, as well. One is that losing all the time can be discouraging, to say the least. Another is that in general the best tasks for learning are those where you succeed about half the time. Proper handicaps provide such tasks.

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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.

lose play 100 games. Easy.

I, too, am not aware of the origin of this phrase. However, a similar phrase can be seen if you peruse the interwebz for Go Proverbs written in Korean (though, who knows? Maybe they just translated the phrase from English).



Admittedly, here, it's about losing 50 games instead of 100. If you win your next 50, I suppose you're succeeding about half of the time

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be immersed

That being said, I agree with Bill that handicap games should be encouraged. Though, when I was a beginner, I wouldn't be surprised if I were to lose my first 50 or 100 handicap games, too :-S

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be immersed

When I was a beginner and joined my small local club the next weakest person was 7k EGF and most of my games were against 5 kyus and 2kyus. It took a good while before my handicaps offline felt proper. I didn't mind, it was usually more interesting to lose to a 2k in the club than to win against another 18k on KGS.

I wonder if that Korean proverb has anything to do with Nam Chihyung. She is generous about rendering go material in English into Korean.

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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.

I once gave a 40 stone handicap. I won by 10 pts., but that's close enough, eh?

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

A lot of players do not like to give more than 9 stones handicap. They might try the beer handicap system. Instead of giving stones above 9, White downs a beer for every handicap stone that he does not give.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I remember the first time I heard it a number of years ago, it was 50 games. But later, I couldn't find any original source.

I suspect it arose out of the difficulty for beginners to even understand how to play, until they've played. So I agree with the sentiment to change "lose" to "play".

I don't have such a problem with the word "lose" in the proverb. It puts you in a reasonable frame of mind when starting out. You don't know squat, and you don't have a chance against anyone who does. The best way of acquiring some knowledge and skills is to jump in and play. Any expectation of winning is these early games is illusory, and it is best to play with the aim of finding out what is wrong with any pre-conceptions you may have. Probably the numbers 50 or 100 are too high, and the first wins will occur before then, giving the new player the sense that perhaps it's possible to develop a knack for go after all.

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Patience, grasshopper.

Play 100 enjoyable games!

That way no one will object.

Could very well be. A lot of the pages I found that had this also had an English translation, so it's probably less likely to be "native" to Asia than other proverbs might be.

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be immersed

Just because we hold our club in a pub...

This piece of advice is being passed around often on reddit in the baduk subreddit. There are a lot of interested beginners showing up after the craze of Alphago. A lot of people are telling them "If you haven't lost 50-100 games yet, then keep playing". I don't find this advice to be very helpful to a confused beginner. Someone could lose x amount of games and still have learned nothing about why they were losing. IMO, it's better to find someone that's willing to play teaching games with you so you can learn while you play. Even better if it can be in person.

I first learned the basics through go apps before meeting a friend that was willing to teach me as we played. This was helpful to me because as we played moves, we would often stop to discuss the moves; sometimes playing out variations, why things worked and didn't, etc. If I set out to play as many games as possible first, I don't think my learning process would have been as helpful. I later asked my friend about this proverb and he said it's a good one, and that you learn the most when you lose a game. That can be true, but only if someone is there to go over your game and help you understand why you lost.

I don't know about that. While I agree that the "lose 100 games" advice might not be very helpful as is, my experience is that the first dozen(s) of 9*9 games with beginners are there to teach them to see ataris, not forget that the first line is part of the board, etc. For that "knowledge" to become ingrained in you brain, you don't need comments from a stronger player (not that it would hurt!), but repetition through many games is necessary.
That's how I understand this proverb, not "lose" in the sense of "be prepared to lose, you weakling!", but more like "your brain is not yet wired to see the very basic building blocks of go, you'll have play a lot to acquire that".

I've always understood it as: (taking handicap as complete beginner from sdk or stronger) lose a bunch of gamed, realise a serious mistake you were making, lose a bunch of games while putting up a better fight, realise another major error, repeat until you win enough to reduce handicap by one, start again. Going from 8 to 7 happens much faster than going 9 to 8 too in my experience but having someone stay long enough until that happens can be tricky if they can't get close to even games too. The average beginner on here doesn't want to play online which can mean taking a lot of high handicaps at the club due to lack of players.

My friend and I are presently at six stones plus a couple of double Scotches.

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Confucius in the Analects says "even playing go is better than eating chips in front of tv all day." -- kivi

It seems we have a different time line in mind for the "lose your 100 games" thing. For me it is more a matter of 2/3 weeks on a 9*9 board.