If it's something that's important to you, to give up hope is a very bad thing, I think. The question is just if it's important enough to me. I think that it is pretty important to me right now.

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be immersed

Interesting statements.
I agree that my statement is a generalization, but so is yours.
Also, I am absolutely uncertain why people would need an 'excuse' not to study Go. Its not like Go is your duty or something. Study it or not study it, its up to you, and nobody has the right to judge you for that. I don't understand your attitude here.



Great, so?
In Soviet Union they had a farm system to breed chess players, or gymnast. They picked them up at schools, at very early age, and put them through some of the most professional and rigorous learning regime I can think of. The kids were taught to be great and strong and competitive like hell... a only a few of them made it - and they made it in a big way. The rest were dropped by the side of the road, scarred for life, forever failures. Some become couches, but many struggled with the rest of their lives. Soviets produced many outstanding athletes like that, but was it really good? I think it is a matter of opinion.

Another thing... What you describe in China might make sense if the parents are pushing the kinds towards a specific goal, like becoming a pro. I would assume that Go pros have a nice life in China, so that's one of the good ways to plan your kid's life. And then it might make sense to be slightly more competitive. I would assume kids then get better chances/teachers based on rank, so being obsessed by rank makes practical sense. From our perspective of a casual KGS player, such thinking makes no sense.



I will just ignore the above as a purely personal attack.



If you are weak, you need to find out why you are weak, not what rank you have.
If you want to improve you need to figure out what knowledge you need, not what rank you are.

And yes, knowing your rank is nice, and has its uses. I never said otherwise.
But there is a difference between USING your rank, and between BEING GUIDED BY your rank, and even more so between BEING OBSESSED BY your rank. I never said 'don't use it', just the opposite... I just said: don't obsess about it.



You seem to imply that if you are serious about Go you need to obsess about the rank.
Well, we just have to agree to disagree on that.

PS.
Just imagine how your attitude would make you feel if Go Goddess descended from heaven and told you that you don't have it what it takes to make it past the 1k you are now. I guess you would be devastated. I just shrug and keep enjoying the game. I prefer my way.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Nice image.

Anyway, you can think of it like a tsumego problem that you encounter in a game. Let's say that it's a bit complicated.

If I don't care about finding the solution and solving the problem, I can just give up and say, "who cares? I doubt that I can really live.". With that attitude, I will almost certainly die.

If I am dead set on finding a solution, there may be a complex and hidden path, which will lead to the answer. There may be a possible way for me to live - it just might be difficult to see.

If I brush this possibility off, and just assume that I am dead, then I have no hope of surviving. Only by searching for the correct solution, even though it appears that none might exist, can I find it.

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be immersed

If rank is really that important, by all means keep chasing the next rank. But I was under the impression that this rank obsession was causing you problems, bordering on defining you as a person. I do believe obsessing over rank vs. giving up are not the only two options here though. Topazg has shown that there is room for more ways to see it.

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FusekiLibrary, an opening library.
SGF converter tools: Wbaduk NGF to SGF | 440 go problems | Fuseki made easy | Tesuji made easy | Elementary training & Dan level testing | Dan Tutor Shortcut To Dan

If she came to me and said that I'd never improve anymore, I'd be devastated, for sure. But not because the rank itself means anything - because I've learned all I can from this wonderful game, and I know it has so much more to give.

But, through the tears in my eyes, I'd force a smile, and ask her for a quick game before she left, as a favor to a devotee.

Reminds me of the movie "The Seventh Seal" where the main person challenges Death to a chess match in order to delay the inevitable

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FusekiLibrary, an opening library.
SGF converter tools: Wbaduk NGF to SGF | 440 go problems | Fuseki made easy | Tesuji made easy | Elementary training & Dan level testing | Dan Tutor Shortcut To Dan

I find it best to more or less always remember that if you lose and your rank goes down, then you'll eventually get back up after destroying the poor player who plays you next. If you can't destroy that player, then you're rank was over-inflated to begin with.

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TucsonGo.org - Play Go in Tucson
We meet twice a week, visit us!

And that reminds me of a comic: http://tod.cartoontomb.de/deutsch/k01/tod01_07.html

Rough translation:
And so, death travels as in the centuries before, and knocks on every door...

But since this incident, he never got involved with a trade again.
"Oh, you. Wait, I have an idea..."

"Oh my god, still so young."
"And what fiend would strike the young gentleman dead with a chess board?"

Yeah, well keep in mind I've been pretty much the same rating for the last 10 years. But there's a good reason for that which can change soon.

I wasn't talking about anyone in particular with my comments. But for myself, I definitely obsess over my rating/rank. I define myself by that number. When I am improving my self esteem goes up and when I am not improving it goes down. In the past people have said similar things to your comment to me. Those types of people don't understand what it is like for someone like me.

For me, I get great pleasure from improving. This is how I enjoy the game. Partly also because I am a bit of a stats freak. I love stats. I also find pleasure in a particularly long or pleasing sequence, or being able to play something related to what I've just studied from a book. I get pleasure out of being the Scion of kami no itte, the Messanger, through me which all proverbs of go are applied. I get pleasure from playing geta and understanding it. Watching the solutions unfold. From this I get the drive to study the game. It's easy for me to see, due to my rare perspective, that everyone can enjoy the game in different ways. I just don't think it is right to say things like (I) lack humility.

I think your interesting analogy points to the cause of your difficulty with rank obsession.

You present two opposing attitudes one might take when confronted with a difficult tsumego: being dead set on solving it or not caring and giving up. First of all, both options you present seem likely to lead to dissapointment. If you are "dead set" on solving it, you give yourself no room for failure, and likewise, if you don't care about the solution you rob yourself of a possible success. Secondly, these are not the only options. Another option might be the attitude: I wonder if I can solve it? Here it is easier to answer failure with: "I did my best, but I can't solve it yet."

Applying your two attitudes to rank, we get: I don't care about my rank vs. I'm dead set on reaching (for example) 3d, and for the same reasons, this can lead to disappointing results. Before looking at other options, it might be worth tweaking the sentence a bit, for example: "I'm dead set on reaching 9d." Unreasonable? or "I'm dead set on reaching 1k." Setting the bar too low? How might one arrive at 3d and not 4d? I say it comes from an irrational pre-judgement of one's potential, and that it is arbitrary. There are other feasible attitudes. You might for example say: "How might I reach 3d?"

While setting yourself a goal is certainly a tried and true method of motivation, the goal doesn't have to be a number. Another way of approaching the rank question might be to ask yourself: Which skills do I need to improve at in order to reach 3d? Then you can set yourself a goal of improving those skills. If after reaching that goal and you are not 3d, nothing should stop you from reviewing your original analysis and postulating new goals. One skill to improve might be "learn to admire the move more than the player who made it."

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Patience, grasshopper.

Nice to meet ya. I'm 7582.

How could you ever know that you can't solve it, yet?



The number is arbitrary, yes. It's similar to when I exercise. I might say, "I want to run for 45 minutes". Why did I select 45 minutes and not 50 minutes? I thought it was a good number.

But if I do not set such a number, I will find myself often quitting much sooner. Setting an arbitrary checkpoint allows for me to be sure that I get at least to that checkpoint.



In trying to advance in rank, I already try to improve my skills in this way to do so. But I cannot see that I have reached a goal in "improving a particular skill" if it is not reflected in a higher win rate.



I think that this is a separate issue. Other than Magicwand, I don't really admire anybody.

---

Basically, I think I can sum up my comments by saying a couple of things:
1.) I think that I can do anything.
2.) I agree that a rank number is an arbitrary goal. But it is a form of measuring ability in the game.
3.) More than when I started this thread, I'm starting to think that it's not such a problem, anymore.

It is very easy to say that you have learned a lot, or to say you only care about skills and ranks, but if it is not reflected in winning more games, I don't see how it's really an indication of any progress.

I think it was during my hiatus when he was most active, but if I recall, a number of individuals on the forum got worked up about a certain user by the name of "inigo-weiqi"... If we ignore a player's win rate as a measurement of progress in the game, there is no reason that people should have gotten worked up. If I were of the mindset that win rates and rank didn't matter, as inigo-weiqi, I might think that I knew a lot, and I might be an "expert" in regard to go - but I don't think that my mindset would be well-grounded.

I guess that's a little off-topic...

Anyway, through this discussion, I think I have a better idea of what's important to me in playing go. It might be a different idea than what others have, I suppose.

And, I'm OK with that.

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be immersed

Good to hear. There is in any case a difference between trying to reach a certain rank and being obsessed with your rank. Being obsessed is bound to make you unhappy and it's hard to imagine getting too far at anything if doing it makes you unhappy.



Here I was trying to make a similar point. If you see losing purely as an attack on your rank, and rank is very important to you, then losing will make you unhappy. Admiring a good move is a way of finding value in a loss. Being more concerned with whether it was you or the other fellow who made it draws your focus and energy away from the game and towards your sense of self-esteem which doesn't deserve or appreciate taking a beating 50% of the time.

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Patience, grasshopper.