Hello, it's me again with all my rookie conundrums. Recently I've noticed a rather odd trend with my Go games: I'm either on fire or ice cold. Before this week, my playing stank terribly. I was making all kinds of mistakes that had me slapping my forehead as soon as I played them, and this resulted in some rather lopsided losses or disheartening losses that should have been wins. Now, however, I've utterly dismantled two 12k's and an 11k for 3 game win streak. I can't for the life of me remember the last time I won three straight.

It's not that I place much priority on winning. But is this a situation all Go players face?

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Slava Ukraini!

When I played more games on kgs, I tended to win in long streaks for days or weeks or lose almost every game for a similar length of time. I still wish I knew why that happened.

Winning/losing streaks happen over real boards too. Psychological factors probably come into play. But even discounting those, pure chance (50-50 chance at winning a properly handicapped game, right?) says you throw heads six times in a row once in a while.

Once you start getting to Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead levels of coincidence though, you may want to take a break (in the case of a losing streak) or at least you can be excused for wanting to change the handicap.

EDIT: There's also the case of the "learning new stuff makes me lose" conundrum. It seems to happen to too many people to be just coincidence. Especially at your level, you're often learning things that make you see the game in fundamentally new ways. When you learn something that causes one of those paradigm shifts, you have to relearn your game strategies from scratch, integrating the new knowledge into them. Until you do, you'll lose, of course, as you're playing out of the area where you've been comfortable. But once the knowledge starts to fully become part of your working set, BAM! You're playing two, three, maybe four stones stronger than you were last week.

Love it while it lasts. There aren't many paradigm shifts left after you hit 1-dan. (Or maybe there are, and I just haven't found them yet!)

Good point. I recently have been thinking about new things and losing games, and today I decided to review some of the games I lost, and lo and behold, every game was lost early on, and the reason was: I was thinking about something fancy while neglecting something basic. I don't know if this is the start of a paradigm shift, or if it's just the case of not having enough room in my brain and dumping the wrong things.

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Patience, grasshopper.

I've noticed this streakiness when playing the computer or working on problems. My explanation is that Go requires a different way of looking at things. A high level pattern recognition that humans can do (easily?) but is hard to program into a computer. It seems that when I'm trying too hard I do lousy but when I'm more relaxed I sort of see things out of the corner of my eye and it is all easy and natural.

In other words, certain thinking patterns are conducive to playing Go and others not so much (or perhaps some patterns are needed in some phases of the game and other patterns are needed in other phases). So part of learning to play Go is learning to use specific thinking patterns. This is what makes it addictive. Like always having a word on the tip of your tongue but never being able to say it. Or like those experiments done on people who have had their corpus callosum severed (split brain). If they hold a plastic number in their left hand but can't see it, they can show you the number by holding up fingers on their left hand. But they can't show you the number with their right hand nor can they tell you with words what it is.

I think a decent part of the nature of streaks is related to the basic human factors everyone faces (that can be at times exacerbated when playing online). Let's say you are on average 12k. On one particular day, you maybe got a poor night's sleep the night before, or you've had a stressful week at work, or you've been feeling a bit under the weather, or perhaps your neighbors are remodeling and there is a lot of distracting noise, etc, etc....the fact of the matter is due to a number of environmental factors your playing will not be as good as it can be on that day (In fact, maybe it is something that lasts for a string of days--like an exam week in school). The result is that for that string of games you're going to have a reduced chance of winning (assuming you're handicapping to your average rank). Once you actually start playing, it only snowballs, because not only were you having a tough day, but you make a silly mistake in one game. Now you're not only playing at a disadvantage, it's harder for you to keep focus because of the mistake from the first game....and then it just continues into a downward spiral.

The same thing might happen in reverse next week. Maybe you got some extra sleep the night before, or had a healthy breakfast and are feeling particularly energetic. The end result is that you are on an above average day, and will likely be playing at an above average strength. This time when you win your first game you'll feel even better, you'll be thinking about how well you are playing, do a better job of maintaining focus, etc...The exact opposite of the first case.


I think these types of effects are more pronounced online where the individual user environment is less controlled. In a real life club there will still be some outside effects (like playing when you're tired), however you are less likely to show up if you are feeling ill and if there is a noisy environment it is present for both players. If you look at face to face tournaments it becomes even more controlled.

If you find yourself winning a lot, and then losing a lot, you might want to make a mental check on your pride. Winning streak may cause you to think you're all that thus you'll do less reading, try silly stuff, and overall play worse game than if you know you have put in effort to obtain victory.

Sometimes my pride takes the better of me when I see my opponent making all kinds of errors in the opening, so I become lax and result in losing the mid-game badly.

Always remember to have patience, especially in the opening. You don't want to have any of those regrets the moment after you play the move. If a move failed, better to have it be because your not strong enough rather than just not paying attention. If you can't help it because of the time, trying taking a break from blitz.

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