Okay, but at some point between the first stone (when the odds of each player winning are .5) and the last stone (when the odds of one player winning is 1, and the other 0), something happens. Trying to track the probability as it changes is unpredictable and exciting, especially when the changes in the probability of one player's victory are changing as a result of amazing skill, rather than silly blunders.

@gowan I was badly paraphrasing bantari, who actually said "primal".

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Occupy Babel!

1. You actually give a pretty intelligent and good reason for wanting to improve - and one that I can wholeheartedly agree with. To understand better and thus enjoy more the games of stronger players. Probably the best reason I have ever heard.

2. I do not want people to 'not compete and indulge'. I guess what I am trying to do is to convince people to stop hiding behind cheap pretense and platitude. If beating others and leaving them weeping in the dust is what you enjoy - more power to you! If overtaking those once stronger than you rocks your boat - great, keep doing it! If you derive some silly pride from the rank number by your name - go fer it, even if I find that sad! Just don't call it 'love of learning/improvement'. And don't expect me to bow to you just because your number is bigger than my number, lol.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Well, let me try to explain, since what you say is not really what I mean. First, some example questions:

1. Would you enjoy studying a joseki if you knew you will never have a chance to play it or anything like it?
2. More extreme - would you enjoy studying Go if you knew nobody else in the whole world will ever play it?
3. Or maybe - would you enjoy studying Go if you knew that you will never win a single game?
4. For your own example - Would you enjoy learning a formula if you knew it does not come up on the test and you will never use it?

My point is that for most people, learning is the means to achieve something, not the goal in itself. For most Go players, learning and studying is the means to beating other people. They think 'if I study hard and learn enough, i can beat him!' And so they learn and they study, and at the end they hope for the payoff - beating 'him'. If there was no 'him', most of us would not spend much time learning, we would be much weaker, and we would mostly play fun games rather than sweating over Go books.

So, what I was trying to say, is that I think that most of us do not really enjoy learning for the sake of learning itself.
All we want is to 'beat the sucker that clobbered us in that game last time' or some variation thereof.
And learning is the price we are willing to pay to get there.
And there is nothing really wrong with that.

But then we go all noble and PC and say 'we enjoy learning'.
Because saying 'we are mad at that guy and want to teach him a lesson and beat him good' would be somehow... cheap.

PS>
Present company excluded, of course.
Anyhow - this is what I was trying to say, more or less. Sorry for not making it more clear.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

There are a few topics in this thread, it seems, so I will only comment on one said topic.

Rank is important to me because it represents my chances of winning against a given person. Winning against a given person is important to me, because that is, to me, the objective of the game. Hence, if I improve myself to have a higher rank, I can win against more people, and be better at achieving the objective of the game.

If you don't play to win, you are just putting stones on the board. Monkeys can do that, too, but I doubt they get the same type of enjoyment from go as I do.

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be immersed

I would say that I enjoy learning for a purpose: to achieve the objective of the game. That is, to win.

I suppose there is also some satisfaction to solving go problems in the same way that I get satisfaction from solving puzzles, for example. When you solve a puzzle, you feel some sort of accomplishment, and it feels nice.

I guess I could compare it to fishing. I like fishing if I catch a fish. I don't like sitting with a line in the water if I have no hope of catching everything. Without the hope of catching the fish, I don't get much satisfaction.

I guess it's OK if I ultimately don't catch a fish, but at least I need hope that I could catch one.

I guess with go, it's OK if I ultimately don't beat my opponents, but at least I want to have hope that I could be able to.

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be immersed

Unless you play against the same people, regarding of your rank, this is flawed.
In real life, you usually play within a group of people with approximately the same rank as you. Thus your chances of winning each given game are approximately the same - about 50%. And this holds the same if you are 10k or 5d.

I assume what you are trying to say is that: rank is important for determining which group of people I should be part of and playing against.
Which i agree on. Rank is also important in determining handicap within this group.
But then rank is relative to this group only!
1d here can be 5k there and vice versa.

If you were literal in what you wrote, than such situation only existed in the past, when you were mostly confined within the small group of your fellow club players, and advancing in rank could really be a measure of how many people you can beat and how many can beat you. In other words - how many games a meeting you can expect to bring home. But in the age of internet and global village - this all looses its meaning.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Well, the human population is finite, and fewer people exist at higher ranks (presumably).

So if I am a higher rank, I will have a better chance of beating a given individual, if his rank is unknown.

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be immersed

Chances are - if you know the rules, you can already beat 99.9% of the planet's population.
Which pretty much mean 'any random person off of the street with the rank unknown'.

How much more hair do you wish to split?

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

I think this is actually the strongest argument against your claim that the only component of go that all, or most people enjoy is knowing that they can clobber other people. I was most confident in my go abilities the day my dad taught me the rules, because I had figured out how ladders worked and he hadn't. Every improvement in my strength since then has further humbled me. As the percentage of the human population that I could beat rises, my feeling that I can easily crush other people slowly erodes. But that doesn't mean that I've been enjoying Go less and less. Rather the reverse, actually.

(To be technical, I think that as most people get stronger at something - doesn't have to be Go - the average ability of the set of people "who matter," the ones over whom a victory would be rewarding, rises faster than one's own ability.)

And I think I'm in the majority here. I'm not claiming that crushing people isn't fun; and it takes all types, so presumably there have been many people who enjoy Go exclusively to crush people (or because they make money off of it, or because it's a way to socialize, or as a non-negotiable part of social identity). But why is it that teaching games with stronger players (the stronger the better!) are so sought after, while playing with beginners is looked upon as a duty and an imposition? Why aren't we all sandbagging? On your theory, it's because we're really stupid and bad at getting what we want. On my theory, it's because a lot of players enjoy the intellectual aspects of the game more than victory for its own sake.

It's a little unclear what you have in mind (by definition, joseki occur regularly), but I think I can definitely say yes. One of the things that I enjoy most in studying joseki is understanding the inferior sequences that make the main line a joseki. That's the moment at which I "get" the joseki. If you'll let me use intellect as a verb, it's frequently the lines which I expect to never see in a game that allow me to intellect the joseki. And that's enjoyable.

Two more related points:



I would still enjoy it, but not as much - in the same way I enjoy logic puzzles in general.

Another note:



Yes. That sounds amazing. Like if I got the collective membership of the Nihon Kiin as my personal Go tutors, on the condition that we only ever played even games? Sign me up.

Yet another note:



Yes, of course. This happens all the time, actually - I spend more time studying things that are intellectually stimulating than what I actually expect to show up on a test. This may be a personality quirk of mine, but I think it's quite common, as quirks go, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's especially common among Go players.



Again, it depends who and what. Some people just dislike learning, period. Other people really enjoy it. With most (all?) activities, there are people who just want to know enough to get by, and people who become experts for the sake of expertise. Learning to drive - that's a good candidate for "means to an end". Driving is good for getting places, so learning to drive is good for getting places. Learning to play Go is good for X because playing Go is good for X... can you fill in the blank?




Ah, okay, X={beating people}. I think I mentioned why this is unlikely in my previous post. It's grossly inconsistent with the way Go players actually behave, what they actually want, what they avoid...



Are you projecting? I would love to hear the story of the man who inspired you to study Go, and the final showdown in which the padawan became the master. But there has never been a specific person that I've wanted to beat at Go. I fear that here our personal experiences are giving us hugely different views of the psychology of the average Go player.

Self-indulgent reasons to think my personal experience is more widespread:


I think I understand the conclusion you want to draw just fine. It was your initial argument for it that was too cute for me.



That's the second time you've called enjoying learning (or claiming to) "PC". What exactly does "PC" mean to you?

I really find it difficult to believe that you've ever studied Go in order to "beat him good".


I'm not at all immune to desire for victory, revenge, triumph, honor, the respect of others... no need to exclude me, at least. But to think that these are the only principles that motivate anyone to do anything is flat-out wrong; and I find it unlikely that these (and especially the first three) motivate people to study Go, in particular.

While I normally have a secondary reason for learning any one specific thing, I definitely do think I love to learn in its own right. A couple of years ago, I was looking for a game I could devote my mind to, as I had lost interest in gaming a few months earlier (after being disillusioned by SSBB, but that's another story). I wanted to satisfy my urge to compete, but also my urge to learn. I really do think learning is one of the most enjoyable things I do. You seem to be drawing some distinction between learning and improving, but I don't understand how that can occur in a thinking-based activity unless you simultaneously forget old knowledge as you learn new things, which seems unlikely in a normal human brain. Would I enjoy learning without ever improving? I would say I'm not really learning in such a case.

So, like I said in an earlier post, part of why I enjoy learning is to be stronger/better than others (in that subject field), fulfilling my competitive urges. However, were I not studying Go, or even competing at all, I would definitely have to find something else to fill my brain, as I don't like going more than a day or two without trying to learn things, and University is about to be over for the summer.

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We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.

Imagine the following situation:

Short after making your move (which was a normal move not an obvious mistake or so), you notice a nice tesuji for your opponent. If he finds it, you will lose a game where you thought you were ahead.
But your opponent misses the tesuji (suppose you are sure that he has really missed it, so no "found an even bigger move" kind of thing...)

Now, what are your feelings?
a- You are happy that your opponent missed it -> immediately fix the weakness in your shape
b- You get sad because the "true" game is somehow spoiled and you will eventually win a game you don't deserve
c- You still get upset with yourself (even though you are going to win) because you failed to see the tesuji beforehand


I think the honest answer to this question determines your attitude towards the game, in respect to this topic.

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If you say no, Elwood and I will come here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the week.

'a' and 'c' for me.

Anyway, I was thinking about learning without improving more, and I was thinking about how learning Go history, for example, does not help your rank improve. I guess that provides a counterpoint to where I said "learning without improving is not really learning." Of course, you could always place that type of knowledge in a separate category than learning things about how to play the game itself...

Anyway, Bantari, doesn't the fact that many people enjoy learning Go history, for example, even though it rarely will improve your play, show that people do enjoy learning without any other benefit attached?

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We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.

More interesting stuff in this thread too.

Kirby, I find it interesting that you see the rank as the benchmark that compares you against others and enables you to gauge where your winning chances are about even, which helps in your goal of achieving the objective of winning the game.

Maybe I'm odd, but my objective is almost entirely separate from the game result, which matters little to me. I like getting stronger, because the more strong I become the more I appreciate good moves, sequences and ideas in the game, regardless of whether I win or lose. Given the choice, I would like to play every game against a professional in an even game, despite 0% winning chances. Why? Because I get to admire and respect their skill by being on the receiving end, and I suspect I would learn and improve by just playing.

If I couldn't get any stronger, I wouldn't care about the game, even if I could beat everyone on the planet. It just wouldn't be fun for me. The fact with a lifetime's journey I'll never get there is unbelievably endearing to me. Am I the only one that just likes playing Go because it's elegant, deep, always just out of reach..?

No . I especially like Go because of its depth and being always out of reach. Altough I'm not sure what will happen to my interest if I'll ever reach some kind of plateau that I possibly can't overcome (wasn't there a thread about this?). Of course I can still appreciate good moves, but knowing that you'll never have the correct understanding / the ideas to play them by yourself could be quite tough.

I hope that this plateau -- if it exists -- is still far, far away.

Michael

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Go is easy: don't play bad moves.

Maybe the basis for my feeling is that it is difficult for me to really feel that I have become stronger if it is not reflected in being able to win more. I think that I feel that way in other areas of life, too.

I'm a software engineer in real life. It's hard for me to measure my "strength" as a software engineer unless I can see specific accomplishments that help my self-esteem. If I were very skilled as a software engineer, but it never amounted to anything that I could measure, it's hard for me to have any confidence in my ability at all. I could think to myself that I am awesome, but some part of me would say that I'm kidding myself.

In go, I can study and try to learn new things. If that effort is not projected into something that I can measure or feel, then I must admit that I have doubt that I'm really learning.

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I will say that, in addition to winning, I do get some satisfaction from go problems. I feel like I've solved a puzzle, which is a good feeling. I can have that feeling because I feel accomplishment in getting a solution to the puzzle. In some ways, maybe solving a go problem feels like "winning the problem" to me.

If I were to work toward a game that had no solution, or no way to measure if I could win, it'd be hard for me to really tell if I was learning anything, or just... thinking, I guess.

When investigating go, I like to feel that I am improving, and not knowing less. If I do not have any sort of feedback (eg. winning, solving a go problem), it's hard for me to have confidence that I am really learning about go.

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be immersed

I definitely don't play go because it's "fun," and if you do I'd like to see your fun-o-meter while you're getting beaten in an even game. I do enjoy the thrill of battle up to a point; namely, up to the point at which I think that I still have a chance of winning. The only reason I play go is because I think it's cool.

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Patience, grasshopper.

Plus one to this thought... I would say that I can relate to this sentiment quite a bit. In addition, I treat winning and/or solving go problems as an indicator of improvement.

If there were another indicator of improvement, I might be satisfied with that as well. But so far I haven't found any. It's hard for me to have much confidence in improvement without a concrete indicator such as a win or being able to solve a go problem.

As a sidenote, I often wonder these days if I have gotten worse at go - probably because I do not experience these indicators as often as I used to... Maybe I'm just in a slump.

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be immersed

Perhaps. But I also don't study as much as most people on the boards, or play as much, or improve as much. Maybe it's a coincidence, but perhaps really strongly wanting to win and compete is a better route to improvement.

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Occupy Babel!