Looks like putting five 1ds together is like connecting five 1-ohm resistors in parallel... This move seems way too bad.

Yes, so far it shows quite nicely how design-by-committee can lead to poor results. More discussion about procedure than considering how to proceed after this rather obvious last move by White.

Not that Magicwand has played great so far either...

When this project started, I was a bit sceptical about Joaz and Daniel's belief it would make for a stronger game, capable of taking on a higher dan even. I'm now convinced we will be weaker than we would be individually. This kind of general discussion / consensus may be very good in a crazy tight life and death situation where tactical blunders must be avoided, as 5 pairs of eyes are better than 1, but I think it's a very poor system for global strategy and evaluation, where playstyles and preferences for territory, thickness etc is so different. I think we'll end up playing a very inconsistent game, swinging between flavours and priorities, and get pushed around in the end to our demise.

It's still going to be an interesting exercise, but ultimately I'm not sure this is the way to do it. I think a better team system would be to assign individual members roles: "a picks the best tenuki points, b picks the best local points, c does life and death, d looks for remaining aji on groups" etc - it still may have the same problems, but I think this game will just become a mess

Perhaps a better method would be to have the five of you develop a strategy and a sequence starting from ONE move they would like to play. Then that move is submitted along with their variations to SL (or wherever) along with the four others. Then you vote on only the five moves instead of allowing every flitting fancy to cover and confuse the board. This would be more formulaic: each member of the collective decides on a move and posts it with a short description of their intent along with variations (unlimited) then voting commences.

Yeah, that probably would be better. However, it would still suffer from the same problem - we'd all be likely to prefer our own sequence to the others. I may really really suck at the timing for splitting groups, but be absolutely convinced on a split that doesn't work, and advocate a bad idea really strongly. If I'm convincing, we may make a sub-optimal move. I'm convinced that the last cut was not good, but the other 4 players gave it 3.8 out of a total of 4 voting points. I'm not even sure why, as it was the last move discussed and one without variations. I think it's the sort of thing I often do in RL games - analyse 4 perfectly good moves and then at the last minute go "Oooh, look at that one" and play another move entirely immediately, without good enough assessment.

Over the course of a normal game, my sucky bits and my good bits average out to around KGS 2d now, but I'm sure some of my sucky bits are at best 1k. If we could really evaluate the area each of us is best at, and assign work accordingly, we could probably play a really strong game. However, I suspect pride will get in the way of that even if we tried.

That's not to say this won't be fun anyway In fact, I strongly encourage everyone to keep an eye on the sensei's page and the awesome arguments we'll be having, I'm sure there will be a lot of entertainment there!

Require a unanimous decision to proceed. If you don't like a move you can act like Henry Fonda in 12 Angry Men. It's true that for any given move you may have 5 different strategies, but it would be your task to look objectively at the position and try to decide what is the best way to proceed out of the five and not worry with thoughts of "well, maybe this would better..."

With us lot, that could turn the game into a fortnight per move. I'll be an old man before the game finishes

I think MW is older than you, so as they say "a win is a win." Maybe a super-majority (4/5) and leave the one to lament "I told you so!" if the game is lost.

I find it interesting that the move that was decided on has only a single variation that is 4 moves deep.

I was expecting a little more analysis of that move before we made it. But it had been taking a while so I don't fault Dusk Eagle for making the move. As it is, I don't agree with topazg's analysis on sensei's that our likely connection indicates that the prior move was a mistake; it was even in the one diagram that was discussed for the last move!

=== Discussion for black 24 ===

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wcm23 Prisoners:
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . a X X X . X . . O . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . 1 X O X O . . , . . . X . X . . . |
$$ | . . d O O X O . . . . O . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . c X O i . . . . . . X . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . e b . . . . . . . . . O . . . |
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . X . . . . . , . . . . . O . . . |
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

[daniel the smith] ''a'' is what leaps out at me.

[Dusk Eagle] ''a''.

[JoazBanbeck] It leapt out at me too. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to duck. If 'a' is really needed, let us play 'b' first. He connects, then we play 'a'.

[daniel the smith] Is that aji keshi? You don't think we'll ever want to cut at ''i''? I'm thinking about it...

[Kirby] I haven't thought it through much, but I wonder if 'c' is OK...

[daniel the smith] Hmm... if black ''c'', white will ''d'' (white ''a'' looks awful for white)-- looks better for white to me. So what about black ''d'' directly? Then I guess white ''c'' and that doesn't look good for black at all. I'm still thinking ''a'' is best.

[Kirby] Yeah, maybe 'c' is too aggressive. When I do try to read it out, it doesn't look great for us.

[topazg] 0.7 for 'd', 0.3 for 'a'.

[Kirby] What's the sequence you have in mind if white plays 'c' in response to 'd', [topazg]?

[topazg] I'd then connect at 'a'. If we are going to do it anyway, I'd rather White doesn't get 'd'. It's not like the ladder works for White, so he has to allow us to capture his last stone. Either that, or he allows us to squeeze, which looks really bad for White.

[daniel the smith] Added a couple more diagrams. I'm 1.0 for ''a'' still.

[Kirby] I am starting to think that our last move was a mistake, too. I don't know how to fix it easily. I will vote 0.5 for 'a', 0.1 for 'b', 0.1 for 'c', 0.1 for 'd', and 0.1 for 'e'.

[Kirby] I'm still not sure about the best way to play, but one thing to consider is that, if we play 'a', Magicwand will probably fix. We could try to take the opportunity to cut our local losses and proceed to attacking the two top white stones, like we wanted to awhile back. The bad part of this is that it probably ensures that our previous move was a bad one (unless we can work something up later).

[daniel the smith] I still think ''a'', he fixes, we cut at ''i'' is best.

[Kirby] I'll switch to 1.0 for 'a'. I'm not sure about the followup, yet, because it'll depend on what he does.

[topazg] Let's go with 'a' then, it definitely looks like the most reasonable move, although I'm 90% sure that makes our last move a mistake. We're going to end up with a single weak Black group floating around White's groups (one of which will be completely settled with points, so it's not even 1 weak group against 2), and we'll have lost an unpleasant amount of our corner investment. I really don't like the cut at 'i' now, as White can sacrifice those two stones quite easily. It's like 5-8 points or something, probably in gote, for us to cut there now.

[JoazBanbeck] I realize that Daniel is probably right: 'b' is aji-keshi. I could settle for 'a'.

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Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Diagram 24A
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . 3 X X X . X . . O . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . O X O X O . . , . . . X . X . . . |
$$ | . 5 1 O O X O . . . . O . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . 2 X O . . . . . . . X . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . 4 . . . . . . . . . . O . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |[/go]

[daniel the smith] Next move for black? Looks pretty bad to me...

[topazg]I've added the continuation I was expecting. I half want to play at right now, but I think we've got to look after the corner, or what we were doing for the last 5 or 6 moves?

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Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Diagram 24B
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . 1 X X X . X . . O . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . O X O X O . . , . . . X . X . . . |
$$ | . . . O O X O . . . . O . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . X O . . . . . . . X . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |[/go]

[daniel the smith] I'm pretty sure I greatly prefer this; white is not nearly as thick, we have sente (white has to do something to control that cutting stone), and the cutting stone will still have large amounts of aji.

%%%%

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B Diagram 24C
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . 3 X X X . X . . O . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . O X O X O . . , . . . X . X . . . |
$$ | . . 4 O O X O . . . . O . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . X O 2 . . . . . . X . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . n 1 . . . . . . . . . O . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |[/go]

[daniel the smith] Here we still have sente, but white is much thicker and I'm not sure that B1 is worth that. If we aren't careful it might even become a target.

[topazg] As long as we extend at 'n' instead of the atari, I'm happy with this - 'h' last move feels like a mistake now though, unless we can start some pretty serious attacks going. White can settle in a move on the left, so we must split asap.

When this started, I thought we would be stronger as a group then individually. I don't believe that anymore. We all have different ideas, and we still are limited by our position analysis skills when voting on moves. If we had someone ~Magicwand's level who couldn't suggest moves but could take the best move he saw us propose, then we probably could be stronger than Magicwand. As it is, I'm beginning to wonder whether us as a group is stronger or weaker than a normal 1d.

Maybe I'm just getting pessimistic too quickly. I just don't like how the corner looks right now.

Well, other teammates are making me curious by using hide tags, so I thought I'd do it, too.

Regardless of who ends up winning this game, the black dissatisfaction with the past few moves has led me to think about one of the big issues that I think affects any kind of team game: accountability.

Speaking from my own experience with the Teamovitch game as well my observations of other variations on L19, I feel that any time there is a team format, individual members will suggest and even strongly argue for moves that they themselves would never play in a normal 1v1. I think the issue here is the relatviely low accountability of the team format; in a 1v1 game you know that you will have to singlehandedly follow through on any move you play, since you are 100% accountable. In the team format though you no longer have this responsibility, you are only partially accountable for whatever move you suggest, and will not have to bear the full brunt of following it up.

This begins to get into psychology, but I find it interesting how team games can not only lead to inconsistent play due to differing styles of play, but to daring/strange moves that players would perhaps not play themselves in a normal game.

Yes, the psychology and team dynamics are very interesting, maybe even more fascinating than the Go itself.

To me, your game seems stronger than you realize. The team format appears to have a strong psychological effect. Do you expect to use the same system of voting for the entire game?

The game has barely begun but how do you feel about it? Do you think it will only be a matter of time before the gang's game becomes too fragmented and how would you feel about your chances if the game went into endgame tied? Can one strong dan's endgame compete with five dans?