I think I'll need to have a word with Mister Cho Hunhyun then.

Give him my regards when you talk to him! But more seriously, since we can't really understand what players at that level were thinking when they made the choices that they did, how shall we decide which moves to admire and take away with us and which not to? I won't beat either Cho or Nie whatever I choose - that I can be sure of! But I will continue to happily be suspicious of peeping at bamboo joints.

_________________
Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

To be honest, I saw it as one giant inducing exchange. To explain my thoughts:

After black slid into the corner with e2, I cannot imaging him giving up the entire group. I didn't even think he would save the stone to begin with. When he bumps against the white stone with 1, because it is an attachment, it becomes urgent for white to respond. He can respond with a nobi or hane, and white chooses the nobi of two. Now I see that black is getting even more surrounded, so the 1-2 exchange induces black 3 rather than simply playing 3. Black 3 makes the push and cut for white look a bit dangerous in my eyes, so black 3 induces white to play 4 and defend himself which in turn induces black 5 - the whole thing for black to somewhat move out into the centre and stay connected.

That's how I saw it, and it might just be entirely wrong. Oh well.

If the shape for both is equally bad, it strikes me as a fair trade, at least. Whether one or the other side could have done better is an open question, however.

Even against a 3k (He is white with komi) W+10.5

This is fine since he is 3k and I made bad endgame decisions; I'm glad to have it close

Even against a 4k - I'm not paying attention and I should've connected something rather than deny him an eye and then have him live. This is before 50 moves in the game and he would have a 1 or no eyes 10-20 stone group that had to run. But I don't pay attention and he is just fine and now I am the one with the weak group and I resign later on.

Even against a 6k - I win comfortably.

Even against a 5k - Entering late endgame with a 20 point lead. I even say to myself that I should win if I don't do something stupid and die. I see a chance to trade 4 of my stones for 5 of his, so I take it. Too bad I completely missed the part where he falsified the eye of my group because of that and HE ends up with the 20 point lead.


Why are mistakes in Go like this so much harder to take well than anything else.

See also Dunning–Kruger effect .

The 5k game: When the board fills up with stones, it becomes increasingly difficult (for some) to keep track of group statuses and not be caught up in material matters.

If you consistently throw away acquired advantages late in the game, you can invest a move in reducing risk.

If it's a one time occurrence, get over it.

The 4k game: this is a whole different matter. It feels like early resignation. Can you show it?

I will show it up to the blatant mistake. Clearly in those last few moves black is not paying attention.

http://eidogo.com/#2r5TBrIh2

I see. is indeed an unfortunate oversight, but other than not capitalizing on White's earlier poor play, Black is still doing quite well in this game. So perhaps you should not be too disappointed about such local failures, look at the big picture and move on.

As I have described in other posts, not being unsettled by a major setback and recomposing yourself can have tremendous impact on your winning percentage.
The point of resignation is not shown here but I can sense that it was more a self defeating attitude than the local loss itself that brought it about.

I died with said black group on a large scale about 100 moves later. I was probably still not composed when I continued on from this position.

I am white - towards the very end after white 110 I do really really REALLY dumb things. Until then, I'm proud of my game somewhat.

http://eidogo.com/#4lCLlgXsJ

This is against the same person I played in viewtopic.php?f=4&t=10542 about one month ago.

Check the second variation because I messed up black 1.

Every move I make that I immediately think "What was I thinking!?" after playing it is marked with an A.
The marked triangled stone I made after a few minutes of thinking - I wanted to defend my group since it didn't have two literal eyes and was behind black's sector line. I can attempt to be patient about gaining profit, but the rest of my play in the game is a lot more profit oriented than usual.

White 110 is really unfortunate since I was looking at R16, but thought I'd cut and see what happens and subsequently go full retard.


Instead of white D2, I could possibly concentrate on, you know, letting my top left corner not get sealed in...

(Emphasis added.)

Simple. You are not playing up to yourself. As bridge great Terence Reese said, someone who plays up to himself is hard to beat.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I might be a native English speaker, but I can't tell exactly what "Playing up to yourself" means - when I google it all the results are for people asking what does "Play with yourself" mean.

I think, and Bill please correct me if I'm wrong, he means you are not playing at your true level.
See his emphasis on your quote.

However, my take is slightly different: I think you are playing at your true level.
"Not paying attention" enough is part of your current level.
If you can consistently fix this attention problem, then you will have improved,
and you will have moved on to another level -- but that's not your current level;
that will be your future level, if you work on it.

I completely agree. Let me share a quote from one of my friends:



I disagreed and said that blunders are are part of your strength and reducing the blunder rate is a factor of naturally getting stronger.

Right. Of course, even 9p's make self-ataris. They're just super rare. It means we are only human, after all.

But if we are constantly making silly mistakes, that's our level.

Playing up to yourself doesn't mean avoiding mistakes that you know not to make. As you say, that happens. Golf great Gene Sarazen said that he knew that he would make two bad shots per round, so if he made one, it didn't bother him. But it certainly would have bothered him if he had made four bad shots in a round. He would not have been playing up to himself. Go is a game of endurance. If you try to play at 100% of your capacity all the time, you are setting yourself up to make blunders when you cannot keep up the pace. Playing up to yourself means finding and playing within your zone of competence, so that you do not make too many blunders, because you do not play in ways that cause you to make blunders. It means seeing a false eye because you are looking for false eyes. It means paying attention. Even a 30 kyu can pay attention. It means deciding upon a play before you make it. It means not dithering. I have told the story a few times about the Korean 5 dan who visited our club and remarked about some players who were around 7 kyu, "Why are they taking so long when they have nothing to think about?" That remark was a bit unkind, but at best they were wasting time and energy trying to read out positions that were beyond their capacity to read out, instead of taking a reasonable amount of time and effort to think and then using their judgement to decide upon a play. That is the kind of thing that leads to later blunders.

If you are making errors that you kick yourself about, that is prima facie evidence that you are not playing up to yourself.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Two possible factors (there may be others):

• the 5d forgot how he played when he himself was kyu.
  So easy for us to just think of our current understanding and forget at one point, we were there, too.
  Most likely the 5d started when he was a kid, so he never played slowly as a beginner (most kids play super fast).
  He simply never had the experience of being a kyu person as an adult and taking a long time on moves.
  Of course he could not relate to them -- he had no idea how they think and feel.
• the 7k's had no idea they were wasting most of their time reading bad moves or variations beyond their level.
  If they knew, they would not be wasting so much time, and they would not be their level -- they would be better.
  That they did not know, and that they thought so long, was exactly their level.

Beat a 4k in an even game as white by 23.5. We checked the game afterwards and, yes, there were many places where I could've either killed him (Two places), or one place where he could've not made a small move and gotton a huge lead over me. Still happy.

Sounds like you'll be beating down on me soon enough. Good work.