In my experience most binational couples have a lot of trouble to bring up their children bilingual. Often enough even monolingual families in foreign countries have problems to retain their native languages over more than one generation. This wouldn't be the case if learning were effortless (We talked about effort not frustration before!).

Children speaking not 2, but 3, 4 languages fluently are rare exceptions even if those exceptions are highly advertised.

And yes, I believe it is wrong when children are schooled at age 4, put in multilingual schools (with none of the languages their native language) and additionally forced to perform in "creative" fields after school by their ambitious parents who mistake education for affection, but they are never let alone to play outdoors. And yes, you can see the frustration of the overschooled children, in their eyes if you ever gave lessons to primary school children or in ADHD or the number of children on medication or the alarming prevalence of eating disorders.

In my little boy, barely two and about 10 words vocabulary in both german and french, I see no specific frustration linked to language (sometimes he is frustrated by not managing to open the marmelade pot, or not being allowed a third biscuit. How he feels is quite obvious on his face).

However it does not mean learning how to speak is effortless for him (or anyone). Those are two different things.

I wouldn't say "effortlessly" and "without frustration" were the same thing at all. I'm not convinced that what you've written is true: see this post (including the post quoted), for a local and recent discussion. But I did say "most people", and most people are adults!

When comparing go and languages, it might be useful to separate the learning aspect and the performing aspect. For an adult at least, the learning process is similar. You can learn from books or with a teacher or both. There's a lot to learn, and you have to keep practicing in order not to forget what you've learned. There are also differences though. The basic structures of a foreign language are not utterly new, because it's always possible to compare them to the structures of something we presumably know pretty well - our native language. Besides seeing how these structures function, getting better is primarily a matter of learning more words, and while it may be tiresome to memorize vocabulary, to me at least it seems a heck of a lot easier than memorizing joseki. In any case, the difficulties that arise during the learning process - forgetting a structure, forgetting a word - don't seem particularly frustrating.

Then there's the performing aspect. With languages, this is talking to people, reading and writing - and for students, taking tests. With go it's a battle. These seem fundamentally different, and while not being able to express oneself adequately, or not being able to fully understand or grasp nuances of what is being communicated to you can be frustrating, except in a test, one's day to day performance is not characterized by failure or success. In go, you are evaluated every game, and half of the time you get failing marks.

In this regard, I think that the comparison with sports is more apt. Like go, sports is about winning and losing, and all of the work that you've put in training all comes down to whether you win or lose one individual game, and if you lose, what was all that training good for? I think that this is the problem that go players face, and it becomes a particularly irritating question when you have put in months and years of training and are still below the level of many six year olds.

I learned German from a book and without a teacher when I was in my mid 20's and it took me about a year to reach something comprable to dan level. It never bothered me that I could never achieve the fluency of even some of the stupidest six year olds. My proficiency was perfectly adequate to do whatever I wanted to do in Germany - after all, language is a means, not an end. Being good at go just enables you to be good at go.

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Go? It's like sharing two bowls of cookies, but one person gets all of them.

Hmm, Go can be a means, too. There are many nice things we can learn from Go
that can also be applied to other areas of life.
(Of course, there are people who are very good at Go -- pros, even! --
who haven't figured out this lesson; at the same time,
there are amateur Go people, even at kyu levels, who have.
So whether or not being good at Go just means you're good at Go
depends on the person, and not Go -- this is true for many other disciplines,
including language. )

I don't believe the problem is that Go is frustrating.

I believe the problem is with Internet Go.

I have exactly the same general frustration problem, but that only exists online. On my (now practically extinct) local Go club, loosing was not a problem. The opponent was there, in front of you. Colleagues at your side, you could have a bad game, go outside, take some breath, and return for another try.

Online Go servers have a strict ranking system. It's very hard to find free games. When you find them, you may get sandbagged.
But for me, sandbagging doesn't really matter much. I was already accused of it and got sandbagged two days ago. It just happens.

What pisses me is the competitive paranoia. People seem to have a schedule to learn Go. "I must make to 1kyu before next summer".

I don't want to become 1kyu till next summer, I want to become 1kyu naturally, as if the game was part of me. BTW, I know that this may sound even worst than the former phrase

I don't have time to study. I work 9 to 6, have two kids, all I have to study and play are two daily hours, from 10pm to midnight.

Tsumego's and Joseki's are great. A great way to boredom. You may study them for a week, you'll have a match with someone who have studied them for two weeks. You loose. Ok, you study one more week, the other guy also studies it for one more week... You loose also.

Not playing is not a bad way to deal with the frustration. I spent some weeks on that diet. Just watching dan and pro games.
I decided to come to this forum for that sake. Talking, discussing the game, rather than playing it.
I played some games lately. Discovered that I wasn't far behind from where I left.
Seems that the strategy did work.

Nice!Yes!

I like this, too.


Waiter, I want a big jug of that same sake that the gentleman over there had. And hot, please.


Greetings Tom

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

I must disagree with this. I play plenty of free games. Provided you're not very weak or strong, it's pretty easy to find any games you like, free or ranked, as long as your rank is stable. (The reason for this last condition is the same reason people like playing games against stronger players but don't like to be sandbagged: if the reality differs from the expectation, people feel deceived and think the other player is playing dirty. People like to know who they're playing against.)

I share this exact feeling, though am not sure of the reason I'm finding playing face-to-face so much more gratifying.

Playing (read "losing" ) online has been very frustrating sometimes, though in all fairness, this has had very little to do with my opponent(s); They are usually very friendly (I play on KGS and sometimes on IGS) Suspect, it probably has something to do with the camaraderie of an actual gathering of people....

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Tempus Vincit Omnia

I think I know what you mean.
In my case, I find GO frustrating because: either I win and then of course, that's nice, but I have no idea why I won. Or - worse - I lose, and I have no idea why I lost.
I am about 18 kyu, which means I don't make the beginner mistakes at the corners and edges anymore, the basic joseki or whatever they are called. But at this level, the only way to improve is to study, study, study, try to apply your lessons and fail (because most of the advice you will read is only valid for much better players and only confusing for my level). Since I don't want to study - I already have a very difficult job - and only want to have a bit of distraction, my way of dealing with the frustration is: play short and fast games, resign as soon as I am losing (or bored), which after 100 - 150 moves is often already clear and don't think too much about it. It's probably not the best strategy to become a good GO player, but at least it makes it a reasonably pleasant pass-time without too much frustration.

If you improve at any sports or games the competition stiffens.

Your brain is an amazing optimization engine.

In the upper regions every competition becomes a rope dance.

If you dont enjoy it, do something different casually.


From time to time I myself take a break from getting better at go for a fortnite or two and enjoy a different rope dance. Then I take it up again and rock on.

If you don't understand why you lost, then you can post a game on this forum and other participants will help. Most likely, at 18k level you just need to understand one idea in order to improve by 1 stone.

A fascinating question - in many ways, a much more fascinating question than Go, and one that preoccupies almost everyone that has ever picked up a stone, to which the flood and variety of answers is testimony.

When i saw the title of the thread, the first thing that came to mind was Robert Sapolsky, who arguably has done more to illuminate the human condition even than Freud

The question raised is really four questions wrapped up into one:
A: Why is anything frustrating to anyone?, and
B: Why is Go frustrating to me?

From which we also have:
C: Why is anything frustrating to me?
D: Why is Go frustrating to anyone?

From which we have a fifth question:
E: Why is Go frustrating to everyone?

Of all these questions, the one easiest to answer is the 5th, because its answer is, quite simply, "It isn't!"

I can prove this beyond any reasonable doubt by placing before the court the evidence of an eye-witness: one who does not find Go frustrating:

myself

.
.

.

.

Oh, no, wait a minute - it's not frustrating to me now, but if i think back carefully, i can remember a time when, in the privacy of my own room, and with no-one to hear, i did once shout "<expletive deleted>!" in a very loud voice as i uncontrollably jumped up from the online board in uncontrolled angst at what i had just allowed to happen to me on the board, and then immediately laughed at myself for being so silly.

And there you have it: it wan't just that it happened, it wasn't even just that it happened to me, it was that i had allowed it to happen.

To be young is to be foolish, even if it is not foolish to be young
https://aptparenting.com/causes-of-frus ... days-world

I have tried that option, but at my level, most of those reviews are too high level. When I try to follow them up, it only makes matters worse.
I am on the level of: "first corners, then edges, then the center". Which is valid advice for a beginner. However, it's not completely true anymore (or not all), when you play against advanced players. At that level, sometimes one should give up defending a corner, or go towards the center early on. You should play big, but not too big, look for influence, but not forget about territory. And there is no simple advice for that, apart from recognizing certain patterns. Which means study, study, study.
I have tried, e.g,. the videos of Nick Sibicky on YouTube who is an excellent teacher, but if I try to play like that, I lose with 100 points of difference instead of 30
I have come as far as "don't defend too much and sometimes do something that seems hopeless or crazy or useless" (like cutting whenever you can), and - weirdly - enough, sometimes that works, but I still end up not knowing why really.

During the first months of go practice, I improved by learning basic principles one by one, such as:

1) Corners, edge, center.

2) Play on the third line to make territory, on the fourth line to get influence (which roughly means to access the center).

3) Good and bad shapes: do not make empty triangles, don't let your opponent cross your knight's move, etc.

4) Attack my opponent's weak groups.

5) Try to surround my opponent, and not to be surrounded.

If you try to apply everything at the same time, you will get confused, but if you try to apply just one idea for a few games, it will become a habit and you will improve. When I played my first games in a go club against stronger players (3k-10k), the review didn't last long, it was like one sentence, but a really useful one.

At your level, the great pleasure is that you can still improve by a lot, and fast. Whether you'll hit the bar at 9k, 6k or 1d, remains to be seen, but I am willing to wager you can improve 6 stones in the next six months or one year, probaly more and faster.



It's a valid advice, but it's an advice for the opening stage, which is not where you will win games. It is perfectly possible at 18 kyu to screw up a game starting from a decent opening.



Yes it still is, but against advanced players it is even more difficult to win a game, even if you played a good opening.



Rather, play, play, review, play.



Which likely means you haven't progressed beyond very basic tactics and strategy (stay tuned) and likely make major errors that cost the game.



I would not "do something that seems hopeless". Like you say, if it works, you still don't know why. Rather "do something that seems to work". If it works, you were probably right and if it doesn't, you have learnt something.

Now for the real basics that will lift your game immediately:

1. strategy: connect/move out your own groups on a large scale and separate/surround the opponent's groups, as long as these groups are not clearly alive. Go is "the surrounding game".
2. tactics: always be aware of your liberties and the opponent's liberties; in local fight, try keeping the upper hand in liberties
3. mentality: use the time you have to consider at least one alternative move, and read out 3 moves for the move you're thinking of and the alternative(s); then decide which is better

I'm nowhere mentioning territory, influence, shape, sente ... because I consider these already second level concepts. In the early stages, territory will come from living through connectivity, influence will follow from surrounding the opponent, shape will follow from thinking about liberties and connectivity and you may take the initiative whenever your alternative to the local move is a tenuki and you like it better.

Most of all you won't lose games due to outrageous blunders because you will remain concentrated on the moves

Post your next game here, make your own pre-review of how well you did strategically, tactically and mentally. Chances are you won't even need us for a while. Oh yeah, and play people of your own strength to measure your success.

@alasala, I took a few minutes today to look through your game history on OGS. I tend to agree with the comments of some of the others here -- you could improve quite a bit by learning just one or two things. You seem to have a good sense of when to defend your groups and how to make life when necessary.

I'd (as would many others here) be happy to review one of your games if you'd like. But if you do want to improve, I'd strongly suggest changing a few things:

1. Almost all of the games that you've played in the last couple of months are at incredibly fast time limits -- I think your normal is 2:30 main time with 2x0:15 byomi. That's crazy fast! If you just want to play a fast game where each move is played by instinct to blow off steam that makes a lot of sense. But to improve, you need to give yourself enough time to consider (i.e. read out several moves) more than just one option. @Knotwilg's recommendation of identifying three options for each move, reading them out, and choosing the best of the three is fairly standard and very good advice. But you can't do this unless you play with longer time limits. It's MUCH better to play one long game -- say 30min main time 5x0:45 byomi than to play a dozen super-fast games.

2. At your level, you might want to try creating an account on IGS and playing some games there. I think you'll find that you get games much faster than on OGS, but more importantly, the "standard" time on that server for automatch games is 1min main time with 25x10:00 Canadian time. That means that clock resets to 10 minutes after you play 25 stones. With those time limits, you'll have time to read, consider multiple options, and even to count. And while the rating system is not ideal, it is not nearly as sensitive as the OGS ranking system. So, I think you'll find that more of your opponents are closer to your strength. Plus, when you do play stronger opponents, you'll have handicap stones to make the game even. The norm on OGS seems to be to play even games even against players who are significantly weaker or stronger. That can be fun for a challenge, but not sure that is good if you are trying to learn new techniques.

3. Try not to "follow" your opponent around the board. You often continue to play locally when the position is settled and there are bigger moves to be made elsewhere. This is another reason to play slower games -- if you play fast, it is hard to pull yourself out of the local game to see the other moves available on the board.



It can often be difficult to peg comments to players' abilities given that we have usually only seen a single game. If you post your games regularly, people will develop a sense of your style and abilities and be able to give you better advice. That said, you should also feel free to ask questions when things don't make sense.



I had the same feeling when I was at your level, but the interesting thing is that everyone follows "corner-side-center" to some extend in every game. Even in games where it looks like people aren't doing it, I promise you that it is on their minds, or they are doing it but using moves and techniques that you don't yet understand.



It is completely normal to get killed when you are trying to learn/understand new moves. The key is to stick with them and ask question yuntil you understand how they work. I honestly think you would improve tremendously if you spent some time understanding the rule that one extends the height of a wall plus one. This largely involves understanding how to keep the extension stone connected to the wall.

I beg to differ on the question of time limits for alasala. For beginners, finishing a game in 30 min. or less is fine. Long time limits might drive him nuts waiting for his opponent to play. Maybe 10 min. main time with 2x0:15 byoyomi, Something that he would find appealing.



Amen!



When I was starting out, I did OK if I only lost 2 groups.

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The Adkins Principle:

At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?

— Winona Adkins

"Once in a very great while his eyes light up for a moment, and he says "Whee!" very quietly."
— Lion Miller