Moving this discussion from Rikuge's study journal, Rikuge said he wanted to discover his style (later refined that to finding out what his strengths and weakness are, which I find a very laudible objective). I said, somewhat cheeky, that all of us have amateurish style. Ian Butler jumped in to say:



On the analogy with music, I think it's flawed and I don't like analogies as a rhetoric device (well, they are good rethoric devices but rarely good arguments).

While professional go may be an art, and oriental culture has viewed Go as an art, I find Go to be a skill. At our level, the deficiencies in our skill outweigh any difference in style. When I'm reviewing games, I cannot figure out what someone's style is. Often their play is incoherent. When I review my games, I see the mistakes, not the style. I may have certain intentions or preferences, for example I prefer playing White because I think komi favors White in a game full of mistakes. I prefer 4-4 because I like to keep things simple in the opening. I would like to emulate Otake's thick play, making a difference in the endgame. That's as close as I get to "style". However, I'm sure Otake wouldn't recognize the least bit of his style in my games.

It's not entirely impossible. The infamous "Captain" on KGS had some sort of style, even if he was only 3-4 dan.

Yearning/pretending to have a "style" is a sign of putting the e before go. My guitar style is bad, my go style is bad, my table tennis style, though attacking oriented, is still quite bad ... The only activity in which I can probably claim to have a style, is my professional one.

That's my strong opinion. How about yours?

Answering the thread question: yes.

When I was 3k, I started having some style and changed styles a few times afterwards. Before, I had played too much no-thinking nonsense to speak of a style, except that I chose strategies to have more fun.

A different question would be: can all amateurs develop an original, unique style? I did, but I would not say that all amateurs do.

Yes, but who cares?

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

My two main guides in life:
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Everything with love. Stay safe.

Everybody has got his own style, not only in go.

Saying something else is elitist

My style is to make failed timesujis. Would have got 7th in KPMC if it weren't.

Seven types of go players, by In-Seong Hwang:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlDNSdPdO8Q

AlphaGo can say the same about top human pros: "they are all weak, no style"

Joke aside: of course everyone has a style, think of the people you usually play (at local club or online) and you can definitely find examples of solid players, aggressive players, territorial players vs moyo players, etc.

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Sorin - 361points.com

Sure they can.
Just place as many stones as possible on the 4th and 5th line and say you play cosmic go.
That's what I do at least

More seriously, I do acutally think that amateurs can have different styles. Our amateurish mistakes don't prevent that, they just make it less obvious

While I appreciate the passion with which Knotwilg argues for a counterintuitive position, I'd say the answer is pretty obviously "yes." That style might fluctuate--frustrating day? feeling whimsical?--but there are, at least, varying degrees of aggression that Go allows for at most any level. Maybe certain high concepts are critically misunderstood or misapplied at all amateur levels, like "moyo" or "thick" or "light." But I'd venture to say that even DDKs, if they play the same opponent a few times, will have a sense of what it "feels like" to play against that player at a level beyond just their skill level. Inclined towards greed? Aggression? Live-and-let-live?

Maybe the problem here is the term "style"--what I'm describing is basically a player's Go temperament (or their actual temperament, applied to game playing generally or Go more specifically). I have a certain style in this sense, I think, across all sorts of (thinking/board/strategy) games, which I can see in my Go playing. In terms of properly describing my play as "light" or whatever, I can see a moderately strong player looking and saying "that's not what lightness is at all--you're just playing bad moves that are disconnected."

There are two questions that come to mind from this post:

1.) Can amateurs have their own style (the OP)?
- Yes, some people fight a lot, some people are defensive, some go for more points, etc.

2.) *Should* amateurs aim to have their own style?
- Yilun Yang says no. Amateurs should try to play the best move. When the opponent forces them to fight, they should fight. If the opponent makes it so they should play for big moyo, they should do it. In some ways, playing *contrary to* the style you are good at can be educational.

So yes, amateurs have a certain style. But I believe it can lead to mistakes if amateurs try to strictly stick to their favorite way of playing.

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be immersed

It probably doesn't rise to the level of "style" that one would use to describe pro's, but I definitely observe consistent "types" of players. Their type is usually defined by a combination of their strategy and relative skills, and this often dictates my strategy in reply. Here are a few examples:

1. The blind fighter. This is the player to just does nothing but cut, invade, and try to kill from the get go. Usually doesn't play expected moves in josekis, and requires me to think hard sometimes about why moves are not joseki. My strategy is usually to try to be patient, keep my groups strong, and sacrifice when advantageous. If I do this right, either my opponent will waste too much time going after small groups of stones or she will tie herself up in a knot of weak groups and something will die. These players usually defeat themselves if one can avoid letting them kill something big.

2. The middle game guru. If I meet a mid-sdk opponent who plays the fuseki like a ddk but without the clearly unreasonable moves of the blind fighter, I gird myself for the middle game. These guys are amazing at complicating the middle game and usually come up on top if they are able to do so. These games are about trying to hold onto enough of the lead I get in the fuseki to win.

3. The jealous fellow. These players focus almost exclusively on the sides of the board. They opt for territory when ever it's an option in a joseki, and after giving up influence, they will immediately invade to close to the resulting wall. They give up too much influence and the challenge is to use that influence as well as possible. 9 times out of 10, these games end up with me having a large central moyo that my opponent then invades with a move that is much too deep or one of the "too close" invasions dies.

4. The builders. I find these guys on IGS more than elsewhere, but they love frameworks. So, games end up being either a framework race or me trying to tear apart an area in which my opponent and I disagree about whether or not he controlled that area in the first place.

From my limited SDK perspective, it does seem that these players do have what might be called distinctly different styles.

That's not the kind of thing I meant to convey. When I was 4 kyu I aspired to a fleet footed style. It was a style I admired. Sure, I was weak, but no style? When I was 2 dan somebody pointed out that I had a thick style. I had not realized it, but I did. I had developed that style without intending to. How did that happen? Who cares?

It is true that some styles are bad. A timid style is bad. An overaggressive style is bad. A greedy style is bad. Such styles are bad habits. Weak players have bad habits. What else is new?

The term, style, has a descriptive aspect and a normative aspect. I knew K. C. Kim, Janice's father, when he was a 4 kyu. He had a beautiful style of play. In middle age he went from 4 kyu to 4 dan, a remarkable achievement, which I believe he could not have done without his style. (I haven't seen K. C. for a long time, he may be even stronger now. )

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

My two main guides in life:
My mother and my wife.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

There are aspects of the way individual players play. Pros who have studied many games by an amateur player, say one of his students, can recognize games of that player without knowing the names of the players. Does that mean the player identified has a "style"? Or does it just mean that that particular player makes characteristic mistakes, or combinations of moves, that allow the pro to identify him? Once, Cho Chikun, at his peak, when asked to describe his style said "flexible". Is that a generally accepted type of style? Seems to me that the concept of style of a player is not especially meaningful.

How is style related to making remarkable progress?

I think most Go players have a consistent enough style. The idea that you can only have a style if you are above a certain strength is unfathomable to me.

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North Lecale

In K. C.'s case I think that his beautiful style indicated a good sense of the whole board and a lack of bad habits. He did not have much to unlearn.

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

My two main guides in life:
My mother and my wife.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

It seems like most of you agree to disagree with me. I remain unconvinced. I don't think I would be able to recognize any of the people I usually play against if I'd play them online with an unknown nickname, even if they gave me a selection of 10 players. I would probably recognize them by strength, but not by style. Players of same strength, I'd have a hard time guessing who's who.

I reckon I'd have a much higher chance of recognizing a game by Takemiya, Go Seigen, Cho Chikun, Fujisawa Shuko, Lee ChangHo or Shusaku, when given the choice. Sure, the era in which they played, plays a role.

So yes, I do think players have a style above a certain level and I put the bar way above mine, somewhere close to pro strength.

And yes, Alphago will not care and "think" all pros play bad go. Styles reflect a preference of how to deal with the uncertainty Alphago is beyond style, close to certainty already.

Good question. Probably it irritates me because there's some kind of entitlement behind it. On a bad day I think "Get real and get better". On a good day I think "OK, it's nonsense, but who cares".

The disagreement, I feel, stems from different meanings we all attach to the word 'style', which arguably is a rather fuzzy term. What I got from your question is that you feel like style in Go can be understood as a collection of refined patterns that can be used to uniquely identify a player. The way the rest sees it, myself included, a style is just a set of preferences, deliberate or otherwise, when it comes to certain decisional aspects of the game. Could I be identified by how aggressive or territorial I am or by the mistakes I make in games? Certainly not from a large pool of international players around my rank. Could my common opponent adapt to my preferred strategies over the course of a couple local tournaments? I think so - and that's good enough to be called a style; whether or not it's a positive thing to have one as such is another matter completely.

it's possible that *identifying* style also takes some degree of skill. That is to say, even if a player has fighting characteristics, it might take some ability to classify this just by looking at the game. It doesn't mean that those characteristics or tendencies don't exist.

When you start as black, do you like to start with 4-4? 3-4? 3-3?

Maybe you like to mix it up. But if you favor or tend to play any one move over the other, that preference is the beginning of a style.

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be immersed