Look. I calmed down a bit more, so maybe I can express myself more clearly.
We’ve done the whole Mickey Mouse discussion a million times. I’ve clearly expressed that I don’t like the term, and the nice thing to do would be to simply use a different term to express your intent. Same way as how you've been asked not to use the term "oriental" - I don't think it's unreasonable. There are many other ways to word things, but that probably wouldn’t be as fun for you on L19, right? Does it make me egotistical for thinking that? If there’s a particular phrase that you’d like for me to refrain from, I’d be happy to use a substitute.
Anyway, the argument as stated before is summarized well with this quote:
John Fairbairn wrote:
With modern go, especially the Mickey Mouse events in Korea, you just want to be the first to start a successful fight. It's basically a crapshoot, but at least if you can control when and how the fighting starts you may have an edge.
Yeah, got it. Crapshoots.
My argument is also simple: To jump to the “crapshoot” assumption on an entire class of professional games, based on your arbitrary decision that the time limits are too fast is both without data, and not necessarily accurate. As a result, we see a bunch of pseudo-persuasive ideas to try to reinforce the point:
* Kasparov agrees on Mickey Mouse
* Lee Changho must have bad results because of the time limits
The strongest evidence provided against the time limits has simply been the opinions of other pros. Everything else has been not based on any sort of real data.
Simply the assumption that less time means more mistakes.But it’s not an obvious assumption to make. Josh Waitzkin, child chess prodigy, and champion of the US Junior Chess Championship in the 90s, writes in his book,
The Art of Learning:
Josh Waitzkin wrote:
For a number of years, when notating my games, I had also written down how long I thought on each move. This had the purpose of helping me manage my time usage, but after my first session with Dave, it also led to the discovery of a very interesting pattern. Looking back over my games, I saw that when I had been playing well, I had two- to ten-minute, crisp thinks. When I was off my game, I would sometimes fall into a deep calculation that lasted over twenty minutes and this “long think” often led to an inaccuracy. What is more, if I had a number of long thinks in a row, the quality of my decisions tended to deteriorate.
And sure, this is chess: maybe the same rules don’t apply to go - I’m not saying that Kasparov agrees, either. Furthermore, go is a different game, so maybe the two- to ten-minute think that Waitzkin found valuable in chess would translate to different time limits in go.
I have only one point in saying this:
the idea that increased thinking time necessarily results in increased quality is an assumption. A number of factors are at play, and the equation is much more complicated than that. To claim that 10-minutes isn’t enough time for a quality go game is unfounded and without real data.
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So how do we get real data? And how do we define a “quality” game? These are undefined questions. The closest thing I can think of in today’s go world is to use our super-human AIs to evaluate games for us. But even then, how do we interpret the results? Is a game that maintains a close to even result of high quality? Or is it better to have less variation in the game?
As a small experiment, I compared a few games, below.
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Game 1: 42nd Meijin Title Match, Round 1 <— This one’s OK to use as a non-blitz game, right? The definition of blitz is without data and arbitrary, so I’ll have to assume that it works.
Anyway, I ran through the first 150 moves, giving over 1000 payouts to each move with Elf, using Lizzie. Here’s a screenshot of the win rate graph, as perceived by Elf:
How do we interpret the win rate graph? Surely, it’s not stable. Perhaps that’s partially a characteristic of Elf, but nonetheless, the volatility of the graph is pretty extreme. Around move 50 or so, it looks like black makes a huge mistake, and win rate drops below 25%. But then a short while later, win rate for black is approaching 70%. No, wait, a move later, it’s below 50 again, then below 25. Now up at nearly 75%. No wait, down below 50%, now up close to 75% again. Now down to 25%, no 50%, oh wait, now the game is lost.
Recall again, the view of modern go in “many” Korean events:
John Fairbairn wrote:
With modern go, especially the Mickey Mouse events in Korea, you just want to be the first to start a successful fight. It's basically a crapshoot, but at least if you can control when and how the fighting starts you may have an edge.
Now, personally, I find it rude to call a professional game a “crapshoot”. But if we trust Elf’s evaluation, certainly, it’s hard to say who’s gonna win this game!
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So how about a recent “blitz” game? Again, we are choosing what is considered blitz somewhat arbitrarily, but the Crown Haitai Pro Go Tournament looks reasonable - it’s the most recent Korean tournament I see game records for. They use Fisher-style time with 10 minutes, plus 20 seconds per move.
Game 2: Crown Haiti Pro Go Tournament #1How about this graph? Well, things start out somewhat evenly, and black makes a mistake, thereby dropping to a win rate of less than 25%. White doesn’t capitalize on its, and has a win rate exceeding 90%, and then a short while later, black makes another mistake. Certainly some ups and downs from Elf’s perspective. Compared to the Meijin game? Hard to say, but perhaps less volatile. The lead goes back and forth with larger swings, but fewer times.
Which game is higher quality? It’s not apparently clear to me.
How about this, another game from the same tournament?
Game 3: Crown Haiti Pro Go Tournament #2This game is less obviously one sided - a majority of the game lies within the 25~50% area. There are fewer ups and downs than either of the other two games, and the swings are less extreme. Does it mean higher quality? I don’t know.
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What’s the point?I don’t like the term “Mickey Mouse” when referring to time limits:
1. It’s a gross over-generalization: we bucket a bunch of modern pro games into a single category, and classify them in our minds as blitz
2. It’s not apparently clear that there is even a significant difference in quality between these so-called blitz games and ones with longer settings. All examples indicating that the quality is lower have been anecdotal and taken from a handful of old pro opinions at best.
3. It’s not respectful to pros playing in the tournaments - the term is pejorative and insulting. You can claim that you’re only dissing the time limits, but for a number of pros, this is what they’ve chosen to do for their livelihoods.
And sure. The analysis that I’ve done here with Elf? I probably trust it less than most people might. But it’s the only way I could think of to do any sort of objective comparison of a few games. And maybe the time limits for these tournaments are too fast, in the sense that they result in more mistakes by the players - maybe not. I don’t know.
But I’m formally expressing here that I don’t appreciate the “Mickey Mouse” term, and I would personally appreciate it if other terms would be used (e.g. blitz). Better yet, I’d prefer more specifics about games or particular tournaments, rather than bunching a huge number of tournaments into a single bucket, and pretending that they’re all of the same nature. That’s not scientific.
Of course, nobody is under any obligation to honor my request, and have the freedom to post what they’d like on the forum. I’m also exercising this freedom by politely expressing my preference.