Why are "pre-researched" moves looked down upon?

[Bki]

Trick plays can be insulting. Not all, but many are of the variety of "I'm playing a move that I know is objectively wrong because I think you're too stupid to answer properly".

Why do you feel insulted? If you know the correct response, play the correct response. If the guy playing this keeps losing from it, he'll naturally be obliged to find better moves. This is not limited to trick plays. Suppose your opponent reads out a variation that seems to work, but in fact, it doesn't quite work. You know the refutation to that sequence that he read out. Is it insulting that he could think to play out a variation that is not working? Or he plays out a ladder that's not working - is that insulting? I don't understand the reason to find insult here.

Maybe it's because your opponent believes that he knows something that you don't. That's OK, isn't it? Show him that he's wrong.

The answer to all of that is literally in the part you quoted. A trick play is a move you know is wrong but that you play anyway. Unless it's teaching game and you're trying to test your opponent (and even then, I don't think trick plays would be the best way to test him/her). In a complicated position, you play move that your reading say works, or that you feel work when the situation is too complicated to fully read. Sometime you're wrong, but if you realized that before playing that move, you would play something else (unless maybe you're desperate and decide to gamble one last time before resigning).

Of course some tricks play gives reasonable positions even when refuted and there's nothing wrong with those.

For the other sorts of pre-researched moves, it might result in "fake strength", when the moves you make are backed not by reading, evaluation and experience, but by superficial and half-remembered knowledge. Such moves are bad because they don't really help you progress as a player.

Pre-research doesn't imply half-remembered knowledge. It could mean that you understand the nuances of a board position better than your opponent. Any sort of joseki study could fall into this category. If you win games by studying patterns, and go on to play stronger players, is that not progress as a player? Professional players do pre-research all the time on opening formations. In tournaments, it's good to start the game in familiar territory, so that you can focus your energy on the less-researchable aspects of the game.

Pre-researched moves are, in fact, a form of experience. By going over a position before the game, you gain experience about the nuances of that position. Similarly, by playing out a sequence in a real game, you also gain experience. It's nice to think that, as go players, we back all of our moves by precise consideration of all possible responses and sequences, without any sort of knowledge known beforehand. But I don't think that's the case. Otherwise, a player who just learned the rules would have the capability to beat an experienced player, since any additional knowledge is "superficial".

Hence the "it might result". It's not that pre-researched moves are inherently wrong but how many amateur go about using them and learning from them (or rather, they aren't actually learning from them).

[Bantari]

Trick plays can be insulting. Not all, but many are of the variety of "I'm playing a move that I know is objectively wrong because I think you're too stupid to answer properly".

Hmm... If this is what you think, lemme ask you a question? Did you ever fall for a trick play? I bet you have... and what do you think that makes you?

Generally, getting offended during the game by a bad move is not a smart strategy. Much better to punish it and move on.

PS>
There are advantages to being tricky in a game, I think. A simple example: when you notice that your opponent has a tendency to hang on to stones that should have been sacrificed, you might devise a 'trick play' to take advantage of it. Not to mention that it can be a part of a psychological warfare - you play a lot of trick moves and your opponent eventually gets overwhelmed and stumbles. If you are smart about it, it might work. I know some players who play like that and have decent results - although they do not progress very fast, so there is that.

Having said the above, I would never recommend it. And - of course - I would never play like that myself. I always make the best possible moves. Remember that if we ever meet across the board.

[Kirby]

The answer to all of that is literally in the part you quoted. A trick play is a move you know is wrong but that you play anyway. Unless it's teaching game and you're trying to test your opponent (and even then, I don't think trick plays would be the best way to test him/her). In a complicated position, you play move that your reading say works, or that you feel work when the situation is too complicated to fully read. Sometime you're wrong, but if you realized that before playing that move, you would play something else (unless maybe you're desperate and decide to gamble one last time before resigning).

My point is not that I think it is a good strategy to play a move that you think won’t work. Rather, it is that I don’t understand what there is to be offended about.

As a side note, if a non-working move works, it was a working move. But anyway, what is there to be offended about? Do you feel that your opponent is suggesting that you are not intelligent? Something else?

[Bki]

Trick plays can be insulting. Not all, but many are of the variety of "I'm playing a move that I know is objectively wrong because I think you're too stupid to answer properly".

Hmm... If this is what you think, lemme ask you a question? Did you ever fall for a trick play? I bet you have... and what do you think that makes you?

Generally, getting offended during the game by a bad move is not a smart strategy. Much better to punish it and move on.

PS>
There are advantages to being tricky in a game, I think. A simple example: when you notice that your opponent has a tendency to hang on to stones that should have been sacrificed, you might devise a 'trick play' to take advantage of it. Not to mention that it can be a part of a psychological warfare - you play a lot of trick moves and your opponent eventually gets overwhelmed and stumbles. If you are smart about it, it might work. I know some players who play like that and have decent results - although they do not progress very fast, so there is that.

Having said the above, I would never recommend it. And - of course - I would never play like that myself. I always make the best possible moves. Remember that if we ever meet across the board.

Just because I said I feel it's insulting doesn't mean I get offended and angry when it's played against me. It doesn't make it any less a sign of disrespect (or desperation, but desperation usually happens later in the game than when most trick plays would get played), because, again, it's a move you know doesn't work. If you can realize the move doesn't work, it's natural to expect your opponent also can do so. Then if you're trying to win the game you won't play that move (unless all the other options are also clearly losing and you chose the most complicated one). It's even worse than the pointless endgame invasion into solid territory because those at least usually just end up not changing the final score so there's no real cost to trying (though it is amusing when someone try and die in gote and you end up winning by half a point).

I don't dispute that there might be strategy where using such moves might be legitimate, like if you're playing the opponent rather than the board, or to try to compensate for a high handicap. But well, those are special situations.