Okay. A new day, a new chance. After a good night's sleep, I realize I had a real off-day yesterday and I'm feeling already much better today, even about the game I played. It's still an ugly game to my eye, but I see now how valuable it can be for me to learn from. Games like that especially should be interesting to me to learn how to deal with. I'll never get to be a strong(er) player if I can't handle all kinds of situations at least moderately well.
So, I did some analysis on the game. Not move by move, but the beginning and some key points. The review is added at the bottom of my post.
Main points were (I believe)
- Being too intimidated and not exploiting my opponent's weaknesses. (Being "under attack")
- Not seeing that corner. But that is hard to see. Very hard, I think. (at least for me)
- Playing my opponent's game, and not my own. (when I did play my own game somewhere halfway the game, I made up a lot of ground)
You can also learn from Bruce Wilcox's Contact Fights. I think it's still available online. I have only heard good things about it.
I've heard this tip before. I'm going to purchase it, now. I think it'll really help my game develop.
For inspiration you might enjoy my pages about Spightonians.
Awesome! I'm reading these later today!
Like you I (and many others) somehow find it less stressful to play a bot than a human. I think this shows we have a strong ego and we do "play the opponent" instead of "playing the board". Like I said, we can use this to our advantage, when aware of it.
There are a couple of experiments we can try here:
1. Cold Turkey - after doing the review, challenge that awful player for a rematch. You will have studied his strengths and weaknesses and can prepare a strategy to beat him.
2. Awareness training - in your next game, if the opponent does something that throws you off, think of this conversation. "Aha! I'm thrown off here". Any psychological advance starts with recognizing the situation (and step 2: welcoming it). Just continue to be aware and acknowledge the emotion.
3. Denial - in your next game, pretend the opponent is a bot, who has no emotions, no trickery, no plan other than playing the best moves it calculates. This can be a fun experiment, but I don't recommend it as a gaming strategy, because it disregards your temperament, which seems to be emotionally engaged.
I don't think it necessarily translate to a matter of ego (though for sure there's some part of it at play), rather some things that are different between a bot and a player:
- you can play a bit 10 times in a row, he won't care, you're not wasting his time.
- Leela is much stronger than me and I like to play strong players who give me hell. It helps me to know that if I can ever defend/attack Leela, I can probably do it rather well.
But, like you said, ego might and probably is still a part of it. Even though I've consistently worked on "killing" that ego the past few years, it's still part of me and it's good to be aware of it, so I can work on it.
I think the awareness training is my kind of method. Now that the emotions have gone, I see the game in a different light already. If I can keep my emotions under control when it happens again, I'll have no problems (not saying I'll win, but I mean I won't go crazy).
The other two methods might be good, but suit me less. First one perhaps. The third one is not so interesting. Go is about people and I should always recognize that. And rather than see an opponent that annoys me, I should see him as one who challenges me out my comfort zone and stimulates me to come up with moves I ordinarily wouldn't play.
Let me be a bit severe here: if you really know the foundation for the "correct" moves, you can punish the bad moves. Otherwise you're probably going through the motions of good play, without knowing why it is good.
I think it's more like dfan says.
Also, if his "bad moves" were not contact moves, I'd probably deal with them a lot better. The fact that they are contact/fighting moves, probably has more relevance than anything.
But as far as contact moves go, you are right, I should know the reason why a particular move is played.
One thing that often happens for "book learners" like you and me is that we have learned how to respond well to good moves, but not how to respond well to bad moves.
Bad moves have the disadvantage (for your opponent) of being bad, but they have the advantage of throwing you off because they're not in that easy-look-up pattern dictionary you've accumulated in your head.
In general when this happens I need to slow down and really engage the conscious part of my brain that performs reading and does careful whole-board evaluation. The game has turned away from the nice trails through the forest and you're now fighting your way through the bushes, which requires slightly different skills. The good news is that playing these sorts of games lets you accumulate some of the "punish bad play" patterns you've been lacking.
I also cannot emphasize enough Bill Spight's point that a lot of bad moves are self-punishing. Whenever your opponent makes a play that seems wrong, ask yourself whether it is wrong because it has some refutation, or whether it's wrong just because it's small (say). Not all errors have to be pounced on.
That's actually great advice. It does feel like fighting through the bushes. Very uncomfortable for me, but perhaps these are the games I need to playing more than anything else, in that case.
Thanks everyone for your advice!
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makes black stronger. C4 was another possibility?
doesn't feel right. In fact that entire sequence of black running makes white way too strong and practically gives white the victory. Maybe that kick wasn't so bad after all