Life In 19x19

When I think style, I usually think of questions like these:

Do you like territory or influence better?
Do you like moyo games? Do you like fighting games?
Are you more agressive or passive?


In this sense, it's pretty obvious we all have "styles"

Aidoneus wrote:

Loons wrote:I'm fairly sure flexible means you got all the questions right.

Have you looked at the test? I'm not sure that any of the answers are absolutely "wrong." To put it another way, if only one answer is right for each position, then it seems like it would be a test of rank rather than style. But I am certainly not strong enough to make such distinctions.

Oh, when I took the test a few years ago I was "flexible" which iirc says something like "you are the best playing style". But just now I got "influence" (fancy that).

That's what a stronger player told me; I'm inclined to believe them because at least some of the possible moves are abjectly wrong.

Loons wrote:

Aidoneus wrote:

Loons wrote:I'm fairly sure flexible means you got all the questions right.

Have you looked at the test? I'm not sure that any of the answers are absolutely "wrong." To put it another way, if only one answer is right for each position, then it seems like it would be a test of rank rather than style. But I am certainly not strong enough to make such distinctions.

Oh, when I took the test a few years ago I was "flexible" which iirc says something like "you are the best playing style". But just now I got "influence" (fancy that).

That's what a stronger player told me; I'm inclined to believe them because at least some of the possible moves are abjectly wrong.

Perhaps that's why it said I should study yose. LOL I know I picked small endgame moves in a couple positions just because I usually do so in reality. (I spent less than 10 seconds per move in order to just give the move I "felt.")

I took it just now and got 'very flexible'. I'm not sure what the difference is between that and flexible.

My style is "passive"... Weird, since I always try to attack and cut everything, and I play very influence oriented sometimes.

My result:

Your style is flexible

Your Go style is flexible: you can play for territory as well as for influence.
Usually you make such decisions according to the whole-board situation or the playing style of your opponent.
You may force him to choose the strategy he hates. For example, if he likes moyos, you can play for influence yourself, just for making him angry.
Your Go style is actually the best one.
You may improve your Go by studying different things, but I suggest paying attention on yose and positional judgment.

For full disclosure, I have never even started much less finished much, much less won a game in my life -- neither against a human nor a computer. I am about 1/3 through Iwamoto's beginner book. Those questions were the first Go "problems" I have ever attempted. I did not randomly pick answers from question to question but rather thought about each one and picked what I truly thought was best, despite my ignorance.

So it might be worth taking this test with a grain of salt. In my case at least "you may improve by studying different things" translates into "you may improve by doing any study at all."

Manchu wrote:My result:

Your style is flexible

Your Go style is flexible: you can play for territory as well as for influence.
Usually you make such decisions according to the whole-board situation or the playing style of your opponent.
You may force him to choose the strategy he hates. For example, if he likes moyos, you can play for influence yourself, just for making him angry.
Your Go style is actually the best one.
You may improve your Go by studying different things, but I suggest paying attention on yose and positional judgment.

For full disclosure, I have never even started much less finished much, much less won a game in my life -- neither against a human nor a computer. I am about 1/3 through Iwamoto's beginner book. Those questions were the first Go "problems" I have ever attempted. I did not randomly pick answers from question to question but rather thought about each one and picked what I truly thought was best, despite my ignorance.

So it might be worth taking this test with a grain of salt. In my case at least "you may improve by studying different things" translates into "you may improve by doing any study at all."

Yeah, identical.

This reminds me of walking along the street in San Francisco in 1974 with a chess friend. A pretty girl came along and begged us to come with her to answer some "personality" test. (I think that she was promoting dianetics--that is, Scientology.) I took it semi-seriously and answered things like my life goal was to master the Benoni and Dragon (black chess defenses I played). My buddy answered randomly. Latter, sans girl, we compared notes to see that we got the exact same "analysis."

BTW, no one has commented on my original reason for looking at John Fairbairn's list of professional styles. My fault for not making it clear, however, that I was looking for a pro whose games I might be able to (sort of) follow without annotations. Perhaps it should not be called a pro style, but I don't know how else to refer to play that might be simpler for me to follow.

Aidoneus wrote:BTW, no one has commented on my original reason for looking at John Fairbairn's list of professional styles. My fault for not making it clear, however, that I was looking for a pro whose games I might be able to (sort of) follow without annotations. Perhaps it should not be called a pro style, but I don't know how else to refer to play that might be simpler for me to follow.

I've had good luck following the games of Iyama Yuta (whose play I greatly admire), though they have a tendency to get much more complicated when he falls behind. Of course, no professional game is going to be without complication. But the games of his I have reviewed are certainly more clear than those of Lee Sedol, for example, who just seems to make territory magically evolve from go stones.

While I know you're looking for games to review without annotation, I highly recommend reading through a few of An Younggil's commentaries on Go Game Guru. I find his writing style quite lucid, and reading through a few professional commentaries has helped me know what to look for in uncommented games.

jeromie wrote:I've had good luck following the games of Iyama Yuta (whose play I greatly admire), though they have a tendency to get much more complicated when he falls behind. Of course, no professional game is going to be without complication. But the games of his I have reviewed are certainly more clear than those of Lee Sedol, for example, who just seems to make territory magically evolve from go stones.

While I know you're looking for games to review without annotation, I highly recommend reading through a few of An Younggil's commentaries on Go Game Guru. I find his writing style quite lucid, and reading through a few professional commentaries has helped me know what to look for in uncommented games.

Thank you for your suggestion. And I only said unannotated because of my GoGoD games.

How about the development of Go technique? If a new chess player wanted to see how that game has developed it would be pretty easy to start them with this historical sequence: Paul Morphy (quick development for overwhelming attack), Wilhelm Steinitz (smashing unjustified attacks), Aaron Nimzowitsch (hypermodern school of controlling vs occupying the center), Mikhail Botvinnik (Russian opening research all the way into the middle game), and Garry Kasparov (modern EXTREME emphasis on obtaining the initiative). Such a sequence of games would be much easier to understand than jumping straight into Magnus Carlsen's latest games. LOL

Is it possible to find "simpler" (or more "naive") Go play, or would such even be useful?

@ jeromie

I just subscribed to gogameguru's free email updates, so thanks again!

There is nothing wrong with playing a particular type of game on purpose, e.g. moyo, territory, fighting, etc. But you have to try to understand why the moves you choose work in the game. I often see players deliberately make a san-ren-sei even when their opponent has thickness which erases the influence. Sometimes it's just not proper to try to make a big moyo and you have to be flexible. Takemiya certainly understands this.

Aidoneus wrote:How about the development of Go technique? If a new chess player wanted to see how that game has developed it would be pretty easy to start them with this historical sequence: Paul Morphy (quick development for overwhelming attack), Wilhelm Steinitz (smashing unjustified attacks), Aaron Nimzowitsch (hypermodern school of controlling vs occupying the center), Mikhail Botvinnik (Russian opening research all the way into the middle game), and Garry Kasparov (modern EXTREME emphasis on obtaining the initiative). Such a sequence of games would be much easier to understand than jumping straight into Magnus Carlsen's latest games. LOL

Is it possible to find "simpler" (or more "naive") Go play, or would such even be useful?

You may be interested in this site:

http://mignon.ddo.jp/assembly/mignon/go.html

It has a good selection of historical games. This page, http://mignon.ddo.jp/assembly/mignon/go_meikyoku.html , has a reasonably small number of famous games dating back several centuries.

This page, http://mignon.ddo.jp/assembly/mignon/go ... ikan0.html , has links to pages about many players, whose pages usually link to their games. At the bottom you will find links to the four houses:

本因坊家 Honinbo
井上家 Inoue
安井家 Yasui
林家 Hayashi

The rough equivalent to Steinitz in chess is Honinbo Dosaku Meijin (本因坊　道策 名人), who understood the game like none of his contemporaries. You also want to check out Shusaku (本因坊 秀策). A creative player of the 18th century was Sakaguchi Sentoku (坂口　仙徳). (There is also a later player with the same name.) And no other player has had more influence on go in the last 100 years than Go Seigen (呉　清源). It would be no exaggeration to say that every pro alive today is directly or indirectly his student.

Bill Spight wrote:You may be interested in this site:

http://mignon.ddo.jp/assembly/mignon/go.html

It has a good selection of historical games. This page, http://mignon.ddo.jp/assembly/mignon/go_meikyoku.html , has a reasonably small number of famous games dating back several centuries.

This page, http://mignon.ddo.jp/assembly/mignon/go ... ikan0.html , has links to pages about many players, whose pages usually link to their games. At the bottom you will find links to the four houses:

本因坊家 Honinbo
井上家 Inoue
安井家 Yasui
林家 Hayashi

The rough equivalent to Steinitz in chess is Honinbo Dosaku Meijin (本因坊　道策 名人), who understood the game like none of his contemporaries. You also want to check out Shusaku (本因坊 秀策). A creative player of the 18th century was Sakaguchi Sentoku (坂口　仙徳). (There is also a later player with the same name.) And no other player has had more influence on go in the last 100 years than Go Seigen (呉　清源). It would be no exaggeration to say that every pro alive today is directly or indirectly his student.

Yeah, I downloaded Go on Go (https://www.usgo.org/files/pdf/go-seigen-book.pdf), but figured it would be over my head for awhile yet. And thank you for all of your suggestions and links!

I took this test probably when I was around 15-18k and got passive.
I took this test again at around 8-9k and got passive.
I took it today (5k, maybe going on 4k) and got something different!

Your style is greedy

You like territory so much and it seems that we have similar playing styles.
Nowadays lot of top players plays for territory too. You may know that if you grab too much cash, you will have some weak groups on the board.
You must work more on Life&Death problems – they can help you to save such groups.
You may also improve your ability of defending weak groups by trying “Kill-all Go”: Place 17 handicap stones and try to live as white (even with a very small group).
If you are not able to live inside – make the handicap smaller.

I definitely like territory and always have. I wonder if my earlier results of passive were just me not knowing how to do this so well and playing slow but overly secure choices.

PeterN