I almost passed out at the finish line. I was seeing dark spots.
Turns out, the human (mind+body) is much stronger and more resilient than many of us usually realize.
Over the past quarter century, I've experienced the dark spots on numerous occasions (due to a particular discipline). One time, I was exercising in "complete darkness" -- the dark spots had engulfed 100% of my vision, and I also had "hummings" in my ears (losing both senses of sight and hearing simultaneously), but I was still standing upright and exercising the next minute or two.
I found out from my direct personal experience and from chatting with trustworthy friends: when we think, when our body tells us, that we're about to pass out, in reality we're only maybe 10% there. (Given decent, average good health conditions). The irony: it's much more difficult to actually pass out than we think; our bodies have evolved to give us way advance warnings. Just like our stomachs have evolved to delay the signals of a full stomach until a bit later.
You were likely about 10% to passing out at the finish line.
Kirby wrote:I've recently started running 5k races again
It took me a few seconds to understand...
lol
jlt wrote:@daal: do you also play with longer time settings than KGS (over the board, correspondence games)? Do you still feel the same frustration?
To tell the truth, I have almost stopped playing slow games entirely. My go activity is currently just kgs blitz games. For a while I did this because I found it fun. Lots of action, not so much pain involved in losing and lots of games against stronger players. In the long run though, it is getting boring. It feels like too much luck is involved, and since I don't have the sense that I know what to look for in a review, I rarely do it. I haven't been to a real life go game in years. As to correspondence games, I found the possibility of thinking so long with so little idea about what is right to be exhausting.
It distresses me to see that you're feeling so frustrated.
Since you're using my remark about "keeping Bonzo under control" as your tag line, and because you say that a good game is one after which you don't hate yourself, I wonder if perhaps at the root of your current trouble is an issue with emotions.
I don't believe there are any quick and easy fixes. I would recommend you, though, to watch again the Episode of Hikaru no Go entitled "Isumi no Go" (it's around Ep 64), in which Isumi goes to China. It seems to address this matter very well. If you think of emotions of fear and anxiety as being something coming from the atavistic simian part of one's mind, and go as being something you do with the more evolved, human part, then you have a useful way of looking at it. Isumi is discovers that he can learn see himself from the third person (human keeping Bonzo in its proper place); but he is also warned that it's a skill that needs practise, and that it takes time to master it. If you're feeling anxious when you play, then with practise you can learn to put that anxiety to one side, and gradually get better at enjoying the game. And as you do that, you put yourself into the condition to play better and achieve better results.
This also ties into a quotation from O Rissei that I remember writing out many years ago, in which he says that his results improved because he changed his aim from trying to win to trying instead to play the best move that he could. He said that he could relax and sleep better the night before big games. This was around the time he captured the Kisei title and held it for several years. It also further ties into a remark I read on a chess forum quoted from former World Champion Smyslov. He said that he simply aimed to play 40 good moves. If his opponent made a mistake, then Smyslov would win; if the opponent played well, then it would be a draw; if his opponent played like a genius, then Smyslov would lose, but who can complain about losing when the opponent has played a great game?
That's one side of it, then.
The other is that perhaps you're too focussed on results. I think the answer to that is to ask yourself why, say, a 1k will most often defeat a 5k, or why a 5d will most often defeat a 1k? The answer is not that some people are just better at go than others or that it just destiny or whatever. The real answer is that the stronger player has learned to play to a better standard. And the fortunate thing is that usually progress in one's standard is possible. That usually means going back to basics and putting the whole thing back together again, but with fewer shortcuts and more attention to detail than before.
Game reviews are next to useless unless they're sincere. One very common mistake is to lose a game, then go back and find a single big mistake and say to oneself "if I had not done this, I would have won". I've witnessed defeated opponents of mine do this, and I've made exactly the same mistake myself. Another common mistake is to review the game, but to obsess over every single move, and thereby confuse yourself because you're not really able to figure out the broad trends of the game.
So how to do it? The method I like is to ask the winner if he or she can tell me where I went wrong. And if they won't do that, then perhaps at least try and find some joseki sequences in which you got an unsatisfying result, and then look them up and see if you can improve your play there. Do likewise for life and death. If you have go books - use them for reference while reviewing.
An interesting exercise that I could recommend is that when you lose to a player who strikes you as being a "bully" then you don't only review your game/s with him; look also at what happens in their games with other players. It's easier to be objective, and you might find an insight into why you lost by seeing how other people lost to the same tactics.
I am currently profiting from systematically working my way through a "reading list". I began with Attack and Defence and Life and Death, and I'm now going through Strategic Concepts of Go and Get Strong at Joseki. I play through examples on a real board, and I frequently test myself to make sure that patterns have registered. The essence of playing well is contained in those patterns, in knowing them and knowing how to apply them. The better you know and understand examples of good play, the better you'll be at improvising when you're caught on the hop by something unfamiliar.
I'd be very happy to play with you on KGS and see if I can identify anything that strikes me as a weakness; but I'd highly recommend you find a good teacher. But beware of those "teachers" who play handicap games to win; Sai has some very harsh words to say about the pro whose "teaching game" consisted of ripping his student apart. Test your teacher's attitude and try to determine whether their motivation for teaching is a) to help you b) to make money c) to make themselves look cool. Each of these motivations is less acceptable than the one before it.
I really hope you can get through this little spell of turbulence. You deserve to enjoy go.
Learn the "tea-stealing" tesuji! Cho Chikun demonstrates here:
[Disclaimer: impromptu, unofficial review of In-Seong's EYD follows below this line.]
My love of Go was saved by joining In-Seong's Yunguseng Dojang around this time, last year. I was stuck at around KGS 2 kyu at the time and, although I have been playing for a decade, I feel like I only started studying the game, then. (Also, I seem to have slipped to 3 kyu on KGS, now, even though both my EGF ranks and YD-rating have improved in the last year. Curious.)
Somehow, I reached strong-SDK by basically knowing nothing at all. One year ago, my style of play was crude: pretend I know what I'm doing in the opening and then read my way to a cataclysm in the middle game. If my opponent didn't open the door to disaster or neglected to resign in the middle game, I'd just lose. Otherwise, I'd win.
What In-Seong does exceedingly well is this: he will analyse your personal playing style, detect your strengths and weaknesses and teach you to do what you don't do, now, because improving your weakest skill is necessary to improve your strength.
In-Seong has been pressuring me to play properly. Play the slow moves, he says, because even if I lose the game on points by playing too politely or too timidly, those losses (and reviewing those losses) can teach me how to play properly. Winning by middle-game-cataclysm is prone to catastrophe and useless from an educational perspective: to a large extent, I already know how to do it.
At the same time, I have listened to him advising shy players to cut and fight and he often gives qualified advice saying things along the lines of: "If this was wossname's game, I would say this was a good move, but you need to try something else, like..."
The lectures I have attended, live and interactive, or watched recordings of, have also provided new inspiration. They are sometimes fun and sometimes very serious, sometimes exciting and at other times inexorably soporific but, always, they increase my desire to learn more about the game. I think they do this because they frequently emphasise "soft" topics and not simply axiomatic ways to play Go.
In the most recent season, season 21, one of the lectures covered a subjective list of the best professional tesuji of all time -- like the legendary goals of a famous football player. In season 20, we had one on the history and evolution of various conceptual ideas in Go: territory, influence, speed -- amongst others -- and, post AlphaGo, the fact that anything is now possible.
Being a member of a league full of other humans, attending lectures and reviews and Go-camps and meeting those people at European tournaments, adds a whole new dimension to the game as well as being good fun. Most participants are friendly and sociable, even online, and it feels more like a friend group than a typical online community.
Active YD membership is certainly not cheap but, if you can afford to spend that money, it is certainly worth it. (It is also comparable to other sports and hobbies.)
I was still getting stronger, before I joined, and, lacking a control group, I cannot prove that EYD membership has accelerated my rate of improvement. I can claim that I enjoy Go more, today, and for different reasons. I can also hope that my efforts to work on my weakest skill -- playing slowly, peacefully and diplomatically -- will pay off in the long run even if it has hurt my present results a bit.
Today, I am more able to judge my games on how I played rather than their outcomes.
Strength in go seems to be the term we use for accuracy. In other words, on a go board there are multiple possible moves. The fact we can quickly discard most of them shows the brain is already quite handy.
If a stronger player is able to further discard possible moves, it could be because they have a finer resolution of vision derived from factors such as being able to read the results of plays better, experience, and intuition developed through training.
So here are two brazen suggestions to tweak the traditional review, to obtain a clear picture of your position, and even, perhaps, to make you stronger:
1. Play games with long enough time settings so that you could malkovich during the game all of the moves you considered and the reasons why, rating from 1 to 5:
Options you never considered (1), which would be ignored and not noted. Off-the-wall options you thought had a slim chance, or other fancy moves, but quickly discarded (2), which could also be ignored depending on the detail level you'd like to conduct the review with. Moves you seriously considered (3). Moves you concluded were playable or highly likely to be best (4). The move played (5).
Of course, this most likely requires playing games with slow time settings, while finding the strongest move possible, from my memory widely considered being prerequisite to consistent long-term growth.
2. Reviewing games with players stronger, similarly ranked or even weaker as an experiment, in the following fashion:
2.1. Look through the game record and derive move ratings and reasons for each position, as mentioned in section 1. 2.2. Ask another to independently do the same.
With 2.1, you can compare your review accuracy with your playing accuracy. If there is a small difference in opinion between yourself in and out of game, you are possibly playing up to your limit and need to do things like learn new concepts or improve your intuitive reading. If there is a large difference, such as blunders occurring often, you may be having a more mental acuity, emotion or focus based deficit and need training in that area.
With 2.2, you can compare your review self with stronger players review self. Instead of just looking at the difference between one move in each position, the move you played and the one the stronger player suggests, look at all of the options considered by the stronger player and find out why the stronger player discarded moves you thought were feasible, or in some cases, why you may have discarded moves that indeed were feasible, like an unusual sabaki technique (forgive the extreme example), greatly reducing your accuracy. A frame-by-frame analysis of all options considered during the game may reveal deficiencies in thinking that may be hard to identify through a narrow lens.
Some say an AI cannot explain the reasoning behind it's moves, but maybe many humans are similar. I unknowingly started reasoning on the unconscious 'why' for each move on even the 'easier' positions, and to great effect— be it blindly following a proverb, reducing ease for the opponent, or looking at a future consequence on another part of the board. So it may also work for you.
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.
Be carefull when you cross the borders your mind sets for you during physical exercise. It is quite possible to expand the limits, but the borders set by your brain are there for a reason. I managed to break my body several times in the past, when I went over the borders. I recovered from most failures but my life is different now in some aspects, still very enjoyable.
For some of us, 6-5k) is the limit of what we can reach with the kind of effort we amateurs can spend. For me it seems to be 1-2d. For Uberdude or Bill, it's more like 4-5d. After that, you either have to spend a lot more effort or just settle for that level. I don't really know your game, but from your contributions here I have reasons to infer that 5k may be that plateau of moderate effort.
More effort goes two ways: becoming a better thinker and become a less bad executioner. With our mileage, we have grown some pretty bad habits.
Are you frustrated about your level of thinking or your level of execution?
If it's the former, find yourself a good teacher. If the latter, I can recommend myself as a drill instructor for making less mistakes and raise your level of execution to your level of thinking. Warning: there will be some ego to let go (in particular the "oh I am so bad" kind of ego) and there will also be a few addictions to let go (like, let's play a blitz game for I don't have anything better to do).
That being said, if you ever reach 1d, don't fool yourself into thinking you will be happy then. The frustration never goes away.
Tami wrote:One very common mistake is to lose a game, then go back and find a single big mistake and say to oneself "if I had not done this, I would have won". I've witnessed defeated opponents of mine do this, and I've made exactly the same mistake myself. Another common mistake is to review the game, but to obsess over every single move, and thereby confuse yourself because you're not really able to figure out the broad trends of the game.
These are very good remarks. I try to review someone else's game by finding the bigger patterns. These tell you the areas of improvement at the conscious, analytical level, the level of thinking. However, we often observe instances where the player drops below their level of thinking. This is what usually generates a lot of frustration and makes the game go downhill. A reviewer can hardly tell why that happens. This needs introspection: what is going on when I'm making these moves, exactly? Is fear? Is it vanity? Is it sloth? Is it gluttony? Capital sins, deeply rooted desires ... Not wanting to exaggerate, there's a lot of work to be done at that level.
Elom wrote:So here are two brazen suggestions to tweak the traditional review, to obtain a clear picture of your position, and even, perhaps, to make you stronger:
1. Play games with long enough time settings so that you could malkovich during the game all of the moves you considered and the reasons why, rating from 1 to 5: ...
I guess this is something that I find interesting, though to do it I might need some particular boundaries. First of all, I would not want to play publicly. I find it entertaining to watch and read other people's malkovitch games, but the prospect of doing it myself and have people read my lousy reasoning makes me cringe. Second, I have had bad experiences with correspondence games because spending too much time agonizing over moves drained the game of fun for me. I would like to try a game where the players would only spend approximately the amount of time on a move that they would in a regular serious game: typically a minute or three, ten at most, and then spend the larger portion of the time explaining why that move was chosen over other candidates. Afterwards, I would ask a stronger player to point out poor lines of reasoning. I'm not sure what would be the best format for such conditions...
Bill Spight wrote:What about go do you find enjoyable?
I've thought about this question some more, and I think that one thing I enjoy is getting a handle on something and applying it successfully. Regarding go, this is when I play moves with an intention that I understand, and that they turn out to have been an advantageous thing to do. This hasn't been happening much lately.
daal wrote:To tell the truth, I have almost stopped playing slow games entirely. My go activity is currently just kgs blitz games. For a while I did this because I found it fun. Lots of action, not so much pain involved in losing and lots of games against stronger players. In the long run though, it is getting boring. It feels like too much luck is involved, and since I don't have the sense that I know what to look for in a review, I rarely do it. I haven't been to a real life go game in years. As to correspondence games, I found the possibility of thinking so long with so little idea about what is right to be exhausting.
Hi Daal, I have experienced what you describe here : hitting a limit, then playing more games to try to gain some practical experience, and becoming more and more frustrated.
I realized that playing a lot was not helping me in any way. On the contrary, all I was doing was playing faster and faster, thinking less and less, and repeating the same mistakes. Worse : playing more was in fact increasing my fatigue, which, in turn, made me make more errors.
The solution was to take some breaks. After one or several weeks without playing, I felt the need of playing again, but with a rested mind. My ideas were clear again, and the game was much more enjoyable.
The biggest difference after these breaks was that I was taking my time to assess the situation. I was finding interesting to pause for 2 minutes and estimate the global situation, to ponder what strategy would be better, to try mentally to read out different options... All things that, in the urge of playing the most possible games in a panic state of mind, were looking too tiresome, too long and too complicated. It was a renewed pleasure to do that again.
I think that the problem for both of us is to blindly trust the advice "play, play, play the most possible games". In our state of mind, this is not helpful at all. It is even counter-productive !
However, I am not saying that this is the solution to become better. I didn't become better after these breaks. I just went back from 6 kyu to my former rank of 5 kyu. What I am saying is that all the frustration disappeared. It was a pleasure again to play 5 kyu opponents, building interesting games with them... But that's a first step.
Another thought : who says that we are not improving ? Our rating. But who says that it's not the rating scale that is going down while we are actually improving ? Both movements resulting in a constant number.
Nothing... The general drift of rating scales is essentially out of control, unless they are calibrated with bots.
Thank you, daal, for posting this. I am falling into the same hole you're in, not for as long of course. I have become frustrated and anxious with every game I play. If you hadn't have posted this, it would probably have been my first.
And thanks to the replies with things I can try implementing during my games.
Bill Spight wrote:What about go do you find enjoyable?
I've thought about this question some more, and I think that one thing I enjoy is getting a handle on something and applying it successfully. Regarding go, this is when I play moves with an intention that I understand, and that they turn out to have been an advantageous thing to do. This hasn't been happening much lately.
I think that if you only enjoy Go through playing to win, then you're going to experience a lot of frustration and anguish through your practice of the game.
Just like our stomachs have evolved to delay the signals of a full stomach until a bit later. 
