Life In 19x19

You are totally right Dusk Eagle! Thanks for the reply.

The reason for the push was http://senseis.xmp.net/?PlayKikashiBeforeDefending. However in this situation, the liberties are much more important.

@peppernut

It's a game.

Every game has its customs and culture. Have fun!

Not seeing atari is quite common in beginners. Don't worry, just play some more games, and you will gradually improve over time.

I was just playing a game on ogs against a total beginner in which I just missed an atari of a big group. I'm white, please feel free to laugh out loud

So please don't feel bad because even a few kyu's later you will sometimes still have this.



Cheers,
Otenki

@Bill

Yes, sometimes I forget about the other reasons people have for playing these games

Just a thought on this.

Perhaps a bit late? Perhaps just a symptom of not yet having learned to watch liberties?

I think it makes sense for a strong player giving a beginning player a game at high handicap to warn "atari". Possibly also for a couple of beginners playing, say 20k or worse.

But probably out of place 10k or better.

The situation is different than chess because "check" isn't a warning as much as an announcement that only a move that deals with this would be legal. In go you are allowed to let the group be captured.

Mike Novack wrote:I think it makes sense for a strong player giving a beginning player a game at high handicap to warn "atari". Possibly also for a couple of beginners playing, say 20k or worse.

I'm not such a huge fan of this, it's probably the main thing that makes it difficult for beginners to learn to spot atari on their own.

speedchase wrote:

Mike Novack wrote:I think it makes sense for a strong player giving a beginning player a game at high handicap to warn "atari". Possibly also for a couple of beginners playing, say 20k or worse.

I'm not such a huge fan of this, it's probably the main thing that makes it difficult for beginners to learn to spot atari on their own.

In the long run, not being able to spot an atari is not going to remain one's biggest difficulty (and if it does, maybe it's time to take up something else). Most of us find it natural to want to save a stone, yet many of us initially find it a stretch to envision what could happen if the choose not to. Sure, beginners should learn to look for themselves, but there is quite a lot to look at, and it's good that they are looking in other places. To me, the niceness of informing a beginner not to overlook the atari outweighs the potential damage done.

speedchase wrote:

Mike Novack wrote:I think it makes sense for a strong player giving a beginning player a game at high handicap to warn "atari". Possibly also for a couple of beginners playing, say 20k or worse.

I'm not such a huge fan of this, it's probably the main thing that makes it difficult for beginners to learn to spot atari on their own.

I also don't like saying “Atari!” lest ppl believe this is a duty like saying “Check!” in Chess.

But sometimes I ask beginners who have just played a move while obviously not having seeing an Atari, “are you sure you want to place your stone there?”, without telling why (yes, I apparently have some sadistic facettes). If they insist, I ask “did you see that Atari?” w/o showing them where it is. If they don’t see it, I show them. Then I offer them to take back that move, if they wish to do so. Sometimes, if necessary because the situation is already unavoidable then, and if we can and wish, we go back a few moves to where it can be avoided, and usually we both learn something then.

Okay, but how often is it a case of players being unable to spot the atari, versus not really looking for it in the first place?

It seems to me that only complete newcomers to the game have genuine difficulty seeing stones that are in atari (even when actively looking for them). I have to believe that most of the time, it is simply a case of a player not taking the time to look. A kind of carelessness that perhaps comes from trying to over-optimize one's play?

zslane wrote:Okay, but how often is it a case of players being unable to spot the atari, versus not really looking for it in the first place?

It seems to me that only complete newcomers to the game have genuine difficulty seeing stones that are in atari (even when actively looking for them). I have to believe that most of the time, it is simply a case of a player not taking the time to look. A kind of carelessness that perhaps comes from trying to over-optimize one's play?

I believe(from my blunders, at 6k) that it's a matter of not actively looking for them. I don't agree with the phrase "over-optimize one's play", though. I think it's more of a case of cutting corners in reading, or a failure in pattern matching.

I meant over-optimizing in the sense that a player "cuts corners", as you say, on purpose in an attempt to save clock time by focusing on areas of the board believed to be more important. If this pruning of one's whole-board evaluation is an attempt at saving time, yet leads to missing or inadvertantly neglecting stones in atari, then I think the term over-optimizing is quite apt.

And failures of pattern matching seem irrelevent to me. One need not know a single thing about complex group patterns to count liberties and determine if any stones are in atari. After all, the definition of atari is that a stone or group has only one liberty remaining. How hard is it to count to one?

zslane wrote:I meant over-optimizing in the sense that a player "cuts corners", as you say, on purpose in an attempt to save clock time by focusing on areas of the board believed to be more important. If this pruning of one's whole-board evaluation is an attempt at saving time, yet leads to missing or inadvertantly neglecting stones in atari, then I think the term over-optimizing is quite apt.

I think I see what you mean. My post was not that different from that, no.

zslane wrote:And failures of pattern matching seem irrelevent to me. One need not know a single thing about complex group patterns to count liberties and determine if any stones are in atari. After all, the definition of atari is that a stone or group has only one liberty remaining. How hard is it to count to one?

Here, I disagree. One of the shortcuts that helps you improve is good pattern matching, to shortcut reading. Pattern matching doesn't always mean there's a complex group pattern around. Do you always read the Chapel?
If you do pattern matching well, you can skip a lot of lines in reading a position. However, if that pattern matching happens to fail to match a possible move as self-atari, only seeing a cut, or some other advantageous position, you might play it without reading/counting, and self-atari yourself before you've realized what you're doing.
I say "you" above in general. It's happened to me too much for my level, it might not happen to others.

Bonobo wrote:I'm not such a huge fan of this, it's probably the main thing that makes it difficult for beginners to learn to spot atari on their own.

I also don't like saying “Atari!” lest ppl believe this is a duty like saying “Check!” in Chess.[/quote]

The difference isn't so much that in chess a "duty". The difference is that in go one may allow a stone to be captured but in chess one may not ignore the king in check. Any move leaving the king in check is illegal. There are other fundamental differences. In chess there is no pass and having no legal move available is a draw (stalemate).

One way of learning to see the atari is from the beginning to develop the good habit of asking yourself every move: "What was the purpose of my opponent's last move?" This makes it pretty hard to miss an atari, and will also give you a better idea of what's going on in general on the board.