Life In 19x19

For me losing hurt if I made really dumb mistakes. If I played a really good game and still lost, it could be disappointing, but it didn't hurt the same way. This is how it used to be for me.

Recently I have gotten over these feeling because I think I have developed more as a person (not related to Go at all.) I think that Go can bring out a lot of things related to personal character that are worth investigating.

My advice for improvement in Go if you have this problem is to pay attention to what you're thinking. During a game if you're not reading, counting, or judging a position, what exactly are you doing?

entropi wrote:Losing does not hurt but not improving does. I want to ask my fellow eternal kyu players, do you have a convincing explanation that does not hurt your ego, why a dan player managed to get to that level and you could not? Personally I cannot find an explanation, unless I lie to myself by thinking that each and every dan player played and/or studies much more than me. No, of course that is a lie, but then I really don't have an explanation. How do you fellow eternal kyu players cope with that feeling?

My explanation has always been the late age at which I started. I don't think that there are many teenagers who get stuck in the kyu ranks and keep slogging at it the way some of us older folks do. I suspect that most of them who do not progress quickly give it up in favor of something easier.

I personally don't know anyone who started when I did who has reached dan level. I suspect that the reason is that we have ingrained certain mental habits that are detrimental to high level go. What makes matters worse, is that we began to apply these habits to go as soon as we started learning the game. Of course we learn to recognize cases in which our instinct is wrong and our false priorities lead us astray, but because the grooves in our minds are deep, it is easy to slip back into them. My mind for example jumps at the opportunity to think about your post instead of thinking about what Naiwei Rui has to say about some joseki I was studying...

I also doubt that people who easily reach dan ranks necessarily study more than I do. I do however suspect that their studies are more effective than mine. They are more effective, because they can remember more accurately the go-specific knowledge because, to put it simply, (and simply is the only way I can put it), there is more room in their brains for it. There is only so much go that can fit into the space my brain has allotted for go - which may be why it spills over into other parts (before going out, taking a leak is urgent, while brushing the teeth is merely big).

daal wrote:I personally don't know anyone who started when I did who has reached dan level.

So I looked at your kgs account, and don't count yourself out. You've still been improving for three years.

That's part of what makes it easier for me. I actually have been improving, just very slowly. I was a 20 kyu in 2005, made it into SDK territory by the end of 2006. From there on out, I was pushing myself for a few years. I was studying, even if I wasn't doing an hour of tsumego a day (that was my goal for awhile), and eventually I stalled. But it turns out that I was still improving, even as I slowed down in my studying. Now I'm a few stones stronger than I was then, and I still seem to be absorbing things. So I cross my fingers and hope that one day I'll be a dan player.

Hmm, what age are you guys talking about? I feel old enough taking up the game at 30. Most of the local players are a fair bit younger than me. But I feel my progress is ok given how few real time ranked games I manage to get in on KGS (55 ranked games for 30k-14k is reasonable enough I think).

Edit: I should say that I'm struggling to break 19k on both OGS and DGS at the moment. So it's not rosy across the board.

Boidhre wrote:Hmm, what age are you guys talking about? I feel old enough taking up the game at 30. Most of the local players are a fair bit younger than me. But I feel my progress is ok given how few real time ranked games I manage to get in on KGS (55 ranked games for 30k-14k is reasonable enough I think).

Edit: I should say that I'm struggling to break 19k on both OGS and DGS at the moment. So it's not rosy across the board.

I'm gonna be 34 soon, and I started playing Go actively in February of this year. I've known the rules for a long time, and I used to enjoy solving go problems some years ago (at the time I was able to do problems in GGPfB 2, but in all truth I never played more than 5 actual games in my life before February of this year. So I'm about KGS 9k right now.

I'm not sure what the attribute the fast growth to. I study a lot, read a lot of books, and try to do a lot of tsumego. I also try to play in person games as much as possible, and get my games reviewed frequently in KGS Teaching Ladder. On top of that, I also take some paid lessons from a couple different teachers online.

in many fields in life the formula for success is something like: talent * effort * luck

in go it is more like: talent * effort

in a single game it is pretty much: skill

if you lost, you failed. there's no chance, no hidden knowledge, no excuse. losing means you were not good enough. if you can't improve, then you either don't work hard enough, or you are again too bad to make it.

this is formulated much more harshly than it needs to be, but it shows why losing hurts

PS: i know a man who sometimes loses the first game of the tournament against an opponent he doesn't like losing to and then goes on losing the other four games just because he is so upset from the first round. watching him shows you that losing can cause real agony