Life In 19x19

Personally speaking, the biggest road block or "stall" I've encountered thus far is human emotion. When I was weaker, I'd lose a lot of games and quickly get frustrated and discouraged. I didn't ask myself why I lost. I didn't ask myself why my opponent won. I didn't even look over my games, for the most part. And all of that factored in to me getting stuck a lot when I was a DDK.

Now, however, I've learned to accept losses. When I play games nowadays, it almost feels like I search for ways to lose. That might sound confusing, so I'll explain. Instead of playing moves that feel safe, I try new things. I try to kill more, ect. This doesn't always work, of course, but I can learn from failures like that.

I think another roadblock has been my, ahem, instinctual style of play. Here recently I've been trying to adjust that.

Again, sometimes I get frustrated. It's easy to look at my 4-21 record this month and think "why do I play this game?" except now, I don't let that bother me as much. Instead I try to focus on how I can learn from those lossses. That's not to say human emotion isn't a factor in why I'm still an 8k (that and not playing many ranked games this month, haha), but I think losing bothers me a lot less than it used to.

And I think that's what demotivates a lot of beginning players. In Go, I've found you tend to lose more than you win. But perhaps that's my own experience.

hailthorn011 wrote:Now, however, I've learned to accept losses. When I play games nowadays, it almost feels like I search for ways to lose. That might sound confusing, so I'll explain. Instead of playing moves that feel safe, I try new things. I try to kill more, ect. This doesn't always work, of course, but I can learn from failures like that.

that's a lot like Takamiya's advice to "play where you want to play"

there was a thread about it (don't recall if it was here or on godiscussions)

xed_over wrote:

hailthorn011 wrote:Now, however, I've learned to accept losses. When I play games nowadays, it almost feels like I search for ways to lose. That might sound confusing, so I'll explain. Instead of playing moves that feel safe, I try new things. I try to kill more, ect. This doesn't always work, of course, but I can learn from failures like that.

that's a lot like Takamiya's advice to "play where you want to play"

there was a thread about it (don't recall if it was here or on godiscussions)

I think it adds more enjoyment to play where you want to play rather than always looking for places you think you should play. I think that's one of the greatest things about Go is discovering new things for yourself.

hailthorn011 wrote:Now, however, I've learned to accept losses. When I play games nowadays, it almost feels like I search for ways to lose. That might sound confusing ...

It doesn't sound confusing. It sounds like rationalizing.

Hmm, I would have to say my biggest problem is not playing enough, I mean I have a hard time staring at a computer screen to play so I cant concentrate on the game properly lol and I prefer to play on an actual board, problem with that is no go in my area the closest go club to me is over 2 hours away. But ya for the most part my road blocks is not having anyone to play.

Mivo wrote:

hailthorn011 wrote:Now, however, I've learned to accept losses. When I play games nowadays, it almost feels like I search for ways to lose. That might sound confusing ...

It doesn't sound confusing. It sounds like rationalizing.

In games I often problem with this...but when I realize that I'm not truly analyzing the position, I'm just justifying to myself I'm going to make the move I'm looking at, that's when I stop and just go ahead an play...might as well save the time. I think this type of mentality is (for me at least) one of the big roadblocks to improving...Also a great quote I read in another thread (but apparently not great enough to remember exactly where) was someone talking about considering move A vs. B for some time...then rejecting both for C with only minimal thought...that's the other thing to work on...

Hi,

hailthorn011 wrote:Instead of playing moves that feel safe, I try new things.

I feel the same. But it usually gets me in trouble .

In a recent game, I invaded but failed badly. My opponent thwarted my attempts to make two eyes. But I did enjoy trying !

Cheers
tezza

I've been stuck at around the 2 kyu mark on KGS for about a year now. This is the most common rank on the server. This large sample size results in a high variation in actual strength in this rank. Some games are a cake walk to me, while others have me feeling horribly outmatched.

Besides my current situation, I've never felt like I've stayed at any previous rank too long. 5 kyu took a little while to get past, but I still managed to do it in just a couple months time.