Life In 19x19

Moving this discussion from Rikuge's study journal, Rikuge said he wanted to discover his style (later refined that to finding out what his strengths and weakness are, which I find a very laudible objective). I said, somewhat cheeky, that all of us have amateurish style. Ian Butler jumped in to say:

While you are probably right, and I've heard this said before, I don't quite agree with this. I feel even amateur/low/... players can have their own style of playing. Some naturally play for influence, some are very fight-oriented, some are actually very flexibel and will play to match their opponent. Some make the game more complex and profit from that, while others play simple but solidly... Obviously it's not good to pin down on a certain style as an amateur (or ever), you should always experiment, try out new things, look at the situation and handle it as required. But I feel style can be applied on other levels than the professionals' as well. I feel it's unfair to take style away from us just because we're not professional

Compare it to this: I am definitely not a professional guitar player, far from it. Yet in my amateur ways, I have a certain style of playing. A friend of mine is another guitar player, with a whole other style. Even though we're both amateurs, you can see (or rather, hear) the difference well enough.

I believe that also goes for Go. Perhaps I am mistaken completely. Or perhaps I have a different definition of the word "style".

Or maybe style at a low level is only a way to tell what weaknesses are in our play... (my style is solid -> don't play fast enough. my style is peaceful -> you can't fight well enough. I am a territorial player -> you don't know how to use influence)

On the analogy with music, I think it's flawed and I don't like analogies as a rhetoric device (well, they are good rethoric devices but rarely good arguments).

While professional go may be an art, and oriental culture has viewed Go as an art, I find Go to be a skill. At our level, the deficiencies in our skill outweigh any difference in style. When I'm reviewing games, I cannot figure out what someone's style is. Often their play is incoherent. When I review my games, I see the mistakes, not the style. I may have certain intentions or preferences, for example I prefer playing White because I think komi favors White in a game full of mistakes. I prefer 4-4 because I like to keep things simple in the opening. I would like to emulate Otake's thick play, making a difference in the endgame. That's as close as I get to "style". However, I'm sure Otake wouldn't recognize the least bit of his style in my games.

It's not entirely impossible. The infamous "Captain" on KGS had some sort of style, even if he was only 3-4 dan.

Yearning/pretending to have a "style" is a sign of putting the e before go. My guitar style is bad, my go style is bad, my table tennis style, though attacking oriented, is still quite bad ... The only activity in which I can probably claim to have a style, is my professional one.

That's my strong opinion. How about yours?

Answering the thread question: yes.

When I was 3k, I started having some style and changed styles a few times afterwards. Before, I had played too much no-thinking nonsense to speak of a style, except that I chose strategies to have more fun.

A different question would be: can all amateurs develop an original, unique style? I did, but I would not say that all amateurs do.

Yes, but who cares?

Everybody has got his own style, not only in go.

Saying something else is elitist

My style is to make failed timesujis. Would have got 7th in KPMC if it weren't.

Seven types of go players, by In-Seong Hwang:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlDNSdPdO8Q

Bill Spight wrote:Yes, but who cares?

AlphaGo can say the same about top human pros: "they are all weak, no style"

Joke aside: of course everyone has a style, think of the people you usually play (at local club or online) and you can definitely find examples of solid players, aggressive players, territorial players vs moyo players, etc.

Sure they can.
Just place as many stones as possible on the 4th and 5th line and say you play cosmic go.
That's what I do at least

More seriously, I do acutally think that amateurs can have different styles. Our amateurish mistakes don't prevent that, they just make it less obvious

While I appreciate the passion with which Knotwilg argues for a counterintuitive position, I'd say the answer is pretty obviously "yes." That style might fluctuate--frustrating day? feeling whimsical?--but there are, at least, varying degrees of aggression that Go allows for at most any level. Maybe certain high concepts are critically misunderstood or misapplied at all amateur levels, like "moyo" or "thick" or "light." But I'd venture to say that even DDKs, if they play the same opponent a few times, will have a sense of what it "feels like" to play against that player at a level beyond just their skill level. Inclined towards greed? Aggression? Live-and-let-live?

Maybe the problem here is the term "style"--what I'm describing is basically a player's Go temperament (or their actual temperament, applied to game playing generally or Go more specifically). I have a certain style in this sense, I think, across all sorts of (thinking/board/strategy) games, which I can see in my Go playing. In terms of properly describing my play as "light" or whatever, I can see a moderately strong player looking and saying "that's not what lightness is at all--you're just playing bad moves that are disconnected."

There are two questions that come to mind from this post:

1.) Can amateurs have their own style (the OP)?
- Yes, some people fight a lot, some people are defensive, some go for more points, etc.

2.) *Should* amateurs aim to have their own style?
- Yilun Yang says no. Amateurs should try to play the best move. When the opponent forces them to fight, they should fight. If the opponent makes it so they should play for big moyo, they should do it. In some ways, playing *contrary to* the style you are good at can be educational.

So yes, amateurs have a certain style. But I believe it can lead to mistakes if amateurs try to strictly stick to their favorite way of playing.

It probably doesn't rise to the level of "style" that one would use to describe pro's, but I definitely observe consistent "types" of players. Their type is usually defined by a combination of their strategy and relative skills, and this often dictates my strategy in reply. Here are a few examples:

1. The blind fighter. This is the player to just does nothing but cut, invade, and try to kill from the get go. Usually doesn't play expected moves in josekis, and requires me to think hard sometimes about why moves are not joseki. My strategy is usually to try to be patient, keep my groups strong, and sacrifice when advantageous. If I do this right, either my opponent will waste too much time going after small groups of stones or she will tie herself up in a knot of weak groups and something will die. These players usually defeat themselves if one can avoid letting them kill something big.

2. The middle game guru. If I meet a mid-sdk opponent who plays the fuseki like a ddk but without the clearly unreasonable moves of the blind fighter, I gird myself for the middle game. These guys are amazing at complicating the middle game and usually come up on top if they are able to do so. These games are about trying to hold onto enough of the lead I get in the fuseki to win.

3. The jealous fellow. These players focus almost exclusively on the sides of the board. They opt for territory when ever it's an option in a joseki, and after giving up influence, they will immediately invade to close to the resulting wall. They give up too much influence and the challenge is to use that influence as well as possible. 9 times out of 10, these games end up with me having a large central moyo that my opponent then invades with a move that is much too deep or one of the "too close" invasions dies.

4. The builders. I find these guys on IGS more than elsewhere, but they love frameworks. So, games end up being either a framework race or me trying to tear apart an area in which my opponent and I disagree about whether or not he controlled that area in the first place.

From my limited SDK perspective, it does seem that these players do have what might be called distinctly different styles.

sorin wrote:

Bill Spight wrote:Yes, but who cares?

AlphaGo can say the same about top human pros: "they are all weak, no style"

That's not the kind of thing I meant to convey. When I was 4 kyu I aspired to a fleet footed style. It was a style I admired. Sure, I was weak, but no style? When I was 2 dan somebody pointed out that I had a thick style. I had not realized it, but I did. I had developed that style without intending to. How did that happen? Who cares?

It is true that some styles are bad. A timid style is bad. An overaggressive style is bad. A greedy style is bad. Such styles are bad habits. Weak players have bad habits. What else is new?

The term, style, has a descriptive aspect and a normative aspect. I knew K. C. Kim, Janice's father, when he was a 4 kyu. He had a beautiful style of play. In middle age he went from 4 kyu to 4 dan, a remarkable achievement, which I believe he could not have done without his style. (I haven't seen K. C. for a long time, he may be even stronger now. )

There are aspects of the way individual players play. Pros who have studied many games by an amateur player, say one of his students, can recognize games of that player without knowing the names of the players. Does that mean the player identified has a "style"? Or does it just mean that that particular player makes characteristic mistakes, or combinations of moves, that allow the pro to identify him? Once, Cho Chikun, at his peak, when asked to describe his style said "flexible". Is that a generally accepted type of style? Seems to me that the concept of style of a player is not especially meaningful.

Bill Spight wrote:In middle age he went from 4 kyu to 4 dan, a remarkable achievement, which I believe he could not have done without his style.

How is style related to making remarkable progress?

I think most Go players have a consistent enough style. The idea that you can only have a style if you are above a certain strength is unfathomable to me.