Life In 19x19

Up to now, I thought fast time limits were unhelpful, but I might be starting to change my mind.

Slow games allow the conscious practice of applying newly learned ideas to one's play and reading as deeply as possible, that is quite certain, and must therefore be useful.

But can the same apply to fast games, even full-on blitz games?

Do you find that if you make the conscious effort to play well, with thoughtful strategy and careful reading, the time pressure and speed of play make the experience more intense and focussed? In other words, does the combination of speed and attention induce a flow state in you?

It does for me until my games start getting so complicated that I wish I had more time to read out my options better.

I'm cynical that ten second blitz is good for anyone. I have a friend who swears by it and reads as much as he can as fast as he can, but in my experience, games always degenerate into the losing player playing hope-you-choke-on-time-pressure moves, probably after a messy fuseki aimed at throwing your opponent off.


I'm bad at 10-second-blitz. Can you tell?

I prefer slow games, and rarely blitz. But some concepts are learned by repetition, and fast games can be useful for getting that repetition. Of course, people learn in different ways. I learned a lot by playing a mix of fast and slow games as a ddk (though I've always heavily favored slow games).

YMMV.

I buy it to this extent: it is possible to play carelessly but slowly, and actually exerting yourself can be done just as easily in a fast game as a slow one.

I've been playing some Arimaa lately (and I'm not good at it, so a grain of salt), but I find that I focus best on the faster games, and let my mind wander when I'm waiting a minute to see the next move.

The thing that got me wondering about it was my experience with a guitar.

Definitely, you should practice new licks and techniques SLOWLY. Violinists and pianists say the same thing on their fora, too.

Yet, at some point you have to bring a piece up to speed, and I find the process of gradually setting a higher tempo on the metronome concentrates my mind and strengthens each skill I practice.

Again, suppose you want to play licks automatically as you play a song. You have to start by playing them slowly and self-consciously; but, at least for me, it's when I begin bringing them up to speed that the learning really kicks in. That is, I make dozens and dozens of errors, but with repeated attempts the lick becomes polished and fluent. You can't get there without bringing up the tempo.

So, in go, my theory is that you should play slow games and fast games. Slow games for self-consciously applying things, and fast (but not insanely fast) games for pushing up the speed and efficiency of your thinking. Just playing (i.e., not putting effort into it), does not count.

Fast games are a way to test multiple things quickly. They could help with repetition, too. I think the best way to improve is by mixing fast games with slow games.

I think the question depends a bit on where you are in your go development. Up to a certain point, blitz games offered me practically nothing besides cheap thrills. Mostly games turned into a slugfest and ended when one of us (mostly me) was caught unawares and knocked out. This was at a time when in normal games I was always the one in byo-yomi when my opponent still had half of his time. I didn't enjoy the blitz games much either, because the outcome seemed so random, and often left me with the feeling that my "basic instinct" sucked.

Then at one point I discovered Canadian time, and after watching TMarks games at 1 + 3:00/25 I opened a blitz account and played most of my games with this setting, which allows you to occasionally think more than 10 seconds when you judge the situation to be critical. For a while, I played most of my games on this account, and played tons of them.

In another thread about a year ago, I wrote:

For me, the most significant aspect of blitz is that I don't have such an emotional investment in my success, and I think this is having the effect of making my play less cowardly. As a result, I've been playing games that are exciting and interesting instead of plodding and uninspired. This is what is fun for me.

As far as learning goes, having gotten in quite a few games has helped me to appreciate such concepts as aji and thickness, and I've gotten much better at keeping calm under pressure. I think I'm also developing a better eye both for seeing the results of a tradeoff, and for seeing what parts of the board are critical. I believe that all of these things are reflected in my slower games as well.

The caveat was that not thinking long enough became a habit that took quite a while to unlearn. But if you can prevent that, it's a nice opportunity to get in a lot of experience in a short period of time, and to toy a bit with new ideas. In the long run, I think it helped me to relax in regular games, and not to agonize so much over every move. Also, I'm no longer always the first to reach byo-yomi.

daal wrote:The caveat was that not thinking long enough became a habit that took quite a while to unlearn.

This. I'm still trying to unlearn this. It's very hard to unlearn once you learn, but it can be done.

I believe that it's good to play both. I play some games at my club that take 3 hours. However, I also play games 45 each no byo-yomi at my club too. It's a lot on your playing style too. You definitely can't neglect reading. Fast games also improves how fast you can read into things. If you're playing somebody who's stronger then you, you most definitely will want to play a longer game, but while playing someone your own strength it's good to try and play a little faster.

Pushing timings for things like life and death(IE how long does it take you to solve the problems) is good but overall it is better to play better than it is to play faster, because in the context of a game if you play fast games you will be solving problems that don't necessarily relate to the problems that you would normally.. I find that when my strength increases, my rating improves, but then I have to find ways to play faster at the new level, because I start losing on time, until I am comfortable playing at that higher level.

If i might share my personal opinion on this topic, I believe fast go has absolutely no interest for me at the time being. I believe that to be able to actually benefit from fast go one needs to be a mid-dan at least. In my personal opinion, playing fast go while not having the reading, shape evaluation, directional judgement, and whole board understanding that is necessary to play well is a total waste of time, and a perfect nest to learn bad habits. And as some said before, some players only try to make the situation ultra complex and then push their opponents into making mistakes just for the sake of winning, which for me is against the purpose of playing to enjoy the game and hopefully improving slowly by actively thinking about what next move to play.

sol'sbaduk wrote: Fast games also improves how fast you can read into things.

For me reading improvement doesn't come from trying to read fast, but rather from the slow reading repetition while taking your time (that's my personal opinion )

Jash wrote:If i might share my personal opinion on this topic, I believe fast go has absolutely no interest for me at the time being. I believe that to be able to actually benefit from fast go one needs to be a mid-dan at least. In my personal opinion, playing fast go while not having the reading, shape evaluation, directional judgement, and whole board understanding that is necessary to play well is a total waste of time, and a perfect nest to learn bad habits. And as some said before, some players only try to make the situation ultra complex and then push their opponents into making mistakes just for the sake of winning, which for me is against the purpose of playing to enjoy the game and hopefully improving slowly by actively thinking about what next move to play.

sol'sbaduk wrote: Fast games also improves how fast you can read into things.

For me reading improvement doesn't come from trying to read fast, but rather from the slow reading repetition while taking your time (that's my personal opinion )

See, I think fast go improves shape awareness better than just about anything else. I don't think it really helps reading. BUT shape awareness improves your ability to see candidate moves, so it's not that your reading gets deeper, but that you're reading better lines in the first place.

I like Blitz (10-20 seconds/move) because to me, in the end, Go is a game. When I start taking it too seriously, I'll start hating it. But, I suppose tournament games should have a longer time limit.

FWIW

Speed of play does little to improve your game, it's depth of review, and analysis, which help that