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A short while ago there was a topic on GoDiscussions.com about something or other (actually, it was in the thread Games you wish you had resigned.), which at the end mutated into a discussion about the fun of playing Go vs. the level of the player. The popular sentiment was, as expected, that the stronger you get the more pleasurable the game gets. This sentiment is shared by many others I talked to over the years, in person and on-line, and it seems to be universal regardless of the club or country.
As a result, people push to get stronger and everybody who is not a dan-level player yet dreams of becoming one.
I disagreed with this, and spoke up to that effect.
There were quite a few people who supported what I said.
Here is an argument I gave:
LPDavid:
While worrying too much about your rating might hurt you in a specific game, on the long run it can give you focus to improve.
It's a lot easier to keep your focus when you are going after a specific goal (I want to reach 1 dan) than a generic one (I want to get better).
Bantari:
So you reach 1d, and then what? Set your goal to 2d.
And then what? 3d? 4d? 5d? Pro?
You're always chasing.
This way lies ulcers.
The problem is - if your main goal in Go is "to improve", then once you reached saturation and you can't improve anymore, then what? Give up Go and start Chess?
And another:
rover:
The dan player can, if he chooses, play a fun game, yet still play a good game. But the weaker player (like me) just makes bad moves. Believe me, it's not fun.
Bantari:
You assume that from a point of view of a dan player its different?
Its the same old story, regardless of the rank....
20k wishes to be 10k, because then its "different" and "more fun" somehow...
10k wishes to be 5k, because then its "different" and "more fun" somehow...
5k wishes to be 1k, because then its "different" and "more fun" somehow...
1k wishes to be dan player, because then its "different" and "more fun" somehow...
When you are a dan player, you think "pros play so well, it must be more fun and different when you are a pro and not a small bumbling dan like myself"...
See the point?
We are back to the endless chase that can never be satisfied.
The main idea I have is that in my experience people get so caught up in ranks, ratings, and improvement that they forget to enjoy the game. They always something like "I work towards this or that goal, work hard, and *then* I will have fun, you'll see!" But when that goal is reached, they just move to another one, and again they will "have fun later".
Well, this does not necessarily mean that they do not enjoy playing and studying Go. They certainly do, otherwise they would move on to something else.
So, this is/was my position on this particular subject.
Still, there was something nagging at me in the back of my head. Some thought that refused to go away but was too faint to capture and analyze. I realized that I was not really all that secure in my opinion, not really convinced of its validity. If I could only figure out why... it drove me bonkers!
And then I had it!
I made the grave sin of forgetting how I myself felt when I was a beginner!
So I started to recall and then I remembered.
Yes!
I remember how it was to be a complete beginner... and how it was to be a 20k, 15k... 5k, 1k...
I thought about it. Did I really have had as much fun then as I have now? Not really.
But what does it mean? Was my argument about fun as a function of strength flawed?
Do my own experiences contradict my well thought-out arguments?
Let us dig deeper.
Since I seem to have more fun playing now as a dan-level (DL) player then I had when
I was a double-digit kyu (DDK) player or even for most of my existence as a single-digit
kyu (SDK) player, it stands to reason that there was a t least one point in my development
as player in which the level of pleasure changed. What's more, when I recall my life as
DDK and compare with the period I spent as a SDK, I have to admit that I also had more
fun as a SDK.
However, granulating it even further does not seem to always contradict my initial theory. Did I have more fun playing as a 12k than as 15k? How about the difference between 7k and 5k? Nothing… How about 1d and 1k? Still nothing. But there is a very definitive difference between 5k and 1k. And between 15k and 5k. And so on… So somewhere there, between some of the levels, there were moments in which the level of pleasure I derived from Go made a sudden jump.
Which seems to indicate that its not really the rating (and thus playing strength, lets assume they are equivalent for now) per se that drives the pleasure level but something else. I have to remember.
When was the very first time I felt an increase in enjoying the game?
Thinking about it, I still remember it like it was yesterday. I was sitting
in my room in Poland, with a green paper board and cheap plastic stones, and
I was remembering a joseki somebody or other just showed me in the club.
My first joseki! Even the word sounded exotic and mysterious, and I felt
like one of those old-time explorers after finding a new lost civilization
or an as-yet-untouched treasure! Life was great and I was ready to fly to
the moon! The whole game seemed to suddenly make sense, and I felt like a pro!
I was putting the same joseki pattern on the board over and over again, for what
seemed like hours… I did not really had any clue what the moves mean, past the most
rudimentary understanding, but I was still coming up with variations and continuations,
one more silly than then other. But I didn't care - I was in heaven.
And from that point on, I tried to play the same joseki in each one of my games for a while, no matter what the opponent did, I was pushing my stones into the same pattern regardless of the moves of my opponents or the overall board position. The joseki is the same which was the first for many of us, I imagine.
In any case, it was an epiphany for me, and while I was still 20k, I felt I could now hold my head high and was rewarded with an occasional win against other 20k players.
For reference:
At that time in Poland, 20k was the lowest rating anybody could get, so even weaker players had
to be 20k to get rating and be able to play in a tournament. But, of course, most beginners play
weaker than real 20k players, and so I remember when a solid 20k could whoop me with 9 handicaps,
even though I was also officially a 20k. I think that now this lower limit got dropped to 30k in
Poland, or at least this is how it looks on the official rating list of PSG.
I am not sure I can remember all of my epiphanies since then. Two of them were certainly reading the books "Life and Death" and "Tesuji" from the Elementary Go Series, which I managed to "inherit" from my neighbor after he moved out to germany and left his Go book collection behind. Each of these books propelled me by a few stones in strength, and the understanding I gained certainly influenced the increase in pleasure I derived from Go.
Another one of these moments was when I was told that a player who plays with his head too close
to the board will never be any good. Which means that you should not only concentrate on the
local situation but also always take the whole-board position into account. Stated like that,
it was a revelation to me, and I think that this is what finally got me to 5k.
Another epiphany!
It is harder from me to tell what bumped me higher up the ranking ladder. I think that some notion of own "style" and the idea of a game developing along some predetermined guidelines (I sued to play san-ren-sei then, and had good success) contributed. Up until then I mostly responded to what my opponent did rather than trying to force the issue with well-thought-out whole-game strategy. I got really firm grip on thickness and moyos, and concepts like aji started to play a role in my in-game deliberations. All in all, this epiphany was softer, more smudged, and not so easy to pinpoint exactly, but it was still there. And it too gave me a jolt and increased my appreciation of Go.
However, there were also long periods in my Go life in which the amount of pleasure I derived from Go did not change, even though my rank and strength increased. One of such period was from 1k to 5d. I understand more now than I did when I was 1k, and I certainly play stronger, but I honestly cannot say that Go is more fun now, not by any measurable amount. Why is that?
As a sidenote, and in case you're interested, below is the diagram showing this first joseki I ever learned. :)
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Or, at least, my theory of player development along the rating scale and the inevitable barriers (s)he meets along the way.
So here it goes:
The development of each Go player is accomplished by two different means, in two different modes if you wish.
#1.
The more dramatic mode - the epiphanies - is when some major adjustment to
our ideas about the game happens. This might be shedding of a bad habit,
or getting a grip on a novel idea we did not understand before. It can be
anything and everything, the important thing is that it propels your
understanding of the game to a new level and up a notch. Usually it
translates into a sudden upward jump in the rating, but this is not
always the case.
#2.
The other mode - the more steady and slow progress period - right after the epiphany,
when we assimilate and crystallize the new idea(s), experiment with them
which often leads to a drastic change in the way we play. This can translate
into ratings in various ways, most common is a slow but steady increase.
Sometimes there is an initial drop in rating, while inertia forces us to
play as we had before and before our game adjusts to the new idea(s).
Often there is first a rank decrease but then the improvement follows.
After a period of the slow and steady improvement from #2, a stagnation often occurs. This happens after we have assimilated the new idea(s) as much as was possible - in a sense, when these ideas pushed our game as far as they could. And then we hit a bump on the road, one of the infamous "barriers" Go players are so petrified about. What we need is the next epiphany to get over it and move on and up.
Epiphanies, ideas, bumps and barriers.
But how does this all connect with the initial topic of fun as a function of playing strength?
My theory is that each epiphany is exactly what not only gives you an eventual kick up the ranking scale, but also the very thing that increases the pleasure you get from playing Go to a new level. The slow-and-steady progress from #2 does not do any such thing, only the epiphanies do! So while your strength progresses in a jump-then-steady-growth-then-jump way, your pleasure progresses in a jump-then-nothing-then-jump way.
In my initial argument on the GoDiscussions.com, I forgot my humble beginnings, and the epiphanies I had, and only remembered the -then-nothing- part of the pleasure path which I have been stuck in for the past few years. I have to apologize for such omission.
But there still remains a small issue or thought which is hard to silence, at least for me personally. If I had no measurable increase in appreciation of Go since I was around 1k, were there no epiphanies? And if not, why not? Surely, a 5d player understand Go on a different level than a 1k. Some could even argue that to move from 1k to 1d a large jump in understanding has to occur. So, what happened to me?
The only thing I can think of is that I made the mental jump that usually happens between 1k and 1d *before* I reached 1k. Maybe in my situation, I needed the jump to reach 1k, after all, not everybody follows exactly the same path, and not every 1k/1d is exactly the same. And ratings vary from place to place… I moved so much, maybe I jumped the barriers in the wrong places? Maybe this is why I am so screwed up sometimes? Lol.
I don't know.
But I do not think that I have a radically different/better understanding of Go now than
when I was 1k. Sure, I can read deeper, I know more joseki, I am more comfortable playing
with White, and I can apply more playing "styles". I am more experienced, my intuition has
greatly developed during the last few years.
But no epiphanies.
In a sense - this worries me. Maybe it shouldn't, maybe I am due for one any day now. Maybe if I just had the time and discipline to study more… but no, to me epiphanies seldom came through studying. Usually it was a word, a sign, a move, a game, which opened some until-now-locked door and released a flood of new ideas. You cannot force that, and the harder you push the more distant and unreachable it seems to become.
All I can do to increase my chances is to stay exposed to Go, think about the game, the people, the values, and try to approach things from unexpected angles.
Same goes for my games. Strange moves, strange ideas... bad moves, bad ideas... good games... fun. Every now and then I catch myself trying to re-write the accepted Go theory. For a while I remember being fascinated by a 3-space-highER approach to virtually any opposing corner stone. It was a weird play, but more often than not I ended up with a wall and huge thickness somewhere - it was a large scale play, totally incorrect, but making up for that in surprise value. That and the fact that I was usually much more knowledgeable and familiar with the resulting shapes and directions. I even managed to beat some 6d players with that. Occasionally. Usually, anybody at and above 4d gave me really hard time.
Here is my opersonally patented "3-space-highER" approach. Enjoy.
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Another weird idea I had is more recent. It is based on low play - san-sans in the corners, followed by a kosumi approach to any opposing corner stones. I have seen it on KGS a few times, and it fascinated me. I have never before seen anything like that, it created games which seemed to be totally out-of-the-book, with many of the standard theories seemingly inapplicable. Of course, against a strong(er) opposition, such silliness never goes unpunished, but the fun of that all can be exhilarating.
Below is a small taste of what can happen. Diagram 1 of Fig.3 shows a kosumi approach to hoshi point, while Diagrams 2 and 3 show one possible continuation - one that I seem to encounter by far the most, regardless of the level of the opposing player.
| Position 1 | Position 2 | Position 3 |
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Silly, no? But fun. And, in spite of silly appearance, can be amazingly effective against suprised opponents. :)
After a few months of exploring such strange creatures and constructs, I oscillate and switch to playing as correctly and "bookish" as I possibly can, aiming for the best possible move I can find in any given position. Like the silliness, this usually keeps me busy for a few months until I figure out some new weird scheme.
I try to think out of the box, in search for epiphanies.
But maybe I'm done with epiphanies?
Used up all my coupons, and there is no more for me?
Well, there is always hope.
And there is always fun!
As for any more epiphanies - only time will tell.