after seeing posts and interacting with enough people, i've become curious why people want to achieve a certain rank.

i used to have a tremendous urge to become 1d, but after becoming it, it doesn't seem to be such a huge deal. I still lose games, i still win games, i make a ton of mistakes, and go is still a mystery. that's without going into how subjective "rank" really is, a 1d here might be a 3k there or might be a 3d elsewhere. but for the most part, the idea that if i became a certain rank my play or perception of the game would change dramatically compared to when i was weaker seems to be completly untrue. these days all i really want is to play better without any regard to rank, and that's enough for me.

So if you're one of those people rushing to become a certain rank, for what reason are you so motivated to become that rank?

Yeah, I have been saying it for years! And I would also be really interested in any answers.

My personal feeling is that either:
a) people are under the impression that go is somehow 'more fun' when you are 1d (as opposed to 5k, for example), or
b) the game is somehow 'different' then, or
c) they chase after some imagined status within their local groups.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

It's not so much about a particular rank being special as it is about having a goal to work towards and an extra reason to feel pleased when you get there. I'm currently aiming for 1d, but as soon as I get there I'm going to aim higher.

The first point to make is that having concrete goals helps a lot of people pace themselves. Saying I want to do some sit-ups this month will have a very different effect than saying I want to do 500. YMMV. (As I have suggested before, people often don't pace themselves well with go-goals because people are bad at forecasting long-term projects in general, and because they misleadingly generalize from the beginning of the project to the end of the project.)

Among possible concrete goals, I think the only problem with 1d is how long it will take most people to get there at the point that they choose it as a goal. I think it's reasonable to say that a nine-stone difference is the maximum rank difference at which it's still possible for two go players to have a conversation. By that standard, a 1d can try to follow professional play and beat a pro at 9H, while a 3k is on shakier ground. Most go literature and problem books, a 1d can hope to profit from. 1d is also reasonable in Western go circles to the extent that below 1d, there are plenty of people who will volunteer their time to help you scramble up another stone, but above 1d, the ranks suddenly become much sparser.

Now, you could with perfect justice say that this argument applies to 2d or 1k as well as to 1d. True, true! But what on earth is the point of dividing the ranking system into kyu and dan, student and master, if not to make dan cooler than kyu?! If we wanted to be colorless dweebs, we would use straight up Elo points like chess players.

Instead we're colorful dweebs.

Regarding the idea that you have got somewhere important when you reach 1d, Cho Chikun 9p, one of the greatest players in Japan, once remarked that he doesn't really understand much about go, the more he thinks about it the more he realizes the vastness of what he doesn't know. He has won more Japanese tournaments than anyone else in modern times but he still doesn't understand go.

As for the utility of ranks, they do help us to get the playing conditions right when playing someone for the first time. In the EGF there is an Elo-like rating system

often, if you could go back in time, what would you do differently?

For me getting to Dan level is about getting to play the game I want to play, and not the prescription of most strong club players with a handicap mentality.

Get a teacher much, much earlier.

FYI: this is basically going to be a post on why I think a teacher is important and also how i got over my problem of wanting to be ___dan. This'll be long but i promise i'll get to the point.

I've discussed it before in other posts, but having a teacher provided a sense of perspective about Go that self study did not.

It is very easy to view concepts in Go as "right" and "wrong" or that improvement can be seen as definite and having a direct linear relation to whatever "effort" you put in. It is also very easy to approach games with a much harsher mindset and to take wins and losses much harder when you're going it on your own.

This changed once I got a teacher.

First of all, my teacher helped me get a better gauge on improvement. In the beginning, she explained that I had poor fundamentals, and that it would take awhile to correct all of them. When i asked a timeframe of correcting the bad habits, she said it would take at LEAST a year. Through our lessons, I slowly began to see the change. I used to respond to her move suggestions with disbelief and gradually over time I would begin to say "i considered that". Now I sometimes play her suggestions, maybe not immediately but they will come up. I can't see how I might ever have gotten this if I did self study.

I'm also going to point out that she would teach me things that were important for me to learn. I did not learn much about proper fuseki or joseki during our early lessons because she wanted me to figure out better shapes. As my concepts of shapes got better then the joseki/fuseki concepts showed up. That's much more useful than doing it yourself.

Secondly, my teacher revised my expectations. We all want to improve quickly the same way we might've when we begun, but there is so much to learn. My teacher continually stressed "look, this takes time" and also responded to my eagerness to improve with "well, go play Go". Between that and her showing me good moves that were beyond my comprehension (AND EXPLAINING THEM) i was able to see how far away improvement was. When you get to see that your goal is a marathon's length away, all you can do is keep running. So I stopped worrying about the finish line and worried about running instead.

Finally, and most importantly, I stopped worrying about winning and losing.

The easiest way of explaining why is that there are plenty of mistakes in a game made by both sides to where the balance changes, so feeling like at any point you could've lost makes you a little less sad about a loss and less overjoyed about a win.

The longer way of explaining it is that at your rank, you will win at most 50% of your games. If you were better, you'd win more but you'd still lose. And even then with all the topics that are in go, that statistic can get skewed very, very easily. So in a way, if losing and winning at your proper rank is expected, the more important thing to focus on is your moves. Once you realize this, while you have winning as a goal, you focus more on making the correct move. If you win, so be it, and if you lose, so be it. The more important thing is figuring out the correct way of playing the game or trying to win a lost game.

An old way i used to play was that if I was behind I would get hyper aggressive for no reason and attack anything and everything to create problems. My teacher used to say to me me "I have no idea what you're trying to do here". When this happened, I always wanted to respond "I'm trying to WIN" but never did. The way she helped me get over it was by saying "No matter what, you have to play Go. If your opponent makes a mistake that's when you can turn things around and win. If they don't, then it means they played a good game. Because they're at your level, there is always a chance." You're not going to get that revelation if you self study.

I'll wrap things up with a concept from Kyudo (Japanese archery) which is "seisha hicchū". The concept in a nutshell is that if you do things correctly, you'll hit your target. Above all else, my teacher has taught me that if i do things right, i'll win. And if i don't, learn from my mistakes and win the next game. And eventually, if i keep at it, i'll be at a higher rank. (Which, if you've heard him talk before, is something Takemiya Masaki has said) As a result of getting a teacher, I enjoy go more, i embrace my mistakes, and i'm a much better player as an eventual result. And i've dropped this whole concept of "___d or DIE"

What it says to me is that the higher rank you get, the more you become aware of what you don't know.
When you first start off as learner of this new game, all you know is that there are some black and white pieces to be placed on a board according to some rules. Then you start knowing about connecting the stones together to form a chain and to fence off some territory.
Then you learn to fence off more territory than the other guy with less pieces by using the sides and corners.
Later you learn, it's not just fencing territory, you can also try to invade and prevent your opponent from forming territory.
The higher our understanding becomes, the more we are aware of as to what needs to be done but the question is how to find the answers to what we are now aware of.
Of course at Cho Chikun's level, he's not likely to find a more experienced person to help him in his quest.

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http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

I stated in a goals thread that I wanted to 'become strong'.

I don't know what rank that corresponds to. I'll let you know when I get there.

OK Let us know when you beat Yi Sedol.

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http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

Isn't your rank supposed to be a reflection of your playing ability? Ranks are subjective across ranking organizations, sure, but it still gives you an idea of how strong you are, especially relative to how strong you used to be.

You ask why I would pursue 1 dan? That's like asking a chess player why they want to reach 2200 Elo specifically - because that's where you are considered to be a "master" - so why not shoot for that rank? Even if 1 dan isn't special like it used to be in pre-1900s Japan (with a 1 dan certificate you could open your own go school) it still seems like a fine goal to shoot for. What other rank am I supposed to try to achieve? 3 kyu? Mid-range 2 dan? Or should I just say I'm "trying to be as good as I can be" and say that's good enough?

1 dan may be artificial, but so are most things in this world. Are you honestly more capable of making decisions once you turn 18? Probably not, but there needs to be some age where people are considered to be adults. In the same way there needs to be some rank cut off where you go from student to master even if the master still as a lot to learn.

I have sometimes thought about how I would feel when I reach 1 dan. I know I'll feel some accomplishment, probably more than I should, but I don't think go will suddenly gain any amount of clarity or that I won't make mistakes anymore. I'm not pursuing 1 dan because I want to be perfect, I'm pursuing 1 dan because it's 1 dan.

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"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

I want to be stronger because I'm tired of playing wrong moves.

I want to be 9d to see if the mid-dan Korean grandpas at the club, after annihilating them every game, will actually take handi from me. It will be glorious.

I want to be 1 dan so I can start posting in the amateur forum.



I used to think a) but no more. It's loads of fun now. And it would have been loads of fun back then if I'd have let it been.

I still believe in b) I know the game is very different then what I thought at 12kyu, And I feel like at a higher rank I'll be more conscious of how I push groups on to other groups. And I'll be more conscious of how many points loose formations will become. And how many points additional moves will add. Or how many points will be lost by neglecting moves.

I suppose c) also applies. I just always want to be better.

Also I want to be strong enough to teach. But I suppose for that I'd need to practice teaching instead of practicing playing go well.

If you look at those bell curves showing rank distribution, you'll see that everybody and their brother is 5k and that there are far fewer 1ds. Being another sheep in the herd is not particularly glamorous.

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Patience, grasshopper.

Well, I definitely agree to all the points above about being tired of mistakes, but also:

A stronger player once said, "around 1d, you tend to be able to make sense of a players moves - there are mistakes, but you see some kind of understandable plan behind each move." I personally feel that now around 1k-1d I'm significantly better at planning the whole board, and seeing effects of particular moves or sente/gote differences also further away on the board. At least when I'm concentrating and not playing fast. Similarly appreciating stronger players games.

Perhaps I just was lucky an learned something about the above at the right rank, but for me, Bantari's option B is at least somewhat true. But not A, go is still just as fun

You'd think that, but i look back on my 3k-5k days fondly. I always had someone to play at the club and we would always argue the result afterwards. As i got stronger i played less people in my club and now I only play one guy consistently. I sorta miss the days when i could show up anywhere and play most people even.



Sort of, but not exactly. Your rank is more like an average of your strengths and weaknesses in go. Which means you could be a 5k in the opening, a 1d in life and death, and a 3k in attack and defense. If you end up playing and losing to people who are great in the opening you might think you are lower than you might be. And if you play a bunch of people and can beat them in life and death situations you might think you are higher than you might be. This is compounded by the problem that in clubs people are only exposed to one playing style if they play the same group.

Also, people define a "dan" differently. A lot of asian teachers i've come across define a 1d as having a decent grasp of all the fundamentals.

I think it's better to say that your rank is just an easy yardstick as to which you can compare yourself to others and has very little to do with playing ability.

Chess players don't use kyu and dan but they do have fixations with surpassing certain ELO thresholds (i.e. every 100 points after 1800 seems to be considered serious improvement, below that most people can expect to hit 1500/1600 with some effort). There's also the A/B/C/D class player stuff. ELO numbers look colourless but humans apply plenty of colour to them.

Very nice question, IMHO.

When I began my fourth approach to Go, some three years ago, I had grand illusions about “reaching 1d in a year”, meanwhile I have found that, at my age (now 56) and with that little time I have for real study, I can be happy if I reach SDK in my lifetime.

So, while I still read Go literature (meanwhile I have more than I’ll be able to read through in this life), and while I still enjoy reading it, I have given up on improving. I mean, I love to learn new things, but I’m not any more in it for the competition, all that I’m interested in is having more fun playing, and, if possible, to learn more about myself and the world while doing so.

The only reason why I still want to get better is that I find myself teaching Go to lots of people, mostly kids but also adults, and I want to give them the best start possible, but here I have no ___ d/___k goal, I just want to understand more of Go to be able to convey the most fundamental, essential, core ideas of the game as fast as possible and as easily as possible.

For me, the game of Go has a lot to do with personal progress, and I want those people to get as much out of Go as they can, I want them to have as much fun as they can, I want them to stick with it and enjoy playing Go long after I’ve go-ne.

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