Sorry for quoting myself, but one thing seems important to me:

I wrote Actually, I believe that these things: having more fun and learning more about oneself and the world, are really profound improvements to focus upon, but more on a meta level. So, I guess I haven’t really given up on improving

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

This is a really good question and there were some very interesting (and fun! ) answers up to now.

On Bantari's ideas:


on a) Honestly, I do believe in this. Of course, I always had a lot of fun playing go (well, mostly ), but now at around 6/7k EGF I enjoy it in another way more than at.. let's say 15k or 20k, because I see more subtleties, which make me appreciate this beautiful game more. Creating damezumari, snapbacks or being more efficient (e.g. reaching 2 (or even more) goals with just one move), countering an attack and all this make the game more interesting for me. Getting to xd/k is not the main goal, but I do believe that rising in the ranks let's me enjoy more subtleties.

on b) I've heard of that being said and I'm interested if it's really true. I hope to be able to find out some day.

on c) This is definitely true for some people. I met one such person at a club. He was new and was really into the game and improved quickly. After some time (and a lot of ranks into high kuy level) improvement got a lot slower. Being rank-obsessed, he promoted himself to reach his goal of 1d (although in truth he wasn't that strong) and soon after pretty much stopped playing at all. Well, he kinda "reached" his goal, but to what price? I think, such cases are really sad..

My personal two cents on this interesting question: For a long time (quite a few years now), I always wanted to be at least 4kyu (now 2kyu), because I wanted to catch up with my boyfriend so we could play without handicap, on equal terms (and I still want that). What that (and similar stuff) did to me was that I got pretty rank-obsessed myself.. Getting stuck at 6/7k for three years now (also due to lots of university work) I finally feel that I don't have to rush it and to pinpoint it to some number. I will eventually get there someday. Until then I want to improve my fundamentals and lots and LOTS of other stuff needs improvement as well. I think in the course of this, I'll reach this goal (and hopefully rise a bit higher as well ).

EDIT: Corrected some typos..

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By the way, Bonobo, I think a 12k aware of his own limitations probably makes a better teacher than a 2k who has to teach everything to his students all at once. If you eavesdrop on teaching games in the KTL or the Beginner room, you can sometimes hear the most ludicrous things - people dogmatically maintaining positions that are flat out wrong. I've been guilty of it myself, in the past. (There's also a particular style of harangue people pick up from professional teachers, that is only helpful if you have the intuitions and reading to back it up...)

"When I see a move in a high dan or pro game which does something I could have never come up with myself in a beautiful, creative and/or deep way then I know why I want to become stronger."

Maybe it is just an illusion but I have felt that the stronger I'm becoming the more beautiful my games are.

When you see two people of 5 stones difference play each other and talk about the same game afterwards in a review then sometimes it feels as if they are talking about a totaly different game. It is the same game but the interpretation of what happened is different.

Cheers,
Otenki

Short-term 1-2d AGA, just to be past the middle of the pairing sheets in the US Open. Also, to begin to justify what I have spent on books.

Long-term to play in NAMT or other tournament that allows me to enjoy the ambiance of the strong players room.

So long as they post them alphabetically, I will never attain this.

I meant results sheets.

I can get you in there now, if you're willing to be a game recorder

Done that. It was fun and part of my motivation. But it's sort of a bridesmaid/bride thing.

I'm sure some people think this way, but don't you think this kinda sounds bitter? Regarding your specific points:

Go is more fun when I'm improving, and an improvement in rank is the best proxy for improvement overall that I know of (with the usual caveats for how often someone plays, etc.). I'm not saying anyone should be rank obsessed...there are plenty of threads on this topic. Setting long- or short-term goals is often motivating, and makes this hobby of ours more fun. So an oversimplified answer to the OP's question is "because it is higher than my rank."

Actually, I think the game is different. I feel like I was playing a completely different game when I was 18k, 8k, 1k (with differences diminishing over time). But More importantly, I wouldn't belittle someone's desire for a more in-depth understanding of the game by characterizing their efforts as a misguided based on what this statement implies.

In fairness, this isn't always imagined. It may be (or may not be) a misguided source of motivation, and it may not bring the awards one believes, but there are plenty of groups where this is not imagined.

Sprinkle a dose of levity appropriate for a hobby on these reasons, and they seem perfectly fine to me. And maybe you intended your post with that tone.

Well, but this is a different thing. Improvement itself is fun because it is satisfactory.
To say 'I enjoy improving' is not the same a saying 'I want to be 1d'.



Come to think about it, you are probably right. I was just thinking the same thing myself.

But when I wrote what I wrote - what I mean about the game being 'different' is this:
You will still lose 50% of your games, you will still look at positions and have no clue where to play, and you will still meet people able to beat the pants off of you. In this sense, weather you are 5k or 5d - nothing much changes (or at least nothing changed in my case.) My impression is that people think that it does.



Boy, you are a little pistol today, aren't you?

And again - you are right.
I should have chosen my words better, and 'misguided' is a much better and more factual description than 'imagined'. Thank you for pointing it out.



No... I have to confess to have written it with a dose of bitterness about all the rank chasers and rank cheaters and rank discussions and rank goals and rank rank rank... I understand that I am probably getting bent out of shape over something which is not really such a big deal, but at that time I was a little bitter. All this rank chasing is one of my hot buttons, and I tend to over-react at times.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

I still want to reach at least 5-dan EGF (around 6-dan KGS) in my lifetime. Of course before that it was "becoming 1-dan" as well.
I think Go is similiar to martial arts in regards to the ranks: Only if you've been awarded the black belt (1-dan), you are not a plain student anymore. Although you are still far away from mastery, the black belt is the first step towards it.

Besides this number I'd like to understand more from professional games. I'd like to be able to comment on professional games on a basic level. I would also like to play more strategically, really developping a whole-board-plan and pursuing it; right now I think my view of the board is pretty limited.

In the end I want to go deeper down the rabbit-hole to marvel at all the things I deemed impossible not long ago.

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

I have a goal of reaching 4K at the moment because that's about the midpoint of the kyu level players at the local go club. Of course once I reach it I suspect I will want to go higher, so I'm probably just fooling myself in the reasoning behind my goal.

I'm going to disagree with A and C for myself, but I think the game is different as the players get stronger, more types of play open up. Invasions I can't recall hardly any of before maybe 15K with the exception of the 3-3 invasion for example. Although with you clarifying it you most likely are right (I'm not good enough to say yet), but it still feels like you're not.

PeterN

The more I understand about a professional game, the more I'm impressed by.

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Occupy Babel!

When I first started to play, in 1973 in Britain, there was only one or two 5d and no 6d, so that seemed to me to be the highest reasonable amateur rank. I did not expect to reach it but it was a logical goal. I got to 1d and moved to the USA. There I eventually became 5d but realized it was still a stone or two short of a British 5d.

However, I had had this mental idea of 5d for 15 years and so I felt like I had reached my goal. At about that time other things became more important to me and so I never reached 6d (I topped out at 5.96 AGA) but that doesn't matter. I now realize that rank is not that important. What counts is how much you enjoy the game. Now I play for fun and don't try to win every game as long as I enjoy it. I am sure I could still play at 5d if I really set my mind to it, but I doubt I ever will any more.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

When I started to attend clubs, my goal was to become European Championship. Why? Simply because without great goal there is no great achievement.

As a 1 kyu, I set a pragmatic intermediate goal to become 5 dan. Why? I wanted to enable myself to program an expert system program. (At that time, Monte Carlo was unheard of.)

As a 5 dan, the nature of my goal has changed: I want to explain the complete go theory. You know, I still think that without great goal there is no great achievement. My secondary goal is 10 dan, of course. The reason is the same.

Independently, the degree of fun of playing has remained essentially constant at a very high level. So increasing the fun of playing has never been my aim. However, the joy of better understanding has increased greatly. This is part of the reason for wishing to understand the complete go theory and doing related research.



Maybe they half understand what every concept is about, but using every fundamental concept well is for 4d or 5d. This is so especially for using influence well.

Heh... I wonder if a 9d would say that "using every fundamental concept well is for 8d or 9d."
Can we really judge that well those far above us? Or judge our own lack of understanding that well?

I think the pro was just being polite... what he really meant was that the 1 dan he was talking about was a pro 1 dan.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

dude, if you're going to follow my posts around and challenge my ideas you should do more than just object. all you ever say is "you're wrong" without any ideas or examples to back it up. besides, "decent grasp" and "using every fundamental concept well" are two different things.

if this line needs clarification for everyone else, this is more in reference to shape rather than concepts of how to play. a good example for this is the chinese teaching style where they let the kids play and get their attack and "killing strength" skills up to what they feel a 1d is. Then they rein them back and start showing them the more fine grained aspects of territory and playing concepts. the idea being that the willingness and ability to attack are very important and should always be in your play. This is much harder to learn if you try to apply concepts to the game and avoid fighting all the time. the easiest example of this is having a nice seemingly surrounded piece of territory and having someone play crude moves and somehow make life or connect out from it.

anyways, carry on everybody with your reasons for rank goals.

I'd like to make my way back down to 5k, there was so much to learn at my fingertips and so many more people to play! It was amazing.



But short of a little green man, or a major head injury, I think that's unlikely.

I don't want to stay where I am, because learning to see the board differently is the major draw for me. Of course I like to win, but I play because I want to peer deeper into the abyss.

So then, either stronger, or stylistically completely different.

For stronger I always aim 2 ranks ahead. It's just far enough that I'm aware that they see something that I don't.

For stylistically different, I don't know where to start

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

I want to be SDK because I'm about 10 or 11k now, and I'd like to be a stone stronger!

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Poka King of the south east.