Tapir did say that he only runs into these players in blitz games. That sheds a little light on their thought processes.

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Occupy Babel!

Arbitrarily ranking some annoying moves that I have encountered more than once in the last while, in normal-time games.
#1

#2

#3

#4

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Revisiting Go - Study Journal
My Programming Blog - About the evolution of my go bot.

Perhaps my wording was technically inaccurate. Rather than nitpick about exactly what the rules of football are (because I don't know), I'll try to make the same point by comparison.

If the rules of football made absolutely no reference to fouling, and it was completely allowed to do whatever you wanted to your opponents, the best strategy would be to foul lots and field a lot of extremely tough players. The game would plausibly degenerate into a 'who can incapacitate their opponents first'. Nobody would get far with a no-fouling strategy.

In go, if the rules made absolutely no reference to trick moves, overplays or whatever (coincidentally, they don't), the opposite would be true - people aiming to play as best they can would/do still strive to remove them from the game, because they're actively harmful to your own play. Some people would still get a long way with a strategy emphasising these things, though.

That's why I consider the analogy inapt. It compares opposite things.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc More like this...
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X O O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . 1 . . . X . X O . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . X O . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X O . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X O . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

@Uberdude: The guys I mean play more like this than like Kobayashi Koichi. Most of them I met only once, but there is one guy who was 3k years ago, when I was starting, now 2k who plays exclusively in this way, afaik only blitz games and the majority of his wins are by time. If you pm me, I can give you the name and you can look at his games yourself.

Incidentally, I am one of those people who are saying "if you can't punish it, it isn't an overplay" myself, but this doesn't mean I need to enjoy it. And while players punish themselves and their growth with such an attitude, this is nothing I can be happy about. (Only upside is, that they can function as anchors for the KGS rating system.) Finally, when Go is meant to be a conversation, keep in mind not everything you can say to someone legally is necessarily polite.

It appears that most people here see the game more like a competition rather than conversation. Accordingly, the concept of politeness does not apply and any legal move is perfectly ok. Opponent's ridiculous moves are even more ok, as long as you can punish them.

That's not my understanding of the game but if it is the general appreciation, so be it. No more complaints from my side.

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If you say no, Elwood and I will come here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the week.

I'd say it's more like go is a conversation where everything you say is translated by google through half a dozen different languages (e.g., Engish->Japanese->Czech->Korean->Basque->Chinese->your opponent's language) before your opponent hears it. You know what your opponent said, but you can't assume that what you think it means is what they thought it meant.

It's that last step--assuming that what the move means to you is the same as what it means to your opponent--that bugs me. Go is a language, sure-- but it's a foreign language to both you and your opponent, and you should give your opponent at least as much slack as you give a non-native speaker of your native language.

EDIT: By way of illustration, the body of this post after having been run through that cycle in google translate:

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That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
--
My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

I had some fun with google translate, but that's off topic: viewtopic.php?p=84740#p84740.

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Occupy Babel!

I have started to jump in here several times, I guess I finally plunge. In my view, this conversation has been strangely noncommunicative.

tapir is clearly outraged by this behavior and very upset by it. My reading is that most people here actually agree with him to greater or lesser extents, but many choose to explain why it is better for him to not get upset.

And this just seemed to upset him more.

I think most people here do believe in politeness and they would like people to not do this, it is pretty bad go and it upsets people.

But most people here also know that the worst think you can do with people like this is get upset and let them know it bothers you.

I don't agree with either Tapir or you at all, Horibe. I didn't get the impression that most people associated "bad" moves with impoliteness.

Speaking purely for myself, I'm far more upset/frustrated by my own bad moves than at my opponents (unfortunately, that means I'm probably upset more often than I would be if it were the other way around :p). I generally chuckle when I see a move that I believe to be bad from my opponent - if I punish it I get a sense of satisfaction, if I don't I either try to find a refutation after or try to change my assessment.

I too have repeatedly wanted to post here and changed my mind. I have had similar reactions to some play styles I have been running into online. Not exactly that they are rude, but sort of. The kind of play that has been bothering me is different, and I would express my feelings differently, hence my reluctance to post. However, I think it is similar enough that it's worth adding here.

What I've been encountering a lot is players who seem to only fight - they play the fuseki quickly, and seemingly without much thought, then just fight everywhere whether it make sense positionally or not, and then play a terrible endgame if the game lasts that long. Such players who are my rank are naturally stronger fighters than I am, to make up for the way they fall behind in other areas. Overall, as expected, I win these games about as frequently as any other style.

Setting aside the question of rudeness, my complaint is that I just don't find such games enjoyable or interesting. It seems to throw out all aspects of the game except for tactics - if I can handle the fight without getting hurt badly then I win easily, and if not then I lose. It feels more like working through a book of tesuji or life-and-death problems than it does like playing a serious game. I an occasional game went like this it would be exciting and a fun test of fighting strength, but when more than half my games go like this I start to get frustrated - to the point that I often just feel like resigning in the early middlegame once my opponent's play makes it clear that this is the shape of the game.

I can already imagine a lot of people thinking - "hey, if this will get you to resign early, it's an effective winning strategy, so don't knock it." I guess somewhere in there is where I stop understanding. From my perspective, none of us are professionals, and so our win/loss records and our ratings are ultimately not important. The only reason for us to play the game is to enjoy doing so.

People often respond to these kinds of comments by saying that if you lose to these strategies then they are pointing out a weakness in your game and you should be thankful. That seems wrong to me on two levels: First, I do win at least half the time in such games, so it is not pointing out a weakness any more than any type of game. Secondly, all such losses tell me is that fighting strength is a good predictor of overall strength and so studying tactics is a good way to get stronger - well, I knew that already, and, even if I get better at it, I won't stop facing this kind of opponent, I'll just get ones who are better at it.

I guess at the bottom what I find rude is the attitude that anything that helps win is ok, even if it makes the game less enjoyable for the opponent. To compare this to physical sports - I expect professional hockey players to try to get under their opponent's skin and get them off their game and to target any injury an opponent might have to make them less effective or to take them out completely. However if someone played that way in my beer league they'd be kicked out in short order.

To be clear - I don't necessarily think anyone playing any particular style is out to annoy their opponents or is doing anything wrong or rude by playing those moves, it could just reflect their understanding of the game. I'm not sure why I seem to be running in to so many players recently who seem to just fight everywhere, but that's a different thread. What I don't like in this one is the number of posts that suggest that winning should be the main goal or value in play between amateurs. Is my attitude here really as far out of the norm as this thread seems to indicate?

Listen, if you don't like tactics, you will never be good at go. You can do all the opening study you like, but it is worthless without a good understanding of tactics.

Disparaging someone who has a playing style very different from your own just seems like a waste of time.

If it IS an effective winning strategy, then you need to ask yourself why. If you are not constantly addressing your weaknesses as a player, you will stay exactly where you are. And maybe that's okay. But my understanding is that most, if not all of us, want to get stronger.

Tactics are not some magical crutch that people fall on. It's an entire dimension to the game. And if you are playing in such a way that their tactics are ruining your "pretty book-learned fuseki", even only 50% of the time, then it is a sign that you are not strong enough in fighting to play as thinly as you are.

If you are winning as much as you are losing, you are doing something wrong re: studying.

EDIT: There are players famous for being amazing at fighting and not much else, like Lee SeDol, but there are no players famous for just having good strategic sense. Even Kobayashi Koichi, the master of heavily territorial play was extremely dangerous in a fight. Without a love of tactics, you need to slow down your opening in order to be able to avoid their attacks.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

As a reference, here's the fuseki from a game I played at the world mindsports games



Was this rude? I took 2 corners, gave him big outside thickness and then invaded,

I relied on black making one basket to put all his eggs in, and then was able to have a single fight decide the game.

I won, Feng Yun analyzed this and said black had a lot of shape weaknesses here. A weaker fighter though might look at this and say "Well that's just rude, all he's looking for is a mistake".

That's true, in a sense, but at the same time, I know my fighting well enough to know when to play lightly and leave aji for later, there's no risk in an invasion here, because I didn't put all of MY eggs in one basket.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

Shapenaji, it seems we are talking about completely different things. This example has nothing but really nothing to do with what I am classifying as rude.

I don't understand how you interpret what I say as "deviating from a book learned joseki/fuseki is rude". I also don't understand how you interpret me as "I don't like tactics".

I have nothing against complicating a situation when you are behind, unless you clearly see the outcome upfront but just try with the hope of an obvious mistake from your opponent.

Again and for the last time: I am talking about moves that are obviously bad for the understanding of any player at the two opponents level (emphasis added)! Was this invasion move obviously bad at that stage of the game for your level? If no, there is no reason for it to be rude whatsoever.

Please don't overinterpret what I am saying. I mean what I write, nothing more nothing less.

EDIT: Or, or, or maybe you were not referring to my post(s) at all??? Hmm, in this case, please accept my apologies and ignore this post...

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If you say no, Elwood and I will come here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the week.

Actually I was responding to kwhyte, talking about how he doesn't like games entirely decided by tactics.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc More like this...
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1 . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . X 3 . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 4 5 7 |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

See, you understand the mindset of the people I was referring to better when you look at this example. Ok, let us say the normal 3-3 invasion isn't sufficiently obvious. This "opening" too was repeatedly played against me from such players when I was 3k/2k level, always in blitz games, when I thought, well he is so keen on corners, let us challenge him a bit by playing a double hane this time so that he sees at least a little of the landscape with a ponnuki... this was the result. Without timeout wins (playing for time is the ultimate gamesmanship) and mess up wins his results would naturally be miserable, in blitz games it is sufficient to stagnate. What all the "legitimate strategy" crowd doesn't recognise, is that they are reinforcing bad habits that are detrimental to the go population as a whole (and rude). Many comments read like they are adressed at a beginner that feels insulted when someone invades his framework - well, tell them there is no territory in the opening, they shouldn't get attached and all of that. I am doing this myself, but here this misses the point.

If you had players repeatedly doing that against you, and you easily demolish them, then it seems to me that you were underranked. Perhaps that was the main problem - the players you were playing were weaker than you, so it was obvious to you the moves were bad but not to them. (Do you play on an Asian server perchance? Because I could see how these players might actually not be 3k, but just using an Internet cafe where the customers share accounts.) Either way, if you beat these people enough you should rank up and get to a level where you're facing opponents that give you more of a challenge.

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We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.

You assume they play that way because they want to win at all costs. They might play that way because they think fighting is fun. I consider a go game without at least thirty dead stones a dull affair.

I could say that players who back down from any fight once they're ahead trying to maintain their lead are rude. They want to win so much that they they play smaller safer moves and deprive me of my fight. They certainly make the game less enjoyable for me that way. But I accept that they just play a different style.

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Sanity is for the weak.

I don't see how trading potential for cash in blitz can be thought of as rude. It seems like a perfectly valid strategy under short time constraints. Cash is something you have now, but your opponent will have to work to make the potential pay off. The clock is part of the game, too.

That said, I don't think I would try that.

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That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
--
My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

While I can't really get worked up over the original example (my opinion is if you play blitz you deserve what you get), here's a 3-3 point move that always annoys me when I'm playing White:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 . . . . . |
$$ | . . . X . . . . . X . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
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$$ | . . . X . . . . . X . . . . . X . . . |
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$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . X . . . . . X . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

Nothing says "I'm really not interested in playing a game with you" quite like this.

@Crux: I've always seen these moves as challenges for positional assessment/efficiency of moves - white just have to make sure his/her judgement of the biggest points is better