I am always astonished how many players up to 2k KGS believe it is clever to play a 3-3 invasion as their first move on KGS in blitz games. Meh.

I saw a really great lecture from Battousai yesterday about this kind of tactic. ama 7d tygem vs a pro player. Just check it out, it's one of the best lectures I've ever seen tbh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1HJcmn3 ... ideo_title

Heh, you just gave me a good idea for how to play at my next club meeting. I'm sure there are a few people there who will like this .

_________________
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.

I would love for more people to do that against me. I loves me some influence.

_________________
a1h1 [1d]: You just need to curse the gods and defend.
Good Go = Shape.
Associação Portuguesa de Go

It is a despicable way to play. After winning I usually add the ignore flag to the player (if I lose I keep playing). I somehow doubt Black in the first game / White in the second game in the replay you posted is a 7 dan player. (Or maybe I should play on Tygem.)

Can you explain why? It seems to be giving you extra points, but I don't see much despicable about it.

This sounds worryingly like scrub-ism to me. If there's a strategy that works, why is it not fair to use it?

_________________
"There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level." -- Bruce Lee

What makes it so despicable? I understand it can be frustrating to lose to a player that is playing in a way that is theoretically wrong, and I admit I've gotten angry about that before myself, but really, all it does is expose my own weaknesses. I actually look forward to playing players who are good at these unorthodox strategies as I feel I gain a deeper understanding of the positive elements of bad moves and/or a better understanding of why the orthodox approach to playing is considered better.

Actually, this attitude reminds me of the attitude I'm sure many of the professionals at the start of the new fuseki era had. There was a well established "correct" way to play, and these insolent young players were too stupid to see that the way they were playing was wrong. It was even more frustrating when the established professionals started to lose to such players.

_________________
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.

Who said I am losing such games? Who said this "strategy" works?

If you play that way, you are actually saying "you are so incompetent, I do not even need to try, I can beat you even in such a funny way". Play with proper handicaps, however much, but play your best game. Everything else is an insult, not much better than those guys, who type real insults in the chat window to make you steam. If you are good enough to beat me no matter what, you can play a teaching game instead, fine then, but probably there are better ways to conduct teaching games.

If nobody in this thread sees this similarly, huh, very sad.

You said 'if I lose I keep playing' earlier, implying that loss is a possibility.



All I can say is wow, you are really easy to insult.

This seems to be an indication of your own insecurities more so than an indication of your opponent's personality.

In any case, when I was a DDK I used to always play the 3-3 invasion very early because it was one of the few joseki I knew.

Just curious, would you feel the same if you started 3-3 and your opponent plays next move at 4-4?

For sure, a loss is always a possibility. Though I lose these kind of games less nowadays than normal games. It wasn't necessary like this earlier, but then I wasn't insulted but encouraged to play better. Is it so hard to understand that I feel bitter about winning such a game, not about losing? I end asking myself: Would I still have won, if my opponent had played reasonable moves for a change?

Also, it is pretty obvious that this is played predominantly in blitz games with very short time limits. So, the players don't consider it a normal strategy but play it for the mess up potential.

The shoulderhit on the 3-3 point is just a normal opening, what I was trying to say has really nothing to do with "my corner, your corner thinking". Well, never mind for L19ers it seems to be just fine.

Surprised. We can close this thread now.

What's up with all the trololo? Try to be a little civilized like we usually are here on L19?

Indeed, when I'm up against a player who plays a move that makes me think "They should know better!" I suddenly start to get a little worried....after all, this person has earned their rank, so odds are if they have one facet of their game that is (what I would consider) glaringly deficient, they probably make up for it somewhere else with a strength I may not be prepared for.

I think Mef hit the nail on the head here, but also:

Especially in 10 or 7 second blitz (which I don't find fun anyway) though also in regular games, people sometimes play special strategies like "take territory at all costs, I can probably get a great reduction/invasion result later" and "take influence at all costs, I can probably get an impregnable supermoyo later".

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

Playing in an unorthodox or 'wrong' way is an excellent way to learn.

I think blitz can be legitimately fun, but it would be unsportsmanlike to play weird strategies in blitz to take advantage of the fact that your opponent hasn't thought as much about the implications of the strategy as you have. (At the very least, if we enjoyed that kind of thing, we'd be playing chess.)

And yes, it's entirely possible that a weird strategy is designed to highlight a very unevenly developed playing style. If you suck at fuseki, suck at joseki, suck at attacking and killing groups, suck at yose and at reducing, but are incredibly good at handling weak groups, then it's a legitimate strategy to give away a slight advantage in every corner so as to not expose yourself to a game where any of your weaknesses come into play. If I came across this strategy in a slow game, that's what I would assume.

emotionally, i feel with tapir. it also upsets me when i face such a "rude" player. but when i try to put reasoning behind my attitude, i find i can't blame him:

- if i win, it is because he chose a suboptimal strategy, that gave me an advantage since the move 0. nice, come again, i welcome an easy win
- if i lose, it is even less reason to be angry. how could i call his play wrong, when even with playing objectively bad, he still managed to beat me? train harder, beat him next time

however, while i don't mind in a single game, this conflict of attitudes was the main reason why i tried wbaduk only for short time and soon returned back to kgs - it was no fun for me to confront my knowledge-based style with aggressive, fighting-oriented style of my opponents in pretty much every game there. it would be more educational to stay and incorporate this as a possible variant into my own play, but i play for fun, so i decided to leave

_________________
Spilling gasoline feels good.

I might be wrong, but probably not.

I feel the same way against players that play bad moves on purpose. I mean moves that may be tricky to punish, but objectively bad at our level of understanding the game.

My reasoning is similar. I perceive such moves as insincere.
When my opponent makes a move which is clearly bad at out level, I cannot help feeling insulted because I cannot find any other explanation of purposely making bad moves other than hoping a for an even worse failure from my side.

I want to play games with my opponent, and not against my opponent. I want to appreciate and enjoy a beautiful tesuji he finds, even if I was not able to spot it and even if it costs me the game. I want to feel sorry for an obvious mistake from my opponent and have no problem with an undo. But against such tricky opponents as tapir mentions, I cannot enjoy the game as I would like to.

It has nothing to do with winning or losing. I also don't enjoy such trick games even if I win. I may only like the fact that I have proven his insulting claim wrong, but it's not the game itself that I enjoy. It's just a different mindset or a different approach towards the game.

Maybe a game of go is much more like a conversation compared to chess. And as in any conversation, I would like my counterpart to be sincere.

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