I was reading this on the web and feel most of it applies to go as well:

http://www.wikihow.com/Use-Psychology-t ... hess-Games


I wonder about numbers 1, 2, 3, and maybe 6 in go.

6 is like leaning attacks and indirect attacking, influence.

But has anyone felt number one, two, or three are possible in an online game of go with someone you've never played before?

Pychology is almost as important as tactics/strategy and time management. The most important aspects of go psychology are:

1. Avoid blunders.

2. Avoid laziness. (Lacking concentration, not thinking, not choosing, not reading, not counting, not verifying, not considering the opponent's plan etc.)

3. Avoid the meaningless or only mediocre meaning. (Don't develop stones just somehow more or less well but always develop them with good and better meaning.)

4. Notice and overcome your psychologic weakness before you make a next move.

One of the primary problems with a psychological approach is that doesn't translate well across cultures especially to cultures that are very disciplined, ie it may be most effective on college freshman who have to take psychology classes and sit in on psychology studies for extra credit, but since this is small population that isn't really representative of everyone any conclusion is biased. Also psychological approaches have the potential to encourage negative traits in players. IE traits that make the game less interesting and distract attention from the game.

If I understand you correctly, then I disagree.

To know and recognize your own strengths and shortcomings is important.
To know one's enemy doesn't hurt.

A generic mind game is first and foremost a psychological battle.
The specifics of the game (go, chess, poker...) may be interesting,
but are in this sense secondary to the mental fight.

I'm aware of that some very talented people (Alexander Alekhine and Honinbo Shusai) only played against the position.
However, even with that approach one should be aware of how one's mind works.

_________________
"The connection between the language in which we program and the problems and solutions we can imagine is very close" -- Bjarne Stoustrup

I think one of the specific techniques they were talking about were playing trivial or meaningless moves for the purpose of "lulling" an opponent into a trap. Which sounds sort of like boring them or distracting them from the game. I would consider this a negative way to approach the game since generally we all want fun and exciting games that engage us mentally.

Lulling the opponent into a trap is something I do on a regular basis in competitive games and sports. I'm unnaturally good at it, too. I remember without being in any sort of shape I would beat most of the college badminton team on sheer psychology, devilish strategy and tactics, and the best technique I could scrounge from the little practice time I had. That's having about a decade less experience than most of them.

In martial arts, it becomes second nature to lull your opponent into a certain pace and certain expectations, only to switch it up in a flash and take the lead. And again, I kept some of my opponents in my pocket with sheer psychology for up to a year! I've known quite a few better or equal fighters who couldn't defeat me because of these tactics.

In Go, however, it's what's kept me weak for years.

The more I tricked my weaker opponents the better I got at it. Then I hit some higher ranks and, of course, no one replied to my moves the way I wanted them to. I lost a lot of games, and started winning only when I began to apply stable moves with multiple aims and change my aim according to the board when my opponent forces a different outcome. I'll invest some stones in an area, get attacked, give up the stones and make profit indirectly somewhere else.

The same applies to chess. I got reasonably good at chess, reached my goal of beating my dad, then quit. At my strongest I was playing only the position, and slowly building up positional pressure until my opponent ran out of favorable or even sequences. The reading ability I'd gained from Go was invaluable there.

In high-level Go, there are aims that each player knows to aim for or, in the case of the opponent, prevent, and often the flow of the game revolves around this. The same applies for wanting a general outcome. One thinks he will lead the game by building large-scale influence and, naturally, his opponent will play to frustrate him. There are deeper and more personal processes that occur in the players' minds and it's highly personal while stones are being laid out on the board.

Nevertheless, at higher levels there is no question of using cheap tactics or psyching your opponent out. Not only would you get punished for it (over the board), but it's also seen as dishonorable. Aims and strategies can be deeply complex but hoping your opponent will fall for your slow, hopeful trap will keep you back.

It's just not the way to actuate your [insert endeavor here] potential.

Edit: I didn't mean to say this approach has made me a better martial artist or badminton player. I won more but my reach never left the confines of the sense of security I got from applying these tactics. I kept myself from getting as strong as I could in both cases.

"I Don't believe in Psychology. I believe in good moves."-- Bobby Fischer.

I think there is a little truth in that. I also disagree with it as well. I would rather play a game that is decided on by good moves, not mind games. But Fischer also lost his mind. Psychology does play a small part in strategy games, but passively, and I don't see much value in basing your game around them. Mainly, I wanted to use that quote somewhere cause I kinda like it.

_________________
Lose 1,000 games? Challenge Accepted.

Well, reality doesn’t care about what we believe, right? Therefore “believing” is something not quite adequate for things that are real … our psyche certainly is real while whether moves (at least certain moves) are esteemed as good may change over time.

_________________
“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?

Well, To be fair, Bobby Fischer didn't Believe in Reality either, did he?

_________________
Lose 1,000 games? Challenge Accepted.

There are two main aspects of psychology as related to competitive sports such as go.

The first is that one's own psychological makeup will work against you if you let it. Who among us prefers hard work to getting around it? Becoming conscious of the psychological reasons your own mind is suggesting lousy moves is necessary if you want to play on a higher level.

The second is that it is possible to put psychological pressure on an opponent increasing the likelihood that he or she will make a mistake. What I find interesting about this, is that there the broad spectrum of ways to apply pressure, and that while it is probably easy to get a consensus that keeping a poker face is a legitimate strategy and threatening physical violence isn't, the gray-zone is wide indeed.

It's certainly possible both to succumb to and to apply psychological pressure without being consciously aware of it.

_________________
Patience, grasshopper.

"Well, reality doesn’t care about what we believe, right? "

Does that mean subjectivity is not a part of reality? Or one could even argue that subjectivity is the only acces we have to reality, so...

I also disagree with Fischer there... Garry Kasparov wouldn't agree with him as well.

I'm quite sure that most quotes from Sun Tzu apply to Go the same way than to chess...

_________________
FICGS Go server - Free Weiqi tournaments with money prizes!

Try the FICGS Play Go app on your Android phone to play your moves from anywhere.

One trick in Go is to read out a complicated attack, then play a few moves elsewhere so you can go back and start the attack very quickly. It's natural for your opponent to assume that because you played fast, you didn't read it deeply, and that the obvious response is fine. It's definitely a trick, but I find it to be a positive thing, because it's punishing a bad habit: you shouldn't use your opponent to read for you.

In the same vein, if you read out a complicated life and death situation and find you're dead, you can make an "aha!" face and play a stone there. It's tempting for your opponent to figure you found a path to life and tenuki, letting you get a second stone down and live. Absolutely a trick, but what was your opponent doing relying on your judgement about the status of the group?

Should you rely on tricks such as these? Probably not. But I think it's a good thing when players exploit them, because the core issue isn't the trick, it's that we naturally try to glean information from our opponents which to me is the actual bad habit.

I must admit that I wasn’t too serious with my comment, although I think there’s definitely a grain of truth in there. Subjectivity is a part of reality for sure, and yes, I also believe that subjectivity is the only access we have to reality, as you write. And with intersubjectivity, i.e. the exchange of our respective perspectives, we can achieve a greater cognition than each of us can achieve alone. Nevertheless that can never be objective, it can only (asymptotically?) get closer to what is “reality”. At the samte time though, what is reality will also kind of grow larger with every growth of our cognition, i.e. as we know more we see that there’s even more unknown than we thought before. And yet … reality doesn’t seem to depend on what I believe it to be.

_________________
“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?