Every game with a winner and loser requires both competition and cooperation. Without competition you don't have a winner and loser, without cooperation nobody plays at all.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Hmmm... let's just say that I'm living in the northern hemisphere.

Varying degrees of with and against

Hi Katoana,

We're practically neighbors!

You ask a very common question. If you do a bit of search here on the forum,
you'll find others have also asked very similar to identical questions as yours.
Some ask about online anxieties. Some ask about face-to-face anxieties.

And the kind folks here provide similar to identical replies as the ones already given above.
With the expected disagreements, even with a question like this. Welcome to the internets.

Along with the usual suspects: normal 50% win-loss, nothing to fear but fear itself,
fear specific to Go or in other aspects of your life, what are your goals in Go, etc. etc.,
here's my usual glib --

This resonates with me.

People are always asking me why I don't play anymore (my most recent tournament game was 2009), and I've never quite been able to put my finger on it -- until now perhaps. I too hate losing. And I feel stupid when I don't improve as much or as quickly as others, especially after so many years at it.

Don't get me wrong -- I love this game. I enjoy watching/reviewing (even memorizing) high quality games. I enjoy teaching the game to beginners (and it doesn't bother me to lose those games). And I love being involved in the community.

So I try to tell myself to equate it with baseball. The best batting averages are still such a very low percentage of success. So I shouldn't care if I lose.

And I tell people that its actually possible to lose every game, but still improve your skill (I have anecdotal examples from several of my own "students" who refuse to take enough handicap to beat me, but as I improve, so do they, yet they still lose every game)

After all, even if I lose, I still win -- because I can learn something from the game. So unless I'm playing for rank (or trophy) -- which I don't do any more -- I no longer care if I win or lose. I only play for fun and learning.

If you know something is true, and act as if it were not, then what you are doing is deluding yourself. By calling it a matter of your personality, you imply that lying to yourself is necessary for your self-definition. I don't think that this is the case. Taking go too seriously is not something that you have to do, it's something you choose to do. We all have voices in our heads that chatter away incessantly about the way things ought to be and what we should be doing instead of what we are doing and what saps we are for not doing everything better. Paying too much attention to these voices instead of doing what we are doing is just a bad habit. My serious suggestion is to look into mindful meditation to practice focusing on what is actually on the table as opposed to what your mind may be dishing up.

_________________
Patience, grasshopper.

This is something that happened to me last month. I studied a lot, then lost so many games that I lost confidence in myself.
I was telling myself that it was just the usual symptom of assimilation of the new knowledge, but it didn't seem to improve after some time.

Eventually, I found one of the culprits to be frustration. When I am frustrated and I want to do better, things only get worse !
A good sign that I am not playing properly is when I don't use all my thinking time. A solution is not to play any stone before having answered the question "what if my opponent answers there ?". When I am frustrated, I rush for moves that seem best, but I omit further reading, which decreases my ability a lot.
Another thing that I'm loosing when I am frustrated is a fundamental principle that is not often taught in book : to pause the reading and count the game to see who is ahead.

Two fundamental strategic principles that no reading ability can compensate for are :
1)During the Fuseki, pause the reading and check for the status of all groups of stones. The priority is to cure our own weak groups, then to attack the opponent's weak groups.
2)During the chûban, as soon as all groups are more or less stable, pause the reading and evaluate who is ahead. If you are, stop all attacks and just defend. If your opponent is, start a reduction, or an invasion.

Out of frustration, these two principles just vanish into a "play-the-biggest/smartest-move" rush.



I like this. It reminds me of one of my favourite lines in a belgian comic (Spirou et Fantasio), when the heroes come to help a prisoner evade from a military prison in a foreign country :
"Aoh ! I was wondering if they'd find courageous people to come and rescue me !
-Well, they didn't find any, so we came with the jitters !".

This is something that I didn't find in chess: intelligent help when you need it! I'm so grateful that some of you have time to send your own thoughts of this matter. It sure isn't a big problem, but if you don't have anyone to ask help, it could come a oversized hindrance. Thanks!

Hi EdLee! Maybe the word "fear" was too strong in my first msg. "Discomfort" could have been more precise. But the question would have been the same: why that negative feeling after a lost game is so much stronger than the positive after a won game? It empties the batteries you know...

I think so too, but I believe that you're so young, that you have more "against" power. There aren't any trophies for me to collect, just the enjoyment of a good game "with" a friend.

Hi xed_over!

Exactly so! Those are my thoughts also! I haven't played in any tournaments, so I don't have any comparison of the speed that I progress (and because I have that On/Off situation going on). I really enjoy watching the NHK Go tournament games on YouTube.

Hi Pio2001!


I know the feeling very well!


The first pages of the book "Positional Judgement" by Cho Chikun.


Very good advice! I haven't played that way...


"The divine move", yes I know this too...