Bad experience on KGS

quantumf · **#21**

Jujube wrote:

Quote:

He's a very strong chess player, which presumably has helped him, particularly in the reading department.

I'm a fairly decent chess player. I didn't find it easy, and still don't find it easy, to read go positions.
Go is all about visualising shapes, and chess is more... well, I think they're quite different - I definitely didn't find the skill transferable.

That's what he claims. But I find that dubious given how swift his improvement has been. The shapes are very different true, perhaps its just having the discipline to force yourself to read ahead that is key. When I contrast him to some other beginners (or even myself back then), they're much more interested in go strategy and really can't be bothered with this "reading" business.

Jujube · **#22**

Quote:

That's what he claims. But I find that dubious given how swift his improvement has been. The shapes are very different true, perhaps its just having the discipline to force yourself to read ahead that is key. When I contrast him to some other beginners (or even myself back then), they're much more interested in go strategy and really can't be bothered with this "reading" business.

Strategy maybe is something to ponder on over time, and reading out a position involves well, I don't know, more effort? It certainly makes my brain hurt more!

hyperpape · **#23**

An anecdote from Edward Lasker, who eventually made IM in Chess, seems apposite:

Quote:

Then one day at the cafe in Berlin where the Chessplayers used to gather in the afternoon my friend Max Lange and I saw a Japanese reading a Japanese paper, on the back of which we noticed a Go diagram. We thought 'Well, that's remarkable'; we knew, of course, about chess columns, but Go columns? We didn't know what to think, so we waited until the fellow was gone and took the paper down from the newspaper rack. We put ourselves to deciphering the diagram. The problem lay in decoding the Japanese numerals the diagram used, but although we hadn't actually played more than a game or two of Go, we worked things out without too much trouble. So we went through the game, but after 120 or 150 moves things came to a stop, and there was some notation.

We waited until a few days later we saw another Japanese customer at the cafe, whom we approached to ask whether he would mind telling us what that notation meant. Oh, first it seemed obvious to us that it must say 'White resigns', since Black had an enormous army and there didn't seem to be any reasonable continuation for White, or else something like 'Game adjourned'. Well, the gentleman said, 'Certainly, "Black resigns!" When we heard that we decided that we would really have to give a good look at the game, and we took the newspaper. About 3 weeks later Max Lange called to say that he had found a sacrificial continuation for White ending in the capture of the Black army 22 moves later. Then we really started to play Go in earnest.

Can you imagine many beginners finding a 22 move capturing sequence that's not a ladder? Even if he studied it regularly during those three weeks, could many beginners find it given arbitrary amounts of time?

That's from Milton Bradley's "How Go Came to America".

Bigstrongpolarbear · **#24**

Was the sequence he found the correct one?

Jujube · **#25**

On the advice of some posters in this thread, I have played a few games against bots and come out at 16k with a big fat question mark at the end

Question: How many games does it take for the question mark to disappear? Is it however long it takes to get your rank stable or is there a specific number of games you have to play?

Thanks in advance

hyperpape · **#26**

From KGS Faq:

Quote:

The question mark appears after your rank when not enough information has been collected to estimate your rank correctly. Also possible: you didn't play enough rated ('ranked') games in the last time. It will usually disappear after a few wins and losses in rated games. To reduce the time, do the following.
•Play opponents with solid ranks (i.e., without a question mark as well)
•Play opponents close to your estimated rank. If the range of opponents varies too widely, it will take longer to calculate the rank
•Play rated games

I think two wins and two losses can suffice, but given your circumstances, you might be suffering from too broad a range of opponents.

wms · **#27**

It is possible to lose the question mark after just two games - one win, one loss. But that is unlikely. Still, after a few wins and a few losses you should lose it as long as those wins and losses were against opponents near your strength. If your wins are all against 30k opponents and your losses against 1d opponents, then you'll never lose the "?" because the rank system will decide that your rank could be anywhere from 27k through 3k. It will most likely compromise by giving you a rank something like "15k?".

GregA · **#28**

The question mark isn't a big deal. Just play some ranked automatch games with preference for rank close to yours and it will settle out pretty quick. That's what I did. And by the way, I reached 9 kyu after about 30 19x19 games, 5000 9x9 igowin games against the computer, quite a lot of go problems on goproblems.com, and reading a dozen or so books including the Janice Kim series and the Elementary Go series.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend that, as igowin causes tactical brain-damage, and I agree playing games is better than reading books, but um, that doesn't mean I have to do things the best way...

Tommie · **#29**

Jujube wrote:

(...)
I ... read some of Janice Kim's books, and downloaded Moyo Go Studio to play GNU Go ... bought Kageyama, and read most of that, and bought The Second Book of Go by Bozulich. I've found that book to be VERY instructive. I've also read a little of the Elementary series
(...)
my learning style is as a theorist
(...)
I hardly played any games, and none against a real person on the internet.

I did, however, plough through the books, on the train, in bed, at work, with and without the board. Over and over again.
(...)
Did I do wrong?

In general, I would just stress that you'd need a bit thicker skin.
If an insult does not come from people I/you care for, I just smile (really in real life).
On KGS, that would be " ^^ ". (drives such a person even madder :lol:

)

As a linguist, you could agree that the insulting person has a problem handling his/her emotions and expressing them.
Leaving the level of the individual game itself ("What a pity that I've lost it") and
ability to go on a higher, meta-level is not everyones forte ("I played probably well in this aspect, here and there, yet need to improve in these phases of the game.", "My/his/her move here gave the game away - no matter how well played before", "Overall, I learned this & that from this game").

Hence, not everyone can enjoy a lost game (vs. a better playing partner).
In 5 years, when you will be probably at least 15 ranks better - who will remember the loss or win of this short moment now ?
On DDK level the volatility of game results is high, the consistency low.

Go-wise, I could imagine your style Kageyama-like, attempting to play fundamentally sound, which perhaps frightened Blitz-hardened streetfighters - if they could realize it all in the first 100 moves. If you then miss a tactical situation, you'll get labelled 20-25 kyu,
however, if you have no weak groups for wild attacks, you'll get insulted.

That is basically the dilemma with playing partners, who take the game to serious on the level of that particular game.

Hence, the pieces of advice given (Censor-button + bot-play) are good, however do not forgett the buddy- and fan-button.
Also, the game invitation window allows for descriptive text (e.g. "I don't know my exact rank. Want a friendly, yet still rated game" or so).

You have studied excellent books so far. :study:

Was 'Tesuji' (by J.Davies') among your list of the 'Elementary Series'?

Greetings and success!
(Get a thicker skin , smile

and play more - perhaps face-to-face over-the-board ?)

Tommie · **#30**

hyperpape wrote:

An anecdote from Edward Lasker, who eventually made IM in Chess, seems apposite:

Quote:

(...) About 3 weeks later Max Lange called to say that he had found a sacrificial continuation for White ending in the capture of the Black army 22 moves later. Then we really started to play Go in earnest.

Can you imagine many beginners finding a 22 move capturing sequence that's not a ladder? Even if he studied it regularly during those three weeks, could many beginners find it given arbitrary amounts of time?

That's from Milton Bradley's "How Go Came to America".

I read that too and remember that the beginners argumentation will have been either tactically OR strategically wrong OR
tactically AND strategically wrong.

Even Lasker himself (the WM) was later only a low dan, while the game in the column must have been of professionals.
Hence all reasoning on the outcome will have been highly flawed.

Bad experience on KGS

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