I agree with you.

Most of the time, people shy away from go, because I'm in the stratosphere to them, far beyond reach. It's not the sort of board game you get the hang of in a few minutes, so the gap between me and a beginner is too large. It's a very real impediment to getting people interested.

So if you have a DDK who plays much more obvious moves, which aren't so unreachable, it makes go look less impossible. It makes people feel that with a little effort, they can compete. Not against everyone, but against SOMEONE.

An immensely top-heavy set of players might seem completely fine to the people in the upper regions, but it shuts out all but the most insane dedicated players. The rest is just cast into despair and they're off to do something more accessible like a Touhou game on lunatic mode.

Of course, there's little to no prestige in DDK ranks, but that doesn't make every DDK player a mere beginner. A beginner is someone who's still missing stones in atari or even captured ones. Someone who still mistakenly retakes a ko and needs to be reminded this is not a legal move.

Once someone is past the first 100 games, it's abuse of the English language to call them a beginner. If they're still stuck below 10k after a thousand games, they might not be a very a strong player and maybe they really don't have the potential to be much good. But that doesn't make them a beginner.

It also doesn't preclude them from enjoying the game, sharing it, and even helping to organize and run events such as tournaments and camps. It's the same with any sport. A lot of the people most dedicated to making it happen aren't themselves a contender for the championship, but they're vital in that they're willing to waste their free time on letting someone else be that champion.

It certainly doesn't preclude them from buying go merchandise, lessons, traveling to events and other ways of spending money on go. This is purely a numbers game. People don't have to be very good at the game to buy things. The best way by far to improve sales is to have more people interested in buying. When the market grows, more and more varied products become available.

I really enjoy the attempts at improving my game, but I also know that not everyone feels that way. Making it a mandatory part of the game culture seems a bit excessive. Mind sports already have a very elitist (that means "excluding lesser people", not "very good") image, and it doesn't help to reinforce that in any way.

It should really be alright to be kinda poor at go, even if you never improve much. It shouldn't have this connotation of personal failure. If someone doesn't think it's worth it to do the work, or someone just isn't great at this sort of game, there's no good reason to make them feel bad about playing.

I think a lot of it is the lack of a good word in English to describe someone on the early stages of a long path to mastery that doesn't carry the negative connotations of beginner or novice but isn't applicable to everyone on the path like student.

We've got words that don't convey a beginning, but if there are objections to being called beginner I'm guessing "inexpert, incompetent or unskilled" won't go over well either =)?

Dilettante seems the most revealing to me: it literally means "one who delights in a thing" and is exactly the concept tenato is discussing, but it's accumulated a lot of baggage over the years, with a kind of "not trying hard enough" subtext. Saying "you're not good at this" is inherently a little combative, so I think even terms coined with a positive intent grow less so with age.

Hence the use of novice or beginner, which I've always viewed as the politer word choice. It's not saying you're bad explicitly like incompetent, there's no subtext of laziness like dilettante, you just haven't progressed far. You're on the beginning of the road of Go. Maybe you built a house and have lived there for thirty years, but you're living at the beginning and so a beginner.

All of which is to say that in my experience as a native speaker of American English, I find this particular use of beginner to denote the easier, more basic tasks or skillsets regardless of actual time spent to be very common and unobjectionable. However, being dismissive or hostile or judgmental of weaker players is absolutely a very distasteful character trait to me.

There are few things that are better for attracting beginners to your club than to have players against whom they can compete on a somewhat even footing within a reasonable period after starting. Those players are incredibly important, and any notion that it is a personal failing not to (want to) be a strong player needs to die. I know and have know plenty of DDKs who play purely for the enjoyment. Who never study or review, but just come to the club to get some games in. I treasure such players.

It is demotivating to lose every fight. Much more so, IMO, than it is to lose every game. If you lose a game but won a fight against a nominally stronger player, that can be very motivating. If you can best them once, you can best them again. And if you best them often enough, there will be a game you win.

Perhaps the best term would be "recreational players". I think that conveys the notion of playing mainly for enjoyment without the negative connotations of many other terms.

Its not the word that matters, but the attitude. You can call such player "masters", but if this is spoken often enough with the derogatory attitude - this word will become derogatory as well. And we will have to look for another word. Rinse, repeat.

What's wrong with 'beginner' then? There is a need for a word that describes such players. And we need to draw the line somewhere, or we will have to switch our vocabulary every couple of years - and this gets us into the dreaded realm of 'political corectness'. So why not just stick with 'beginner'?

I say - lets use 'beginner', but lets work on our attitudes so that this word looses its negative connotations. Beginner *is* someone who is just beginning to walk the path of Go, skill-wise, even if he/she is at it for decades already. In a sense, I think of all of us here as 'beginners', some just a small step ahead of others.

Because it's the internet and when someone says beginner you don't know if they're saying it sneeringly or warmly whereas with speech it'd be clear. The problem isn't the word, the problem is the lack of tone and body language that normally goes with it and this means if it's used without much context it can be interpreted very negatively by some people.

True, but every word will have this problem. 'Beginner' did not became derogatory on the internet but in real life - and then this spilled to the internet. It will be the same with each word we pick, eventually, because of the attitudes people have and not because we pick a better word.

Bottom line: (some/most?) people look down upon beginners. This has to stop!
If it does not stop, which word we pick is meaningless.

Well, I think it's a poor way to describe a rank you arrived at after playing for months or years, but that's not really what I'm after here.


The sentence would make no sense if "beginner" was just an alternative neutral way to qualify DDKs. What he meant is that anyone with that rank probably just learned how to play. Because, I assume, he thinks they would have already moved beyond it if they'd been playing for any length of time. (Whatever that length is?). That's both wrong (in my experience it takes in fact most people a while to get beyond 10k, even if they play and study regularly), and dismissive of anyone who isn't improving fast enough to feel they are "most people".

But if you're looking for a way to decribe the rank range, I think "DDK" itself is accurate enough. For a more generic word, most fields seem happy enough with "elementary" (level / student / skills). It's also the word widely used in go litterature to define the level of contents.
"Beginner" has the risk of people completely misunderstanding what you're talking about by assuming a somewhat more mainstream definition http://dictionary.cambridge.org/diction ... h/beginner

I agree with you. I think the problem of people caring too much about rank is at the root of this, make yourself feel good about your current rank by talking down to someone with a lower one or somesuch nonsense.

Heh, yeah. I’m so glad I’m already a beginner, and not anymore a bloody beginner

What about 30-25k – bloody beginner, 24-5k “seems to stick with it” beginner, 4k-1k – intermediate beginner, 1d-3d – advanced beginner, 4d-5d – aspiring talent, 6d-9p – master player, 11d – expert?