... to lose a game of Go?

_________________
Stay out of my territory! (W. White, aka Heisenberg)

Yes.

Only if I drop the board on my foot...

Seriously though, I feel very lucky to be surrounded by stronger players for F2F games. It has really helped me appreciate playing for the sake of playing (and trying to play well) much more than playing to win. It has made the losses easier to bear and helped me focus on my own shortcomings in the game instead of looking at it as a mano-y-mano struggle.

Bruce "Man-o-mano" Young

_________________
Currently reading: Plutarch, Cerebus, and D&Q 25th Anniversary

It certainly does if you've played horribly, or if you let your opponent annoy you and they still end up beating you.

_________________
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.

Game result is always a surprise to me, except when there are kills. I recently won one game (by time) where I was certain that I would lose. Opponent had made successful invasion in middle game and his groups were connected. Score however showed that I was actually just one point ahead.

Go is a strange game like that. Perhaps it's for this reason that I rarely get upset over losing. I just try to play the best moves possible, build moyo, attack groups and take sente when possible. That's the 'thing' that makes games fun regardless of result.

Depends on how bad I'm playing. If I'm playing a great game, losing doesn't feel bad at all.

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

Feels like a nail in my chest.

If I lose because my opponent beat me I don't mind. If I lose because I lost focus and blundered I am disappointed.

Mostly horrible, but some feel great. I really enjoyed this loss:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$
$$ +---------------------------------------+
$$ | . . . . . O X . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O X O X X X . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . O . O . O O X . . . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . O O O X X . . . . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . X . O X X . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . O O X . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . O O X X X X X . . . |
$$ | O . O . O O . . O . X O O O O X X X . |
$$ | X O O O . . O O . . . . . O X X X . X |
$$ | X X X O O O X O . X . . . . O O O X X |
$$ | . . X O X X X O O . O . . . . . . O O |
$$ | . X X X . . . X O X . . . . . . O . . |
$$ | X X O X . . . X X O O . . . . . . . . |
$$ | O O O O X . . . X X O . . . . O . . . |
$$ | . . O X . . . . X O O O O O O . O O O |
$$ | . . O X . . . . X X X X X O O O X X O |
$$ | . . O X . X . . . . . . . X X O X X O |
$$ | . . O O X . . . . . . . . . X X . X X |
$$ | . . O X X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ +---------------------------------------+[/go]

I made a gamelosing (about 10 point) yose mistake on top from a winning position. I was winning probably because he wanted a competing central moyo instead of invading. Very fun game.

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

I'm not strong enough yet to enjoy losing.

Yeah, but it builds character.

Out of curiosity: I always thought that you should or need to calculate the score while playing above a certain rank? It seems you don't do it (or the outcome wouldn't have surprised you). Any special reason?

Michael

PS: I'm also just starting to think about counting / keeping an internal score update

_________________
Go is easy: don't play bad moves.

I certainly do it. It's not an essential skill to get to 1 dan (or probably even higher), and I know plenty of people that don't do it, but it certainly helps when you can know "okay, I just need to play safely here and I'll win" vs "It's dead even. I can't give up points for safety" vs "If I don't do something, I will lose." I would say it's worthwhile to invest the time to do it in your games, even if it takes you a long time when you first start learning how to do it.

That being said, I've also had my share of surprising scores, mainly when I am either too upset about my poor play (and just want the game to end) or am just being too lazy (which is something I'm trying to eliminate from my play).

_________________
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 kill kittens when I lose.

Really? I would have thought you would do dirty things to that picture of nami in your av. (Oh god I've wanted to say that for so long.)

For me it's "If I don't do something, the game will become boring.". And that generally does not depend on score

_________________
Sanity is for the weak.

I don't really count all that much in my games, you can get pretty decently far without counting, as long as you have decent positional judgment. Comparative evaluation is awesome.

Yes - it hurts to lose. I can't really relate to those that say, "it doesn't hurt if I played a good game". Well, I never play a good game. I always have mistakes. I can only play "good" (well) relative to my opponent. And when I lose, I have not played well in relation to my opponent.

_________________
be immersed

I am working on a psyhological system for feeling good when I win but not feeling bad when I lose. The general design of the system is almost finished but it still needs to be fine-tuned and tested in tournaments.

Unfortunately, it cannot be used when I am on diet (which is about 300 days per year). This is because it involves chocolate and/or coke at some stage. Nevertheless the progress is promising.

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

Sounds like a normal day-to-day diet for me

Michael

_________________
Go is easy: don't play bad moves.