Not to disparage your goal of aiming for one point wins, but to me this exchange indicates that, if you also have a goal of improving, your opponents are too weak. If you want to improve, you should not be practicing passive play.





As I said.

You know, you can kill two birds with one stone by playing against the weak version of smartgo with a proper handicap, and then striving to win by one point. If you give a proper handicap you cannot afford lax plays.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Everyone seems to be missing the entire point. It's not a bad thing to win by more than 1 moku (japanese term for point), however, you're game plan should be to only control 181 points. If you still don't get what I'm saying, well, I can't elaborate more. The easiest way to win the game is to only strive to do the minimum necessary to win. That's all. If you don't agree with that, you're just another human. If you don't understand that, you're just slow.

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Thinking like a go player during a game of chess is like bringing a knife to a gun-fight. Thinking like a chess player during a game of go feels like getting knifed while you're holding a gun...

It's the endgame. You're behind by 2 points, and are about to lose, when your opponent misses an atari. You can capture 3 stones, and then you will win by 4 points. What to do?

The point being, of course, that go is a two player game, and it is arrogance to think that you alone control the flow of the game. Striving to win by one point is disrespectful to your opponent, IMO.

Like Herman said, it's actually somewhat cocky and arrogant to be able to control your opponent so much to engineer a win by 1 point or a half point. Against kyu or even low dan players it's impossible to do other than by good luck as their play is so bad and full of mistakes. You could be half a point ahead in late endgame and then they make a 2 point mistake. So you need to keep another 2 point mistake available for you to make to cancel theirs. This miai idea gets very complex because positions can interact and they might suddenly play several good moves in a row. However, for something like a 6d against a 3d the 6d can try to win by half a point, and people do sometimes do this to show off. Kim Seong-June, a Korean 6d who used to lived in Cambridge and co-authored Shape Up with Charles Matthews, could do this apparently. It is very hard though, far harder than winning by resign or 20-30 points or whatever would happen if they played normally.
is bollocks.

Yeah, I agree that many seem to be missing the point, but you're the one who started the whole one point business, and numbers have a magical-like magnetic effect on many go players. Also, despite your stated respect for disagreement, the tone of your posts is something akin to "I have seen the light!"

Perhaps your point could be better be expressed so: A go game is about balance, and the best games are those in which the balance only slightly favors one player.

Here, one could argue that balance is not the objective of a go game, but rather a strategy. Another strategy however is efficiency, and if you are not making efficient moves, you are not playing the best go game. Do you see no difference in comparing the weight of two feathers and the weight of two mountains?

Another question: why do you assume that a perfect player would always win by one point, or even want to? Do you believe that there is a morally correct way of fighting a battle?

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Patience, grasshopper.

Maybe my theories wrong and maybe it just doesn't make sense to anyone else (I've mentioned that I have a rather odd approach to the game anyways). I guess I'll just have to report back in a few years and let everyone know how far it got me. It's just the only thing that makes sense to me; it's kinda along the lines of the proverb "wealthy people shouldn't pick fights". If you're ahead by only one point, then why risk playing aggressively? All you have to do is defend and passively play out the win (aiming for the 1 moku).

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Thinking like a go player during a game of chess is like bringing a knife to a gun-fight. Thinking like a chess player during a game of go feels like getting knifed while you're holding a gun...

Regarding balance, perhaps a better sentiment is something along the lines of: go is a sharing game, you only need one more point than your opponent to win. So aim to play good moves that with good play from both sides give you a small advantage, do not underestimate your opponent and assume he is a retard and try to crush him by 100 points. However, you and your opponent are in fact both pretty far from perfect play so you will both make many mistakes large and small and when you/they do the other will naturally capitalise on them and then you can win/lose by lots (or maybe not as the see-saw of mistakes can also cancel out).

MOKU MOKU MOKU MOKU!!!!

You have dan level players explaining why you, a DDK, are wrong. And you call them slow?

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- Brady
Want to see videos of low-dan mistakes and what to learn from them? Brady's Blunders

Of course not. And I haven't seen anyone strait up tell me that I'm wrong; this is a discussion. And to reiterate my statement, I said that if you disagree with me than your're just another person, however, if after all the elaboration you still don't understand the point being made, yeah just slow (perhaps my attempt at humor is unappreciated as well). As the saying goes, a discussion is an exchange of knowledge, an argument is an exchange of ignorance. I see no one arguing here. Once again, I could be totally wrong about my theory, I'm just throwing this out there and bouncing my ideas off of people. Is there another reason for this forum?

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Thinking like a go player during a game of chess is like bringing a knife to a gun-fight. Thinking like a chess player during a game of go feels like getting knifed while you're holding a gun...

You're wrong.

It's an easy way to lose.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I feel like people are being a bit too harsh. I agree that this is unlikely to be conductive to improvement (though would like to see some example games where OP tried to achieve this 1 point win), but I think calling him a troll or mocking his use of Jesus or being hung up on the use of "moku" isn't super helpful.

As an aside, when I first saw the title I thought OP was going to say that half-point losses are more luck than skill, and only losses larger than that are real losses, turns out he has much more strict standards

I also think this is going to require a counting ability far greater than the average kyu. I know I'm pretty bad at counting as a dan, but I don't think I could even dream to do this at any board sizes larger than 9x9 (and would probably lose more games than win even against ddks trying this).

OK, I removed my troll accusation, though I still suspect he's trying to get a rise out of people. Even if he isn't, he's succeeding.

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- Brady
Want to see videos of low-dan mistakes and what to learn from them? Brady's Blunders

I did think it more likely for people to complain I was being too harsh rather than too subtle when I said that quote was bollocks.

So to get back to the discussion, Joel, how would you answer Herman's question about the -2 or +4 situation?

There is a saying that the player loses the game, who made the last but one error.

So I think, it all has to do with one's error bandwidth, as well as with one's counting ablility.

Ten years ago, I participated in Go seminar, guided by Catalin Taranu 5p. Final event of the seminar was a handicap game, Catalin against "the world" (i.e. the participants of the seminar; stronger player 1, weaker player 1, stronger player 2, weaker player 2, ... , stronger player 1, ...).

It seemed to me that Catalin's aim was to reach a Jigo as the result of this demonstrative game, just because he seemed a bit "disappointed" that he managed to win by two points.

+ + + + + + + + + + + +

It is one main feature of the game (may be the most important) that it is sufficient to win by barely one point. There is no need to crush your opponent, in order to win.

But -- in my opinion -- it does not make sense to INTEND winning by the smallest margin possible.

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The really most difficult Go problem ever: https://igohatsuyoron120.de/index.htm
Igo Hatsuyōron #120 (really solved by KataGo)

Well for one, I don't get paid to win at Go so it really doesn't matter if I call a game a loss even though I deserved a win. But as I make the commitment to only win by one point, I'm thinking more about pre-game plan or rather the approach I take to the game every time. It makes sense to me that the easiest and most likely way to win would be to come up with game plan that lets your opponent get as much as he wants just short of winning. Seeking to take more than this will be harder and give you a greater chance of making a mistake. In practicality, if I win by under five, I feel pretty good about it. But my ultimate goal would be to play in such a way that I always win by a very small margin. If something weird happens in the game such as my opponent blundering than there will be an exception. If he blunders early on and I'm way ahead, I passively play defensive gote moves the whole game and cruise in for an easy victory. Why try to demolish your opponent?

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Thinking like a go player during a game of chess is like bringing a knife to a gun-fight. Thinking like a chess player during a game of go feels like getting knifed while you're holding a gun...

Also, I have sort of a different idea of "perfect play" than most. I play the guitar. Sometimes when I finish a song, I think "wow, I nailed that! perfect!" Does this mean that Eddie Van Halen couldn't have played it any better? Of course not! Eddie would've gone nuts and blew my version away. But then, he would have totally different idea of playing perfectly altogether. In other words, he may sound better than me and yet say "I screwed that up" while I say "I nailed it!". Back to Go, I consider a perfect game to be when I don't make any obvious blunders (by my own standards) and everything I attempt to do works out: I tried to take that corner, it worked. I tried to kill that stone, it worked. I tried to invade there and live, it worked, and so on. When everything goes according to plan, I pat myself on the back for a perfectly played game FOR MY LEVEL.

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Thinking like a go player during a game of chess is like bringing a knife to a gun-fight. Thinking like a chess player during a game of go feels like getting knifed while you're holding a gun...

When I was young I had an tendency to play that way. Unconsciously I adjusted the level of my play to that of my opponent. I remember a match play golf tournament in high school in which I came in second. I don't think I finished off an opponent before the 16th hole, even though none of them could play nearly as well as I could. (Until the final round, OC. ) When I started playing go I had a surprisingly large number of jigo. In one game I made a horrendous blunder that lost 80 points -- to win by one point. Not exactly a thing of beauty.

I had something of the same tendency in bridge, but I managed to find a cure. I not only matched the poor play of bad opponents, I matched the good play of good opponents. So I played against the best players I could.

So here is a thought for Joel. Strive for balance and to win by one point, but play against SDKs.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Good idea, Bill! I'm now playing smartgo handicapped and finding my resolution to by quite a challenge. I definitely notice this in my Chess game, btw. I have a horrible tendency to play at my opponents level. I'm the only one at the club who can beat anyone there and lose to anyone there on any given night.

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Thinking like a go player during a game of chess is like bringing a knife to a gun-fight. Thinking like a chess player during a game of go feels like getting knifed while you're holding a gun...