In the a rank thread I posted this:



And this reminded me of a situation that happened when I was at the World Mindsports games in Beijing, that I thought I'd share.

I made friends with a chinese businessman/enthusiast who was visiting the tournament. (He was my smoking buddy)

We played a number of games in the common area, and I won a good number of them. He seemed impressed that a westerner was able to keep pace with him, and invited me to come have a game against a professional friend of his. We went down to one of the game areas and he introduced me to the professional and one of the professional's students (a Tygem 9d).

(I have since forgotten the professional's name, the name was in Chinese and I had trouble with it then, now, 4 years later, it escapes me completely)

The Pro invited me to sit down and play him with a 3-stone handicap and completely blew me off the board. Afterward, I got a distinct impression of disgust from him. He asked me how long I had been playing, and I told him 6 years, he said "that long? People in China can get to where you are in 1 year"

He then started into a lesson on basic strategy, presenting the line of territory, the line of power, and the line of defeat... I listened, but I was embarrassed. I was aware of my friend standing by, shifting awkwardly, and while I wasn't about to embarrass him by storming away, I was internally seething. All I could think about was "Really? This is all you see in my play? Is this how you teach?"

Afterwards, he left and I sat down and had a game with his student. It turns out anger is a particularly effective motivator for me, because I played some of the best go I've ever played. I lost, but only because I played too fast on the killing move, and he survived. Afterwards, he complimented me on my game and I recovered my composure a bit.

I've thought about this moment from time to time since, as someone who got to my current rank pretty quickly (by American standards), I was completely unused to being effectively told that I had no potential.

But I wonder if my professional opponent had a biased view of the potential of players, based on the standard way that players learn in china. I feel like, at the Chinese 4d-5d level, most have learned to play in a specific way, because they're being taught by a system with a standardized set of proverbs. I have weaknesses that would have been eliminated early on.

No chinese 4d-5d would play some of the moves I play, they're above them. But at the same time, I have some strengths that compensate, and my record against folks at the Chinese 4d level is pretty good. The odd collection of strengths and weaknesses makes it difficult for someone to objectively quantify my rank.

Anyway, just an anecdote I thought I'd share.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

Very common, and natural: we look at things through OUR OWN lens(es).
Your friend looked at you and your moves through his lens(es).
The pro looked at you and your moves through his lens(es).
You looked at them (and form your impressions of their thoughts and feelings) through your lens(es).

Wouldn't it be interesting if more people try to be others' shoes.
Your title, "The view from above," is quite on topic.

Now I'm depressed, chinese people become 6 dan in 1 year? What do they do to improve? It seems that I wasted all my time, I'm still a beginner...

One huge factor is age. It makes some difference if you start at 5.
Another huge factor is the environment. Do you start with pro teachers, or kyu teachers -- that also makes some difference.

Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them and you have their shoes.

xed_over, I agree completely.

Unless you're criticizing them for an overabundance of foot fungus

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

I recall a comment by Richard Feynman, about the advantages of having a different bag of tricks. He had learned many of his mathematical techniques on his own, so they were different than what his contemporaries had. Sometimes one of them would come to him with a physics problem that could not be solved by standard techniques. Often, with his different view of things, he could solve it.

Many of his peers regarded him as a genius just for that; but, as he explains, if they had come to him with problems that were most easily solved with standard techniques, he would have performed rather badly. They assumed that he knew the standard techniques, so when he solved using other techniques, they assumed that he understood more. Whereas he just understood differently. He just looked really good because he was only presented with problems that required a different bag of tricks.

I always regarded this as an unduly modest tale, for he probably understood a lot of the 'standard' techniques due to the people he worked with. But it is a great tale about the advantages of thinking for yourself.

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The pro was probably upset from being woken at 6:00 am to start studying go that day. From what I can discern is that not very many people in China play Go, music, or participate in other hobbies, but when they do there is a very high expectation. Compared to westerners who like to have hobbies where they aren't expected to be the very best.

And here I expected you to complain on the placement of the three handicap stones.

It could just be that that particular pro isn`t a very nice person.

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Learn the "tea-stealing" tesuji! Cho Chikun demonstrates here:

I'm aware of the cultural practice of allowing someone to save face. I didn't want to do anything that would make my friend look bad, for example. It did shock me a bit that the pro wasn't willing to extend the same courtesy.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

Oh, my Chinese pro was nicer!

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

It reminds me of this scene from "Planet of the Apes (1968)"



It's good to remember that some of the greatest go geniuses in history were country bumpkins.

Well, it is true that people in the East Asian countries can get astonishingly strong in very little time, the story makes it sound like he didn't assess Shapenaji as a 6 dan.

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Occupy Babel!

I'm curious, Shapenaji, what was the lingua franca for this exchange? It can be awfully hard to give subtle, constructive criticism in a foreign language; often you feel pleased with yourself just for managing to get the point across at all.

I don't think any amount of nuance could make expressing surprise at how slowly someone has progressed anything but rude...

Well, maybe he was used to full-time Go students and assumed shapenaji was one. Even then, it wouldn't be the most polite reaction. The American rude question to a fast improver would be: What? You got that strong that fast? Don't you have a job?

Anyway, I agree with shapenaji's point. It's hard to tell how strong someone is just by looking at a game. It's hard to tell even by playing them especially if you are not close their level. Even pros have this problem a little. Many players have commented that it was hard to appreciate how strong Lee Changho was until they played him, because he wasn't doing anything spectacular or brilliant. He was just somehow not losing.

English, his was pretty good. I suppose there could be a misunderstanding there, but the comment about how long I was playing was pretty plain. His body language and tone were very dismissive at the end as well. (shifted from his body facing forward to sitting sideways, as though he wanted to go). Rather wish he had.

Now that I think about it, I'm starting to remember more. Hell, I think I repressed some of this. Right when I was at my beet-red boiling point, he started asking me problems.

(Not Tsumego, the board was more or less open, they were questions covering the things he had just laid out on the board, showing how much territory the stones at each level could make in the center and on the side.)

I made the move I believed was right (And trust me, this board was completely open to interpretation.) I suspected he was after a "There is more territory on the side than in the middle". but I saw excellent reasons for a center strategy on the board. His answer was obvious given his previous patronizing lesson and I figured that if I was going to get nothing else out of it at this point, I was going to pull a takemiya and play the moves I believed in. He just sorta slapped it away and started laying out a block of territory on the side and then one in center showing how many stones made how much territory.

I tried to show why I believed my move had potential. He pulled it off the board and just gestured at the little squares of territory he had built. Finally, I realized that I wasn't getting out of there until he was satisfied, and just started making the obvious moves. That's when he left.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

Addendum:

Man it keeps flooding back, okay my first comment in that last post is wrong.

His english was NOT good, which is why his student was there. His student's english was pretty good.

So maybe there were some mistranslations, but the gestures and body language were still pretty telling.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...