What's wrong?

I'm an information hoarder. It's natural for me to try and get acquainted with as much knowledge on the subject I'm invested in as possible, even if it's not internalized properly the first time around. When I'm confused, I'm more interested in finding the question that will free me of doubt in the least complicated manner possible, rather than taking pointers or heuristics for granted (this is not to say that I avoid such things as checklists when refining my decision process - quite the contrary - but if an answer is too specific or leaves just more questions unanswered, I'm more likely to filter it out. This may be the case of confirmation bias too, but I do not know how to tackle it). If this sounds like I was looking for a 42 kind of an answer, it most certainly is like that.

Given how fuzzy some subjects of the Go theory are (board judgement for example), this is a recipe for arrested development. For a rational person, such kind of idea would prompt modifying the approach to better suit the issue at hand. For me, it is not so, and I'm worried that this by itself will be a major road block in months to come. No matter how technically refined my game gets, struggling with making efficient decisions because of the inability to see and accept how one sequence results in a superior position compared to another means that my games will feel more and more random as I play, especially online.

The reason this is such a problem for me is that focusing on solutions to internal (wrong approach) problems as opposed to external (missing a piece) ones is somewhat new to me. There's so much vagueness involved here that I can't help myself but just wave my hands at things hoping something would stick. I used to be pretty introverted and introspection isn't an alien technique to me, but when it comes to personal development, you're asking yourself who you want to be and how you can become that 'better' person; in terms of studying Go, there's a more palpable goal on the horizon - winning games more often in the long run - but the path there does not become proportionally clearer.

Given all this, I concluded that there most likely is some fundamental defect or misconception in my approach to the game and improvement and, as such, I'm trying to shine light on different character flaws that might hinder my development as a player. This is done hoping that laundering my mind in a soup of different arguments and viewpoints will open the next door on the path to understanding what exactly I am doing.


Trust and acceptance

I frequent various technical outlets on the net to stay informed. One of those is Hacker News, an aggregator of user-submitted links and text posts related to anything of interest to a self-proclaimed intellectual. Admittedly, I tend to only skim the headlines posted there, only reading the linked content if it's directly related to my trade. One of such headlines caught my eye however - Students learn from people they love - because it seemed to align with an idea about learning that I subscribe to (namely, that discipline, while much more reliable, is the difficult-to-achieve mean of learning and not the main driver of improvement for most people). In the article, the author asserts that emotions and trust play a major part in sparking commitment from students, no matter how technical or fact-based a subject is. I have no trouble finding a connection between this observation and my own experience. There's a number of quite strong players in our club and they are very eager to observe, analyze the games of weaker players and offer advice. In my mind, some of them are much better at formulating said advice in a way that will stick longer. I believe this is exactly because they are better at understanding the unspoken ideas and goals behind certain moves and adapt their answers so that they better address the feeling behind those moves. This results in their suggestions leaving a longer lasting mark. Rough, situation-specific analysis just doesn't feel useful without being able to apply it on other boards, yet a lot of Go knowledge is hidden in such tidbits and one is expected to acquaint themselves with them just in case they crop up in the future. It's hard to argue the merit of that argument, however the effectiveness of the method is debatable. Personally, I have a hard time internalizing information presented to me in this fashion.


Skepticism and bias

I'm sure everybody has heard such old-time maxims as 'one should approach <subject X> with a mind open like that of a child'. What's a child's mind like however, and how one can reach a similar state, is wholly unclear. I believe the crux of the matter to lie with one's experience of life, how our emotions shape our expectations and so on. A child absorbs topically disjointed information and tries to form a cohesive image of the world based on it. An adult, in contrast, takes a piece of information and first tries to find a way to fit it into their preexisting model. If there's no good place to put it in or it takes effort to create new connections with it, they are more likely to reject it altogether. I think this is why it's good to have an early start in any discipline - the later you begin your development, the harder and slower the process will be, especially if you allow the newly created mind map to become entangled with other unrelated experiences. I have that exact problem - I reject ideas that, instead of refining my current understanding of the game, are seemingly disjointed from it or simply don't fit into my blanks well enough. Case in point - I debated a 'blue move' from a club game I played this week with a 1D friend of mine and for him it's pretty clear that that point is the most urgent one in the situation specified in the linked thread. My only reaction is to get overwhelmed with a lot of "why"s and "what is going on"s; I assume it's because I'm accustomed to a different feeling of 'big'. This however is enough for me to treat it as trivia, instead of trying to understand it deeper.


Fear and stress

The article I mentioned before also touches upon the destructive effect of fear on one's ability to learn. That one has been a key element of my experience since the beginning of the decade. When Starcraft II came around, the automatic match finder included with the multiplayer (if I recall correctly, it was something fairly new in PC games even at that time) made playing games at your level easy. Before, you had to search through a list of servers or open matches and pray that the obscure-sounding name of your opponent didn't mean they were a highly skilled player hiding behind a new alias. The ability to 'queue for a game' changed everything - now within seconds you could be paired with someone who, based on their experience with the system, was likely to play at around your skill level (smurfs could still occasionally be found, although binding the license to a Battle.net account curbed that a bit).

Since the whole selling point of the feature was to match players based on their skill level, players were ascribed ranks, with a numerical matchmaking rating (MMR) hidden behind them. I have absolutely no idea what exactly caused the spawning of the 'ladder anxiety' phenomenon, but SC2 was the game to put it in the limelight. People were figuratively scared for their lives to press the 'Find a match' button, presumably due to fear of losing their rating points, lamenting their condition on various Internet forums. Some took it very seriously, addressing the problem with numerous guides, psychological advice and the like; for others, it was a non-issue, a bogeyman, an excuse from playing (?), and their only answer was to just suck it and play more.

I can personally attest to the latter solution not working out very well. I may have pushed it a bit too far, considering how a simple phantom of confrontation with any degree of seriousness about it, let alone with a stranger on the Internet, still causes me to physically shiver. I quit playing competitive video games two years ago because of it; it drove me to the point of depression. Playing Go on the Internet now is still a mediocre experience (I try to calm myself down a tad by talking to myself throughout the match, but it's not much). I still managed to get something from playing online since most of the value of a match lies in its analysis and review.

This would be somewhat acceptable if the stress didn't cause me to also maniacally avoid complicated situations. If a position requires me to read out some sequences, I just rely on my intuition to form an image of the potentially most dangerous sequence for me and play it out only if the end result, about five moves in, is satisfactory. This is of course a doomed approach, since what use is there in reading a single sequence out? Safe to say I get surprised by subsequent moves more often than not. I have no trust in my ability to read the board; if a sequence doesn't end well, I keep going over it again and again looking for that spark of inspiration that'd lead me down a better branch. Essentially, my reading is very inefficient and so I usually avoid it altogether, sometimes letting my weak groups (almost) die because of not wanting to play locally again. I'm pushing ahead regardless, hoping that, indeed, one day I'll simply reach Zen if I reach out far enough, but I'm close to accepting that if I haven't found a solution in those nine years, then chances are I'll have to get extremely lucky to get over it. Maybe I should just go live in a cauldron...


Confusion

And so, most of the time I spend contemplating Go nowadays, I reach a state where I'm left with a number of "I don't know"s. I'm afraid of getting stuck and that fear, I presume, also contributes to me feeling stuck at my current level. I keep playing, but I don't understand what I'm getting from those games; I keep reading books, but the presented techniques feel abstract and detached from my own games; I keep asking for reviews, but it feels like nothing makes sense when the game becomes complicated. I don't know what to focus on. I don't feel like giving up - it's not as frustrating an experience as some others have been in the past and I'm hopeful that there's not a technically insurmountable challenge ahead of me - but damn, which way to go? A good game of Go for me is one where I can apply myself - but most of the time I don't understand what should be done on the board or am too preoccupied with my leg twitching to focus. So, what to do?

I was reviewing a match where, as black, I stumbled upon such a situation. Me and my friend already figured that white can try to live by sacrificing the stones on the left; now we were wondering if white has to sacrifice anything or if there's direct life. The triangles point to the fields that I already analyzed; after quickly eyeing the ones on the T line, I figured white is p.dead in the area. I reckon you can notice the solution to this problem, 'cause I certainly didn't, to the lighthearted amusement of my friend.