Is it Possible to Not Be Mentally Prepared for Go?

[AKaios]

Hello guys. I'm not completely new to this game, in fact I played religiously for about a year before I stopped playing for two. Now that I'm getting back into the game, I find myself wanting to get really good at it. Study the game, study professional games, turn it into something more than a game. As I play casual games on the KGS servers and browse the net for videos, strategies, techniques etc. I find myself wondering if I'm even mentally prepared for Go? When I play the game, sometimes it feels like I don't really have a strategy going into it, almost like I'm going in blind. I find myself wondering why I am putting stones in certain spots and when fighting ensues, I know how to evade and play out of it, but other than that I feel like that maybe my mind isn't prepared for this game. Am I just psyching myself out? Or could there be more to it?


I don't know. Sorry if this post seems a little...useless, but I'm just curious as to what you guys have to say.


Cheers.

[Bonobo]

Uhm, do you have fun with Go?

[Kirby]

I can relate to your feeling, but I don't think you need to prepare yourself. Go is complex enough such that if you try to wait until you are mentally prepared, you will never play.

Kinda like life, I guess - if you wait to be perfect before "living your life", you'll never "live".

Meanwhile, those that just play, will continue to gain experience and improve.

A little bit of psych is probably good, but I don't think you'll have a problem with it.

[EdLee]

Welcome (back).
Stick to this:

I find myself wanting to get really good at it.

Work toward your goal. Take baby steps to improve. Every day. Rinse and repeat.

[Boidhre]

I've found my mind is exceptionally good at finding reasons not to play similar with many things in life. Mostly to deal with it, you need to challenge it, amass evidence against the reason, and then force yourself to play anyway to show yourself the reason was false or at least not the end of the world etc.

[lemmata]

You said that you played religiously for a year. That does not sound so good. It might have burned you out.

Here's a collection of loosely related pieces of advice:

I assume that you are regular human being with a regular life like the rest of us and not an insei. There's no need to feel any pressure about getting strong fast.

Try to play fewer games but make them slow ones. Play 1 or 2 serious slow games per week and ask stronger players to review them. You might play a little more, but make sure that you do not play so much that it affects the rest of your life (family, work, school, etc.). You can post them on L19. I have seen many fantastic reviews here.

Use up all of your time. Don't worry about time management. Time management is for pros and amateur tournament contenders. Most of us just need to think about the best move. Devoting time to think about a move is a real skill, it has to be learned by practicing it. Not using your time results in mistakes that are below your level. If you are forever telling yourself "I lost because of a stupid mistake", it is hard to improve.

If you play online, you might encounter some jerks, but filter them out and train yourself to type only "hi, have fun" and "thank you, good game". Do not ever respond to their provocations. Simply ignore them.

Don't be afraid of handicap games. There's plenty to be learned from them as long as you are playing seriously.

Go is for fun. Never forget this. Go cannot prove that you are smarter or dumber than anyone else.

[jts]

If you are doing those things (pro games, looking for articles and videos) because they seem fun, go right ahead and do all those things. But if you're doing them because you think you have to, I would say, just play for now. Don't worry about not knowing what you're doing... Ddk go is more like kissing than driving a car: having no idea what you're doing is exciting, not frightening.

Past playing a lot, tsumego are really useful too, if you enjoy puzzles. Books, strategy videos, and professional games are all options, but they are more about joy than improvement until you get to (rolls two dice) 10k.

[Loons]

I suspect the trick to go is that there's not much of a trick past common advice. How many hours does it take to become a piano virtuoso?

[daal]

I find myself wondering if I'm even mentally prepared for Go? When I play the game, sometimes it feels like I don't really have a strategy going into it, almost like I'm going in blind.

I'm not sure what you mean by being "mentally prepared" but it can't mean "knowing what to play." Every game is full of difficult decisions, and with hindsight, even pros recognize that some were bad. For me, being mentally prepared means saying to myself at the onset of a game: "I will play my strongest moves, read as well as I can, and crush my inner demons of fear, cowardice and jealousy."

[Buri]

Greetings,
sorry I`m a beginner so take this with a pinch of whatever.
Seems to be two different issues here. First is simply how to play and the second is your psychological relation to the game.
As far as the first goes, unless you are a pro and study your opponent in advance you are not going to have much more than a set of guidelines until the the first few stones are placed. After that, knowing where to play is not that hard. The Guo Juan Internet school has wonderful opening training lectures and exercises which make this easy. Then you need to know a limited number of joseki so the corners don`t get messed up.
Once you get into the middle game if you feel you have no strategy it is probable that you are living in gote.The main reason for this is simply the misconception that your opponent knows where to play so you just follow and react. In such a case there is never any sense of strategy or of knowing what one is doing. Considering that lower kyuu players are making unnecessary connections, cuttings and playing on the second line a lot ofthe time and so on, one is simply learning to play badly by dogging them in gote.
By stopping and looking around the board, take a deep breathe, find the biggest move and play it. The strategy is there: you are taking territory. The strategy of the game is to take territory.
As the game progresses there appear to be less and less of these options so it is often more a question of not doing the wrong thing . Two of the the worst wrong things you can do are a) floating stones in the center that neither attack of make territory and b) waste stones connecting groups that are already alive or cutting groups that are already alive. Eliminate this kind of wastage and you might se e that a strategy emerges anyway. Jennie Shen make s an interesting observation about this issue of not knowing in anothe r lecture at that school. She says that `the experience is quite common and that one should simply play a good shape. Very often the process of playing a good shape opens up possibilities that one would not other wise have seen.`
I understand the feeling of not knowing if one is ready or being lost all to well. However, ones metal approach tot he game is inextricably linked to a feeling of technical competence so finding the right lessons was essential for me. After that I needed to find the self discipline to not walk away from another failed game. But rather look at it objectively and ask myself if the moves I played corresponded to the criteria of shape , direction or efficiency that I was working on. This self review may well be more useful than asking others to review games for you in a lot of ways.

carry on knowing that on the igo board noone can hear you scream.
Best wishes,
Buri

[ez4u]

@AKaios - Great avatar by the way!

[EdLee]

Yes, I like that avatar, too.

[AKaios]

Haha. Thanks guys. Glad you enjoy the avatar as much as me.


Also, thank you for the positive responses. It'll definitely help me get passed the barriers of doubt and nervousness.


I can tell this is going to be a good community to be apart of.

[thegodude]

My opinion is that the only mindset you need to be in is to not be too fatigued that you will not think through your moves entirely. As lemmata said, you need to worry only about making the best move you can. This means you have enough concentration to think through (and read out) the moves. This may just be because I am still a beginner though and tend to make mistakes, especially if I am not concentrating well enough. This is probably why lemmeata suggested playing a slow game, you will make better moves and better learn the skill of reading.

As far as "mental preparation" I would say that there are only a few things you can really do. As you said, study your own and professional games. Other things you could do are tsumegos and studying go books.

[Mivo]

I think for me, and maybe for you as well, the biggest "problem" with Go is all that ballast and baggage that is attached to it. The belief that it's not just a game or recreational activity, but this huge, meaningful test of one's mental prowess, the pinnacle that only the smartest and brightest can climb (and if you struggle even at the slope of the mountain, what does that say about you?!).

That can make it seem awfully intimidating, and when you're flustered, you mentally cramp up (and sometimes not only mentally). It's kind of like trying to talk coherently and calmly when you're anxious or panicky as opposed to doing the same when you're totally relaxed.

Maybe a good strategy might be to forget about wanting to be "really good at it" and instead aim for "really having fun with it", and who knows, the former may just happen as a result.