What is your Goal in Go?

[Kirby]

Like the title says, what is your goal in go? Do you want to achieve a certain rank? Do you want to learn something insightful? Do you want to just have fun?

If you want to just have fun, do you spend much time studying the game?

[tapir]

I want to beat Robert Jasiek in a tournament game.

[TheBigH]

I want to be one stone stronger. Once I achieve that, my goal will still be the same.

[oren]

I just have fun and spend a lot of time enjoying the game.

[Bonobo]

My first goal is to have fun playing with people In Real Life™, not on servers. But I live in a village in Northern Germany with the next stronger player living 25 km away. Therefore I spend more time with getting people hooked (having founded the local Go club and the local School Go Workshop) than with getting stronger myself, so as to get more and stronger opponents on the real board I also (irregulary) read books because I do want to get stronger, but getting stronger has a lower priority for me than getting others to play go—probably until the Real Life people I play with begin winning at even games

[MS_Sydney]

I have various goals, but to get one stone closer to msgreg would be cool.

[Boidhre]

I want to understand the game better. I had a long post written out about this but fundamentally it comes down to this: While it'd be nice to be a strong player what I really care about is getting a better feel for the game because that's what I've enjoyed most about this game, slowly getting a better feel for it.

[Phoenix]

To get stronger so I can better appreciate the depth and beauty of Go.

And like Bonobo said, play with others IRL. Online will never be the same.

I also want to spread it around as much as I can. To teach it and instill in others the same love for the game that I have.

[Tami]

I`d like to

0) Lose myself in the beauty of go
1) Find ways to get much stronger
2) Get stronger
3) Help others to get stronger

[lindentree]

AGA 7D.

[Kirby]

I`d like to

0) Lose myself in the beauty of go
1) Find ways to get much stronger
2) Get stronger
3) Help others to get stronger

All interesting answers, but I'll respond to you, Tami, since you made a list with an index starting at zero.

When you refer to the beauty of go, could you elaborate on what you mean? Beauty can be seen in many forms, and I can imagine that go could be considered a beautiful game in many ways.

But what makes go beautiful to you?
(This question is in reaponse to Tami, but I'd be interested in hearing anyone's answer.)

[Tami]

I`d like to

0) Lose myself in the beauty of go
1) Find ways to get much stronger
2) Get stronger
3) Help others to get stronger

All interesting answers, but I'll respond to you, Tami, since you made a list with an index starting at zero.

When you refer to the beauty of go, could you elaborate on what you mean? Beauty can be seen in many forms, and I can imagine that go could be considered a beautiful game in many ways.

But what makes go beautiful to you?
(This question is in reaponse to Tami, but I'd be interested in hearing anyone's answer.)

When making lists, I like to use 0 to signify an item or principle that may not be part of the main, ordinary list, but which supports or illuminates everything. In life, God is the 0th principle; in go, it is the beauty of the game (speaking for myself, anyway).

What is beautiful about go? There are so many things for me: the often jaw-dropping tactical possibilities, the potential for deep and ingenious planning, the magic of sabaki, the tension between influence and profit, and the schooling in patience, thinking ahead, and accepting the consequences of one`s actions, and the opportunities go provides to make friends with people from all over the world. Beyond these, there`s also the existence of exquisite playing equipment and locations, and a wealth of stories and folklore, and the interesting people that go attracts.

That`s not bad for a 3000-year-old board game, is it?

[Unusedname]

My goal was 1D but that doesn't seem as much of an important goal.

What I want is to be able read sequences in multiple parts of the board AND know what order to play them in and which ones work together.

Right now I can't even read sequences. Well at least not the way I want. All I can do is see a move that looks good. And know what moves my opponent can't do. Like I can read that my opponent can't cut, but then I don't know how they're going to respond.

I suppose I could do these things but I get lazy and I start to feel guilty once I spend more then 2 minutes on a move.

I think the closest to this I can do right now is knowing which stones to sacrifice in order to get the right side of the board.


OH AND SQUEEZES. I want to get better at those. I want to understand the crosscut, sacrifice stone, squeeze sequence.
Like I've done it in tsumego but when it comes to a game I almost never see this.

But my favorite thing that i've recently learned is fighting near my walls and playing safe extensions when my opponent has walls.

[edit note to admins] "At least one new post has been made to this topic. You may wish to review your post in light of this."
this is an amazing feature. I wish all forums had this feature.

[snorri]

What a great question!

Jorge Luis Borges wrote about the fact that we keep coming back to the same metaphors. When I was younger and read that, it struck me deeply. In my own life, I see this sense of return, or more accurately, not ever leaving. I also think it is important to have some source of metaphors. Before go, trumpet playing was one source of metaphors for me, and I have others. Here is one I'll share:

In one lesson, my teacher commented: "You seem to have gotten into the habit of pivoting the horn for higher notes. This isn't necessarily bad---I know some exceptionally talented players who do that. But now I'm afraid you are at a crossroads. You can either learn to control the pivot or get rid of it. It's your choice, but I recommend you get rid of it."

For some reason, throughout my life I have noticed that I'm faced with that same kind of choice over and over again just in different contexts, so whenever I run into a situation where I have to either to decide to avoid something or commit to it entirely, I think of that one lesson long ago about the pivot. The pivot is a deeply controversial thing in trumpet instruction, but my teacher was right that although there was no one true way, I had to choose.

Go is an incredibily rich source of metaphors, and I've been deep enough into it that I know that those metaphors will be part of me forever, even if I stop playing.

So I guess my goal in go is to keep discovering those metaphors, and to keep returning to the best ones and how they relate to my own life...

Right now the main go metaphor in my life is thinness. Many non-players have heard the term: "stretching oneself too thin," and it's like that, but the go concept is much deeper and more frightening than the usual English metaphor. There is a fear of things getting to be too late to find the honte move...

[EdLee]

I want to get a whiff of what pros see.

I already accomplished that in a few other fields.
Life is short; there are only so many years left.
I started Go very late, in my 30's, so my progress is super slow,
and I know I'll never get as far in Go as I have in other areas.
But Go still happens to fit in that category of things one can continue
to improve for life... that's nice.