Crushing Beginners

[RobertJasiek]

viewtopic.php?p=148324#p148324

from Robert's context, we thought it was a teaching game which Robert treated as a contest - a behavior not worthy of a teacher.
Later Robert backpedalled and explained that that was *not* a teaching game, but a contest game, but this is neither here nor there.

Since you still refuse to understand, there are in particular these types of real world games:
- tournament games
- serious club games (each player tries to win as well as he can)
- teaching club games (the stronger player does not try too hard, interrupts etc.)

"contest game" is something you try to assign to "serious club game", but no, "contest" is "tournament".

IMO, in serious club games, it is perfectly ok to crush beginners. Apparently you disagree? Or maybe you think that each game between strong player and beginner is required to be a teaching game?

[p2501]

You talk in such absolutes and black and white... it's not even worth to formulate a reasonable answer.

[quantumf]

You described a 4 stone handicap game - was this the correct handicap? It seems unlikely if your opponent was 13k, even if it was on a smaller board. If it was the incorrect handicap, then pretty much by definition, it was a teaching game.

[Dusk Eagle]

Maybe we have very different club atmospheres, but I've only played a handful of "serious" club games as opposed to just friendly matches where both players are trying to win. In any case, I think it's inappropriate for a stronger player to be playing such a game against a beginner in a non-tournament setting in the first place. The amount of teaching you offer up is up to you, but if your only goal when playing a beginner in a club is to win then you shouldn't be playing against beginners - let someone else do it.

[RobertJasiek]

viewtopic.php?p=148327#p148327

[list=1]
[*] Because your behavior led to a person leaving a club

Not my "behaviour", but "our common attempt to score according to Japanese rules by trying to assess life and death status" combined with my opponent's disliking of this kind of scoring or his difficulty to understand it or his difficulty to understand life and death or his related impatience.

so alienating them like you did is not good.

I have heard of beginners that left because of having been treated like dummies (stronger player letting them win easily). My opponent left because he was not treated like a dummy. Before a game against a much weaker player, the stronger player can choose to treat him softly or hard, or to ask him which treatment he prefers. I have seen beginners and advanced players complaining like mad when being asked such a question before the game, because they considered the question itself to be insulting.

I.e., one simply cannot do it right for all beginners, because everybody wants his preferred kind of treatment.

You can be really difficult and hard to take when you get into your Vulcan mode, which is what I think has happened in that case.

Wild speculations by you are off-topic.

once you notice where the game is going, you can always try to turn it into a teaching game, even an informal one.

I can, but I do not want to. Maybe it is beyond your imagination, but also I enjoy winning games. In a serious game, I have every right to my joy of winning the game well. Quite like my opponent has the same right. This competition for the win is what makes go so exciting. By no means would I want to remove this fun, just to please your preference for not crushing beginners in games in which it happens.

I cannot believe you got to be so much stronger than a 13k, a regular club goer, without running into such situation before, or without witnessing such situation before.

Such happened despite your missing belief:)

And if you have not

Indeed. It was the first experience of that kind. Simply because newcomers were rare at that time. Most would start at the same time in a university club course, so they shared a similar experience.

You never analyze the game afterwards?

Eh??? How on earth do you come to this absurd idea?

Quite contrarily, some analysis was the norm after most club games.

Just analyze the final position... I mean - really.

You misunderstand deliberately. We were busy in that stage and had not entered post-game analysis yet.

[RobertJasiek]

You described a 4 stone handicap game - was this the correct handicap? It seems unlikely if your opponent was 13k, even if it was on a smaller board. If it was the incorrect handicap, then pretty much by definition, it was a teaching game.

On 13x13, there are only guesses for the "right" handicap in a first game between a particular strong and a particular weak player. H4 cannot be too far off though.

[Bantari]

You talk in such absolutes and black and white... it's not even worth to formulate a reasonable answer.

That's RJ for you.
It takes years of practice to get used to his 'style.'

[RobertJasiek]

"serious" club games as opposed to just friendly matches where both players are trying to win.

Uh, that is what I mean. The serious thing is that both are seriously trying to win.

In any case, I think it's inappropriate for a stronger player to be playing such a game against a beginner in a non-tournament setting in the first place.

Why? It was the norm in Berliner clubs in the early 90s.

if your only goal when playing a beginner in a club is to win

Why don't you understand? DURING the game, each player wants to win. (And talk with everybody, since it is a club.) AFTER the game, the players have as much analysis / teaching as they like. Or none, if they play blitz all the night.

then you shouldn't be playing against beginners

Why? Why should somebody offering as much teaching to beginners as they like, just because the teaching is IN BETWEEN the games? Why should the same stronger players not be allowed to teach DURING other games declared to be teaching games? Etc.

Be reasonable! First understand what was being done, before wrongly assuming that there was no teaching of beginners. In fact, there was very much teaching. Mostly AFTER every game.

- let someone else do it.

Not possible, because EVERYBODY in the clubs was teaching beginners. You sound as if I was in clubs were only the club leader was teaching. Nonsense. Everybody was. Some clubs even did not have any proclaimed club teacher, but who cared? Everybody was teaching everybody. Simple.

[Bantari]

http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=148324#p148324

from Robert's context, we thought it was a teaching game which Robert treated as a contest - a behavior not worthy of a teacher.
Later Robert backpedalled and explained that that was *not* a teaching game, but a contest game, but this is neither here nor there.

Since you still refuse to understand, there are in particular these types of real world games:
- tournament games
- serious club games (each player tries to win as well as he can)
- teaching club games (the stronger player does not try too hard, interrupts etc.)

"contest game" is something you try to assign to "serious club game", but no, "contest" is "tournament".

Says who?!?

I consider there to be several kinds of games (I could probably come up with more, so don't push me, heh):

1. Serious tournament game - in a serious tournament, big prizes await, maybe qualification to next stage
2. Minor tournament game - in a lesser tournament, crappy prizes, no qualification
3. Casual tournament game - in a low-level tournament, maybe not even counted for ratings
4. Serious club game - like a grudge match or something, maybe even timed!
5. Minor club game - you every-day run-of-the-mill club game
6. Casual club game - over a beer and admiring a shapely waitress
7. Overboard club game - after you had a few beers and you see too many stones on too many boards, or a rengo or something
8. Serious teaching games - you get paid for it, and you better work your bum off to earn the money
9. Minor teaching game - maybe a high-handi game, or teaching beginner who walked into a club
10. Casual teaching game - you show a new joseki to your weaker friends
11. Implied teaching game - started as a contest, but evolved into teaching for whatever reason, mostly happens in club games, more seldom in tournament games

I consider there to be three categories of games into which the above 1-11 kinds of games can be divided:

1. Contest - the result is important to a certain degree (sometimes a lot, sometimes very little) - types 1-6
2. Teaching - the result is unimportant, the aim is to present knowledge - types 8-11
3. Fun only - the games are for fun only, and while no teaching is intended, the result has no real meaning - type 7

Now - who are you to claim otherwise?!?

Anyways - to me, the game in question clearly falls into type-11. Or maybe it should have been implicitly type-9 to begin with because of the handi, and only you misunderstood it for type-4 or type-5.

IMO, in serious club games, it is perfectly ok to crush beginners. Apparently you disagree? Or maybe you think that each game between strong player and beginner is required to be a teaching game?

Yup, this is what I think.
Unless there is sufficient handi involved and the game is actually tense, I see no reason to consider it to be non-teaching. Even a high-handi game which *is* tense should be a teaching game. Otherwise the game is waste of time - the result is a foregone conclusion and no teaching takes place - then why even play? Unless it is really important to your ego to, once you realize you can win the game easily, to actually go and demonstrate your superiority.

Anyways - this is just my opinion. I acknowledge that you have a different opinion. But, both being just personal opinion, both are valid. And I certainly reserve the right to form my opinion about *you* based on how well you comply with what I personally consider to be good behavior. My judgement, so my standards.

[RobertJasiek]

I acknowledge that you have a different opinion.

Nevertheless you try to impose on me (and other Berliner club players of the early 90s) your interpretation of how games should have been perceived.

[Bantari]

[list=1]
[*] Because your behavior led to a person leaving a club

Not my "behaviour", but "our common attempt to score according to Japanese rules by trying to assess life and death status" combined with my opponent's disliking of this kind of scoring or his difficulty to understand it or his difficulty to understand life and death or his related impatience.

We will really never know unless you have a video of that incident and we can judge your behavior for ourselves.
All I can say that I too have had such experiences, personally, and they never ever led to a person leaving the club and never coming back. Thus my conclusion that there might have been something special about the way you handled the situation, regardless of the scoring used.

once you notice where the game is going, you can always try to turn it into a teaching game, even an informal one.

I can, but I do not want to. Maybe it is beyond your imagination, but also I enjoy winning games. In a serious game, I have every right to my joy of winning the game well. Quite like my opponent has the same right. This competition for the win is what makes go so exciting. By no means would I want to remove this fun, just to please your preference for not crushing beginners in games in which it happens.

Here we just have to agree to disagree.
If crushing beginners in highly mismatched games is what rocks your boat, what can I say... rock on, dude.

And yes, it is slightly beyond my imagination.
Do you also sandbag on the servers and does it give you satisfaction of 'winning games'?!?

I cannot believe you got to be so much stronger than a 13k, a regular club goer, without running into such situation before, or without witnessing such situation before.

Such happened despite your missing belief:)

Then it shows that:
a) such things happen very very seldom, so why all the fuss, and
b) such things happen only to specific people, which makes it more specific-person-issue rather than scoring-method-issue, so again - why all the fuss?

You never analyze the game afterwards?

Eh??? How on earth do you come to this absurd idea?

Because the idea to analyze the end position slightly ahead of time, to determine the status of the groups, did not occur to you. To me, it is a very natural and obvious extension to the idea of analyzing games in general, and so if such natural and obvious conclusion did not occur to you, I was wondering if the underlying premise was missing.

[hyperpape]

Or maybe you think that each game between strong player and beginner is required to be a teaching game?

You say it like we're supposed to be shocked by the idea.

[Bantari]

I acknowledge that you have a different opinion.

Nevertheless you try to impose on me (and other Berliner club players of the early 90s) your interpretation of how games should have been perceived.

Nope.
I tell you how *I* perceive it and what it means to *me* about *you* to have handled it the way you did.

I also voice my disbelief that this was normal and natural at that time to handle situations like that in this way. I was also playing in clubs in the early 90s and in the early 80s as well, and my experience (even from the early 80s and late 70s when I started playing) is that it was the norm and common sense to handle it differently that you did.

If there was something special about Berliner Go Club which made handling situations the way you did normal, this is sad, but I hope them people learned to do things better since then.

For the record, I have been playing a lot in Germany in the late 80s and never seen things handled quite the way you describe. Thus my puzzlement and disbelief that it was 'normal'.

And your implied claim that it was impossible to do otherwise - I simply reject. It was possible, I did it differently (in germany, in late 80s) and I saw many people doing it differently. I have build (with a friend) a whole club out of pure beginners in Clausthal-Zellerfeld in the late 80s, and I have a *lot* of experience in how to handle German beginners. This experience is completely at odds with what you describe.

[RobertJasiek]

Thus my conclusion that there might have been something special about the way you handled the situation, regardless of the scoring used.

Have you excluded the possibility that the difficulty of the position to be scored was part of the cause? I.e., when you had similar troubles, did you have equally difficult positions? (Open middle game position with ca. 3 dan difficulty of assessing death.)

Do you also sandbag on the servers

No.

a) such things happen very very seldom,

If they happen once per regular player (who sees another player never again), it is by far too often. The Western go population might double otherwise.

Because the idea to analyze the end position slightly ahead of time, to determine the status of the groups, did not occur to you.

You mean to stop the game before the successie passes and teach? It would have been insulting to my opponent, who has the same right to end the game by passing, as I have. Recall that it was NOT a teaching game.

if the underlying premise was missing.

Yes, because it was NOT a teaching game with the preagreed right to interrupt.

[RobertJasiek]

Or maybe you think that each game between strong player and beginner is required to be a teaching game?

You say it like we're supposed to be shocked by the idea.

I am just asking to respect that other players (here: my opponent and I) may play a club game under their own agreement (teaching only after the game) and are not required to follow anybody else's prescription (such as teaching required already during the game).