John Fairbairn wrote:
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I infer that Tami is in the "want to understand" group (like me) whereas ez4u and Araban are in the "want to be strong" group.
If you want to be strong that means you really want to beat your opponents, like Fischer. You want to win, you care about your rank. You drill, you think hard, you avoid games against weaker players, you ignore go history and other distractions. Winning gives you joy; losing gives you pain. For you, go is like tennis.
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Interesting analogy... I think that I am in the "want to be strong" camp. I care about winning. It's interesting to try to understand the "want to understand" camp, as I don't know if I completely understand them. ;-p
I feel that I "want to understand" go, but this desire is driven by the fact that I ultimately want to win the games that I play. It is hard for me to conceptualize the idea of "wanting to understand" without "wanting to win", probably because I want to win.
To me, the goal of the game is to win. If you think of the game from a game-theoretical standpoint, it's a zero-sum game: you profit from any win equally, and you lose that same amount when you lose. It is difficult for me to fathom playing the game without using the principle of trying to win as a guideline.
I don't think that this is limited to go in my life. Pretty much any game that I play, I play with the intention of winning. That is the goal to me, and it is how I understand that the game is defined.
If I try to think of games where winning is not important to me - say playing Monopoly - then it seems to be the case that they are games that I do not care about very much. I don't care about winning Monopoly, because I don't really care that much about Monopoly.
However, the "fan" perspective that John mentions in his post is an interesting one. Clearly he cares about baseball. Clearly it is something that he values and enjoys. But he is not driven by trying to get stronger as much as an appreciation of the game.
This is admirable to me, because it is a trait that I do not feel that I can relate to in any aspect of my life.