on suicide (NOT a rule discussion!) (NOT on Depression!)

perceval · #1

By suicide i mean that you are playing a normal game, you feel ahead, maybe a little too relax, and suddenly your brain goes in suicide mode ie it seems determine to see you lose.
I don't mean letting 1 group in atari or a given one move blunder but a succession of stupidities until all this left is resign and rant about it on a random go forum :grumpy:

consider the gem below:
i was unhappy at start but at move 140ish i feel ahead by a safe margin...
well safe.. except for the maniac sitting on my chair ... :batman:

(i was white as should be obvious if you read the rant and looked at the game)

:w144: :sad:

start of the crazy: lets allow him to resurrect his group while killing mine. and it was 2 move deep reading no less.
1 mistake like that is sad but happens (to me at least).
The crasy is that i continued giving like santa claus on lsd until the very bitter end:

:w146: now i die in gote ... :roll:

actually i think that if i made something useful with this move like S9 i would still be ahead.
:w154: lets give those monkey stones, its not like i needs the points anyway. (this kind of mistake while dealing wit monkey jumps happened a lot to me so now i am more alert to them in a normal state ie i should have seen it coming)
now i am behind so i begin to play normally (ie as bad as normal)

:w180: now the game is more or less even, so lets pass :mad:

... no wait let rather play a useless stone in the territory for -1 pt.
otherwise the game might be turned yet.
what could have possesses me to play J14 ? was there a worst move in the board ?

:w208: well the game is still not decided, my opponent was a bit slack seems hard to make a big mistake, so lets take a 1 pt in gote. :-|

Not a big deal compared to the rest though

:w214: well 34 moves without a huge blunder: it's the age of the christ, so time to resurect something i guess ?? :evil:

the ko fight was probably poorly done but it should never happen in the first place

:w244: maybe the was a 30 move rule in this game where is was requested to blunder every 30 move ? should have read it beforehand.
the funny here is that being waay behind i was almost back to normal (except for the hurting inside) so i read that A4 was a snapback so i had to play B7 ..
but then .. MISCLICK.. :mrgreen:

a fitting end for this game

so do you think i should see a shrink for hidden (or not-so-hidden) death pulsions ?

i guess i want reassurance that i am not the only one having games like that. :cry:

come on you can tell me... no sgf proof asked total discretion

Li Kao · #2

A manic sitting in your chair when I want to play go? I get that far too often.

Unfortunately it's not this kind of maniac:

But rather this kind:

Laman · #3

when i saw the title, i thought "on suicide, not a rule discussion... great, someone is depressed", but this is also interesting

to the topic: such things also happen to me, it is about concentration and state of mind. once you get angry or otherwise knocked from your rhythm, your chances to win severely drop, if you don't manage to recompose yourself. take a few second break, clear your mind, forget what happened on the board and instead focus on how to play to win from the current position. i like to imagine myself like an emotionless ghost above the board, who can smile to anything i worry about and instead uses all his power to play the game to the best possible end.
especially in turn based games i like to take even few days break from play after a mistake, so i can forget about my previous play and just do my best in future moves.

i find such calming techniques very useful, but in the end, i still suck. always getting better, never good enough

PS: before b G17, you could have played w A11 and atari your way out for some of the dead stones and play ko for the others, no?

on suicide (NOT a rule discussion!) (NOT on Depression!)

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