That playing against these tricks helps you advance as a player seems more like an article of faith than something believed on evidence.

A player needs to be able to improvise and fight instead of just playing patterns in books, but that doesn't mean that they should know every stupid idea out there. I've heard stories about amateurs who could give bigger handicaps than professionals because they knew hamete. Does their experience make them better? No.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

I feel like you do a lot, but it's definitely one of my weaknesses. In such cases, I often feel like I'm entitled to win just because my opponent is so "bad". It's easy to get lazy and play moves without thinking. "Obviously my opponent is an idiot, so I can pretty much play anything and win". I'm sad to say this has caused me to lose many, many games.

It also happens to be that one of my biggest weakness as a go player is playing against "interesting" moves - overplays or novel strategies that might be suboptimal but that I don't have a canned textbook response to fall back on. I'm sure my weakness there is strongly related to my bad attitude towards people who play that way.

i am not 7 dan but if my opponent plays that way i will not lose.

_________________
"The more we think we know about
The greater the unknown"
Words by neil peart, music by geddy lee and alex lifeson

Once more I recognize that my thought process seems to be rather uncommon. (Best match is entropi.)

I am unhappy about winning such (meaningless) games more than about losing them, which would surely aggravate me, but in the same time encourage me to play better / get better understanding. I.e., I would not have started the thread if I had lost the game, which triggered it.

I am not advocating reliance on book knowledge instead of fighting strength, on contrary.

What I resent however is the disrespect for the skill of the opponent (usually me, but it is the same when watching) that lies in consciously playing inferior moves. I would feel similar to someone starting on 1-1 points or to the way some players play handicap games, playing utter nonsense relying on mess up potential - incidentally this happens more often in rapid games than in slow ones on KGS. ...

I must say, I can't find anything wrong with that kind of playstyle. I don't want to think I'm the only one who loves the non-restrictiveness of go, that is the freedom to create your game any way you like. So I believe it's perfectly fine to try any strategy you want. If you can't take advantage of your opponents suboptimal moves it just proves that you don't really know/understand why these moves are bad, in that case it's just repeating what you "learned" from books/stronger players. Since Go is about efficiently placing your stones over the course of the whole game, if you lose against an unconventional player, your moves must have been worse than his, so you have no right to judge him.
You should welcome such games as you are forced to think and read for yourself much more than in a book-style kind of game, which will help your improvement as well. And if you win, you confirm your own ability/understanding (which is nice) while also helping your opponent to get stronger by showing him the error of his ways

concerning your last post, tapir: I don't believe someone plays this way while really believing it's bad. Nobody wants to lose on purpose, right? Such a player must have had some success with his style (after all, he has the same rank as you) and has yet to be proven wrong, which is your task.
Also playing early san-san/unconventional opening and playing 1-1 are completely different cases imo.

Have you ever thought that you might be the one who is disrespectful and not the other way around? He's probably playing like that because he likes that way of playing, and not because it makes you mad.

He doesn't follow conventional opening theory. So does that mean he disrespects your skill? What about 6-4 5-5 or 6-3, if he played them would that make him disrespectful? It seems to me that he isn't the disrespectful one, no offense or anything....just saying...

if he is indeed 7D then he knows that what he is doing is wrong.
no question about that.

_________________
"The more we think we know about
The greater the unknown"
Words by neil peart, music by geddy lee and alex lifeson

I have two more thoughts.

1) Playing in a way that you know aggravates your opponent is a real tactic, and I won't say it's bad.

2) How do we feel about those multitudes who only play this 4-4 joseki, which is played often as a bona fide mistake to the tune of, "I prefer getting the territory here" (and endures to quite high ranks).

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bc
$$ +---------------------------------------+
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . O 1 . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . 4 . . . 2 . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |[/go]

_________________
Revisiting Go - Study Journal
My Programming Blog - About the evolution of my go bot.

^That has seemed wrong to me since I was about 15kyu, and I hardly ever see anyone above that strength use it. (Unless white hasn't the space to make a two-space extension at the top.)

Do high ranked players really use it?

if you are talking about starpoint joseki...i used to play starpoint joseki only. nothing wrong with that opening.

from your diag below, exchange of and is said to help white.
at first i didnt believe that but as i got stronger..i felt that white is better from that exchange. it is better not exchange and play
is something i would not play against someone same strength..but i do on a handycap game.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Bc
$$ +---------------------------------------+
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . O 1 . . . . |
$$ | . . . O . . . . . 4 . . . 2 . X . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . . . . . , . . . |[/go]

_________________
"The more we think we know about
The greater the unknown"
Words by neil peart, music by geddy lee and alex lifeson

I'll have to admit that while I can understand how people can be upset when their opponent plays this way against them, there are more productive ways to harness that anger.

Here's a more productive way:
1) someone plays this way against you. You either win, or lose.
If you win, forget it and laugh about it. Haha, sucker.
If you lose, why not play this way yourself a few times and figure out new ways to counter it? Who knows? You might make 7d before you find someone who can punish you

Or not. ha

The reason many of these moves/strategies are considered "completely absurd" is because people played/researched them and found out that they didn't work. I don't see anything wrong with going about that process oneself.

Maybe the person who played it against you isn't looking to trick you - rather, they were tricked or intrigued and want to see your counter to it.

_________________
Ko is the best solution.
With Ko, I can keep eating and drinking until I am full.

Visit >>>Koosh's Study Journal<<<

One more thought: We take professional advice very seriously, but quite often "this move is bad" just means a loss of a few points, taking gote instead of sente etc. Such things are of utmost importance to professionals (after all, they make their living playing go and fight for every point) but won't be decisive for most amateur games. After an early 3-3-invasion your opponent still has more territory than you + sente, so it's not like a game-deciding mistake. It just has been evaluated that your thickness is better, but how much? I don't know for sure, maybe 5 or 10 points? And that is only if you know how to use it. Until you are really strong (high amateur dan) you won't be able to keep a small advantage to the end because both players will make many more mistakes over the course of the game. It has also been said that opening study is useless before you reach a certain level, because amateur games will be decided by chaotic middle-game fighting anyway
So stop complaining, thank your opponent for giving you an advantage and try to keep it.

Btw: I've seen the following 1-2 exchange while replaying a professional game some time ago. (Just when I thought: "Of course he'll never play there, because it's bad.")

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$Wc
$$ +-------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . 1 X . . . X . .
$$ | . . . O . 2 . . . . . .
$$ | . . . . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . O . . . . . . . . .
$$ | . . . , . . . . . , . .[/go]

i have seen many many game of professional game with that exchange.
that exchange might be necessary exchange to maintain the point balance on that game.
it all depends on the board situation. you can not say one shape is always bad.

_________________
"The more we think we know about
The greater the unknown"
Words by neil peart, music by geddy lee and alex lifeson

Not to be a downer, but it's attitudes and threads like tapirs over silly little things like this that make me want to give up this game completely. For the most part I love the Go community, but this smacks of elitism. (My opinion, sorry).

I play the game for fun. I don't have much theoretical backing to my play, and threads like this (and others I've come across here on L19) make me feel like I shouldn't bother playing, as rude a player as I am. I don't resign when I should (I don't count and I like to finish my games). I play unorthodox and "wrong" moves all the time (What do I know about shape or influence? I've tried and failed to read many Go Theory books because it's just not fun for me.).

KGS 2k and improving ... and I'm having fun at the same time. Guess it's rude and insulting to be having fun while I play ...

Marcus, more folks than not take your side of this one. Quitting seems premature.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

Just expressing frustration, hyperpape (albeit with more than a little hyperbole; I'll try to tone that back a bit). It just seems that those players who are around my rank as I gain strength are increasingly frustrated with how I play. I don't like making my opponents upset. It's supposed to be a friendly game, and I play for the social aspect. I haven't yet hit the point where I need to study seriously to improve at all (though it's a good bet that it would make my improvement go faster) and beyond that I'm just enjoying the journey ...

I do think you have to draw some distinctions. The immediate 3-3 play in blitz games seems a little obnoxious, though I don't mind so much as others Tapir. But I have no problem with improper moves in general--some players have learned by fighting like crazy. The issue really is that I think "how can this player not know that the bare 3-3 invasion is bad? Is he just being perverse?"

It's much easier for me to understand overplays and bad shape. I play plenty of overplays because I don't know any better, and I know players study different things.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

I am honestly tired of this thread, deleting is impossible though. I wanted to share an experience, but I got a lot of people analysing me and my so problematic attitude. I don't complain when people don't resign but take it as a patience exercise, I am not in favour of bookish play, there is an overreliance on that among most western amateurs anyway, I wasn't even encouraging proper play of any kind. But I am still at odds with people who consciously play a very different game on blitz time limits than they would on slow limits, that relies solely on taking some territory early and playing next to opponents strength soon after to deny any territory/extension at all, while counting on misreads (usually attacking needs more precision than defending your group) and timeouts. It usually doesn't work for them, but I still waste half an hour of my life to such a meaningless game.

@marcus:
To put a long story short, your opponent deserves your best game, he wants to have fun as well. And I think I can tell, whether someone plays a fighting game (I love WBaduk and I believe this is the style you play) or whether he has a blitz-only time-out and misread optimisation strategy.

Go is a conversation, and sometimes with moves like this, it's not a very good conversation.

That being said, I don't see any reason to have a problem with this, I certainly wouldn't ignore a player over it. Do you stop playing with people who make joseki mistakes too?

_________________
Tactics yes, Tact no...

Should every game teach you something? There's no such things as "cheating" in go (except if you move stones, play many times in a row or add yourself some prisoners). Every single tactic is legit.

If I win all my games by invading at san-san right after my opponent played hoshi, it still shows that I am, in some way, superior to my opponent. Instead of being mad, the opponent should learn from it. Review the game and see "how do I answer that move"? By doing this, you'll become stronger. If you just stand there and complain about "dirty tricks", then you won't get better.

Remember... You got 2 eyes and one mouth, because you should be looking/reading twice as much as you talk. Therefore, stop complaining, go study, learn then beat this opponent.