Uberdude: I see what you're saying. It's a good point to keep in mind in theory, though I wonder how much it applies here.

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Occupy Babel!

Duskie: If I were playing white in that position I wouldn't choose your a,b or c but I the cut:) I don't know all the variations and I'm not confident enough in my skill to try and make some up to show it's better, but It's my feeling

Also, about trick moves/weird moves. You don't have the right to complain about the moves that you can't 'punish' correctly. That's my opinion:)

But if you can punish them correctly, why complain?

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The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

In that case I would play 'a'. With both a hane at the head and tail of the two white stones, it's hard for them to be happy.

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We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.

Yes, it is the attitude that I am complaining about.

Actually, I have been learning a lot from opponents' "anti-joseki" recently, and that satisfies me, even I do not always enjoy the experience.

In the end I see anti-joseki and hamete as both being essentially self-defeating: anti-joseki represent a deliberate choice to resort to inferior moves because you don't know the better ones and don't want to study them; hamete may not always be so bad, but they are not the Highway.

But, once again, it is the attitude that irritates me. It is a bit like "coffeehouse chess". It's the taking of refuge in murky, shadowy places in preference to standing in the light. As for me, I want to stand in the sunshine, even if it does make me look a bit outworn and ragged.

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Learn the "tea-stealing" tesuji! Cho Chikun demonstrates here:

I think your expectations for your opponents are too high :p I don't know 3-4 joseki because in my opinion studying them is boring and I play ridiculous moves because I think they are fun. I play Go because it's fun, and I don't see anything wrong with that.

Yes, you're probably right there! Maybe I just take it all too seriously.

Anyway...it's not just joseki deviations I was complaining about. It's just the general focus many players of around my strength, including ME all too often, have on not allowing the opponent to have anything instead of being creative.

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Learn the "tea-stealing" tesuji! Cho Chikun demonstrates here:

I have two broad thoughts.

Thought the first:
Speaking as a primarily wbaduk player who also plays on KGS, I typify KGS players (around 1k-2d) as primarily focusing on all-in supermoyos which feel to me like they're just hoping I'll wait till it's too late to invade or reduce. Followed by trying desperately to kill my invasion or reduction.

Thought the second:
I think trying (inappropriately) desperate/greedy tactics is symptomatic of poor (or absent) counting, a shamefully common vice (I'm trying to shake it).

Bonus thoughts:
A lot of moves I think are crazy-strange, strong players later explain to me as very normal.

As for (whom I view as) anti-joseki and over-invasion players, I just enjoy those games thoroughly. The golden rule of joseki is to know why the joseki is joseki; the golden rule of extensions is to be content with your plan for invasions (otherwise I guess one believes oneself too thin?).

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

I don't get it, you're mad at people because they need to study? Should we study everything before we play our first game?

Maybe they don't get games reviewed, or even talk to anyone about the game. Maybe they only started playing this year. Plus, the point is to win, not end in a tie. You gotta chill out!

Tami,

I find your post fascinating. I admire your enjoyment of go theory and appreciation of go as an art. But others see go differently, they see it as a fighting game. I have a strong Chinese friend who is amused at the time Westerners dedicate to principles and theories. She says to me, "Your theoretical understanding is excellent, now I will kill you." And she can.

It sounds to me you need the exact same thing I need. Less theory, better reading. This is probably true of 90% of the board denizens. Better reading helps us win the fights where we are locally stronger, as we inevitably are when the opponent is "negative". Poor reading makes all our theory good for naught when our cutting stones die.

You can either seek out like-minded players, and enjoy go as art and theory, or embrace these "negative" players for the education they give you, albeit sometimes painfully. Contrary to your last sentence, I suspect the latter is the best approach to true strength.

I mean no insult, and I wish you all the best!

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- Brady
Want to see videos of low-dan mistakes and what to learn from them? Brady's Blunders

I appreciate your sincerity, but I have to say that I completely disagree with you.

When I lose, I go over my game a little later when I am feeling rational and focussed. I also do reviews for GTL. In the course of reviewing my own games and those of others I realised that the worst errors are not the reading mistakes, though many do occur, but simple strategic mistakes. They are things like holding on to junk stones or responding passively in gote, when it would have been possible to take sente.

To reach my current level, I did a lot of work on reading and tesuji. But I have found it difficult to get past my current level, and I have become more convinced it has largely been bacause I enjoy fighting, but sometimes don't know when not to fight, and because I often would get confused when there was nothing to fight about. I rarely miss a tesuji, and I don't get killed all that often. I tend to lose because I keep losing sight of the basic things!

In most fields there are fundamentals that apply comprehensively, and then there are specifics. When you learn specifics, it often happens you forget about the bigger picture. It's "not seeing the wood for the trees". Specific knowledge is only really valuable when you have the larger vision to know how to apply it.

As a musician, I find that slowly working on simple things like alternate picking or the way I hold my guitar enable me to tackle complex music better. You will note in my avatar pic that I am holding my guitar largely on my right knee, that's fine for classic guitar, but a pro pointed out to me that you should hold it on your left (I am a southpaw). I started doing so, and my folk-rock playing jumped up a level.

As a language teacher, over and over again I meet students who know thousands of words and how to conjugate obscure verbs and create all kinds of subjunctives, but have not practiced the fundamentals, like greetings or basic grammar sufficiently.

For myself, my goal in go from now on is to keep reminding myself of the basics until they become dyed into my very soul. At the same time, I will increase my knowledge of specifics, by doing tsumego and studying (i.e., not memorising) joseki.

Back to the issue of "negative go". Actually, meeting it and learning to deal with it is a valuable experience. I simply don't like the mentality that sometimes lurks behind it.

To put it in another way: there may be people who are tempted to use the "dark arts" as a way to boost their ranks. Up to a point, it may even bring certain rewards. Yet it cannot succeed past a certain point. You might quickly get two stones stronger by honing your hamete and anti-joseki and playing strange openings, but if you do that at the expense of the ABCs, then you will eventually reach an unsurpassable wall. I'd rather take the long path, and eventually become five or six stones stronger.

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Learn the "tea-stealing" tesuji! Cho Chikun demonstrates here: