Life In 19x19

Boidhre wrote:Thank you Bill.

Edit: Actually "White lost" sums up how I've been playing lately very well.

I agree with Bill's statement here. I don't think black played poorly by any means, but white did not play in a manner to win. The endgame started around move 59! White really needed to start more groups and challenge black's claims.

skydyr wrote:

Boidhre wrote:Thank you Bill.

Edit: Actually "White lost" sums up how I've been playing lately very well.

I agree with Bill's statement here. I don't think black played poorly by any means, but white did not play in a manner to win. The endgame started around move 59! White really needed to start more groups and challenge black's claims.

Oh I don't disagree with that sentiment. I got away with murder. I'm more just being negative because I'm down at the moment.

Got hammered by Anthony. Played terribly. I'm not sure what's going on mentally with me at the moment but I feel quite a bit weaker than I was. Whether it's the depression or the Lithium (it's associated with cognitive dulling) I'm not sure. I know from other things in my life that my head isn't right at the moment. I really hope it's not the Lithium. The other thing it could be is the benzos from yesterday still being in my system. Hmm, so many possible thing, never mind just a plain old bad playing day! Regardless go is proving quite frustrating to play when combined with bipolar mood swings and medication that affects one cognitively.



We thought the bottom right was a seki but looking at it afterwards I can see that it's just dead. So the result is W+70 odd or something silly like that. I played a lot of dumb moves in this game, I just was not focused well at all. He could have beaten me on 9 stones today I think, I just wasn't with it. I don't know, I just feel dumber at the board lately and I'm trying to figure out why.

Boidhre wrote:
We thought the bottom right was a seki but looking at it afterwards I can see that it's just dead.

I need convincing on this! Surely white has to add a move to kill!

tomukaze wrote:

Boidhre wrote:
We thought the bottom right was a seki but looking at it afterwards I can see that it's just dead.

I need convincing on this! Surely white has to add a move to kill!

White needs one more move to kill I think. T3 for Black makes it a seki, T3 for White kills. Or that's as best I can work out at the moment.

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$W Move 235
$$ ---------------------------------------
$$ | . . . . . . 6 4 B O O . . . . . . . . |
$$ | . O X X . 7 . 5 3 X O O . . O O O X . |
$$ | . O O X . . . . . X X O O O X . X X . |
$$ | . O X X . X . . . , X X O X . X X O . |
$$ | . X O . X . X . . . . X X O X X O . . |
$$ | . X O X . X . X . X X X X O X O . O . |
$$ | X . X X X O X X X O X O X O O . O . . |
$$ | . X X X O O O O X O O O O O . O O O . |
$$ | . X X O . . O . X X O . . O X O X X O |
$$ | X . X O O O X O X O . . O X . X X O . |
$$ | O X X O O X X O X O . O O X X . X O . |
$$ | O O O . O X X O O . . X O X . X O O O |
$$ | . . . O O X O O . . . . X O X X X O X |
$$ | . . O X X X X O . . . . . O O O O O X |
$$ | . . O X . X O . . . . . . O X X . O X |
$$ | O O O X X O O . . , . . . O O X X X X |
$$ | O X X . X X O O . . . . . O X X . O 2 |
$$ | X X . . X . X O . . . . . 1 O X X O X |
$$ | . . . . . X X O . . . . . O X X . O . |
$$ ---------------------------------------[/go]

After , makes seki.

Then captures .

I agree!

Going through a bad patch at the moment but a bit more clear headed this evening so: On playing whilst depressed:

If you're like me, you get cognitively impaired when depressed. Your memory, attention span and concentration are all poorer. This makes for some very lacklustre go. There's also a strong tendency towards passivity in me when depressed both socially and on the go board. It's like you're several stones weaker all of a sudden. The effort you'd put in previously into improving your reading or whatever becomes meaningless as you're working with a more limited mental capacity for concentration, i.e. reading which is what go at my level really comes down to. My mood is reactive whilst depressed, it can brighten and improve but the concentration problems stay put, so while I'm still able to enjoy a game of go at times my play is dire. This is greatly frustrating because it's yet another part of my life that this illness has found a way to screw with. But I got some good advice from topazg, just enjoy laying down the stones until the storm passes, so that is effectively my plan. I'm going to keep playing despite my play sucking, I'll keep doing problems despite me finding previously easy problems hard and I'll keep going to the club and trying to keep social contacts going. I won't expect reviews of my depressed games, too often it'll be a case of "what the hell were you thinking?" with moves. I'll merely post the odd one I find interesting or to show what depressed go can look like for people.

In short, I'm giving myself permission to play crap go and have fun doing it and not beat myself up over the fact that I'm playing poorly. They say when depressed that you should show yourself compassion (well, they say this in general), and I suppose this is my effort at doing this in this sphere of my life. This depression will pass, hopefully before March, and I can get back to worrying about improving once that happens. Until then I might as well keep playing as this has become a game that I love despite its unforgiving nature when it comes to concentration.

Boidhre wrote:It's like you're several stones weaker all of a sudden.

Lack of sleep, exhaustion, bad mood, or otherwise general hiccups in real life easily do this to me, too.

Boidhre wrote:Going through a bad patch at the moment but a bit more clear headed this evening so: On playing whilst depressed: If you're like me, you get cognitively impaired when depressed. Your memory, attention span and concentration are all poorer. This makes for some very lacklustre go. There's also a strong tendency towards passivity in me when depressed both socially and on the go board. It's like you're several stones weaker all of a sudden. The effort you'd put in previously into improving your reading or whatever becomes meaningless as you're working with a more limited mental capacity for concentration, i.e. reading which is what go at my level really comes down to.

I`m having the same feelings, Padraig. Well, I`m not depressed, but I do have anxiety problems, and this affects my go severely. IMO, the most important go skill is being able to view and assess the position objectively, but when your emotions are playing up, it`s next-to-impossible. You`re not alone, and you have my complete sympathy.

Still, you have good friends. It seems you and Tom have both friendship and rivalry, and you`re getting other people into the game, too. Don`t underestimate the value of those things!

Tami wrote:I`m having the same feelings, Padraig. Well, I`m not depressed, but I do have anxiety problems, and this affects my go severely. IMO, the most important go skill is being able to view and assess the position objectively, but when your emotions are playing up, it`s next-to-impossible. You`re not alone, and you have my complete sympathy.

Still, you have good friends. It seems you and Tom have both friendship and rivalry, and you`re getting other people into the game, too. Don`t underestimate the value of those things!

Anxiety is awful, you have my deepest sympathies. I get bad bouts of it and paranoia when low and they can persist into my well periods for quite some time. My psychologist has me doing "opposite action", i.e. simply just doing the thing that I'm being anxious over doing to try and show myself that it won't go all bad and hopefully my brain cops on that there's no threat there. Being objective when either anxious or depressed, well, that's a very tricky one. Doing it for a simple task like feeding yourself is hard enough, maintaining it for 1-2 hours over a go game? Close to impossible for me anyway when substantially low.

I agree completely with you on the value of those other things.

Didn't have much to say about Thursday, played a relative beginner who wanted to play even. No go today because of the Jazz Festival meaning the city is packed and our usual haunts too busy for us to take up a few tables.

I picked up "Chess for Zebras" on Kindle and am reading it and finding it very interesting. I'm not really at a place where the book is aimed (I haven't been playing for years and found myself stuck at a particular rank) but I find the the pedagogy and psychology talked about interesting enough anyway and as an adult learner of this game much of the problems are relevant for me even now I think.

Reverting back to chess I see.

tomukaze wrote:Reverting back to chess I see.

Not at all! A quite esteemed member of this forum recommended it as one of the best go improvement books out there.

It's about why adults hit walls and find it very hard to improve in chess despite studying plenty and so on. From the two chapters that I've read so far it's quite transferable to go.

I'll give an example:

He talks about the difference between "knowledge how" and "knowledge that." To take an example dear to your heart, playing tengen first as black, one of almost any level could amass a lot of "knowledge that" about the advantages and disadvantages of playing tengen first. One could learn off reams of variations related to the opening 20/30 moves. But none of this would necessarily result in one knowing *how* to play after tengen first when taken out of one's playbook. Or to take a non go example, I could read book after book on how to play guitar but until I pick up a guitar and start trying to play it I won't have any "knowledge how." Knowledge how seems to be equated to skill for him, but I may be misrepresenting him here.

He talks about skill versus knowledge. The latter is important no doubt but the former is what really marks the difference in ratings in chess, and by analogy ranks in go. He lists two ways of building skill, playing and working things out for yourself. The former is self explanatory, the latter consists of doing problems, analysing your own games and (for chess) playing won positions against a strong AI (perhaps analogous to one taking extra stones against a familiar opponent?).

Of course the skill part boils down to something that seems to be constantly repeated in go circles to people wanting to improve:

Play a lot.
Do tsumego.


What's interesting about the book is that he's trying to give a pedagogical and psychological framework to support such advice rather than just saying "well it works for that student" or whatever.