Life In 19x19

I have long been intrigued what makes one pro better than another, and I've never seen any substantial discussion of the topic.

It's fairly clear what's NOT vital to the discrimination. For example, there are dozens of pros, even some amateurs, who are better than the most successful pros at life and death, and they tend not just to lag behind but lag far behind (e.g. 4-dan as opposed to 9-dan).

It can't be studying traps and the latest josekis because even if a trap works it's a one-off. And there are countless cases (in chess, too) where a top pro, faced with a new move or a prepared trap finds a refutation over the board. (In passing, as a spectator I find that one of the most satisfying things to watch - if I could do that myself I would be squirming with pleasure.)

Fighting spirit (kiai) is often mentioned, and I think it can make a difference but I'm not convinced it's the answer. After all, a pro can show massive fighting spirit and still be taken apart by a calm opponent.

From my own observations, among players of roughly equal grade, I don't think it's anything to do with knowledge of go principles or techniques at all. I think it's about "attitude". I've mentioned before that I've noticed this word being bandied around a lot by top pros. The more I've seen it, the more I've thought about, and the more convinced I am that it is the answer. Indeed, I think it explains differences between skilled people in almost any profession.

I was therefore pleasantly surprised to see some confirmation of this in a short piece by Segoe Kensaku (then 7-dan) on the go style of Nakagawa Kamesaburo 8-dan, who had just died. this was 1928. You might know Nakagawa best as Ishii Senji, a great rival of Honinbo Shuei whom he might have outdone had he been able to stay away from the sake bottle.

It seems simplest just to translate the memorial:

Nakagawa Kamesaburo had been an invalid for a long time and has now suddenly passed away. It is a matter of the greatest regret that the go world has lost its eldest statesman.

Fortunately there are those who will speak elsewhere about his career and his qualities, and so I thought I would remember him by talking a little about his go style.

If we were to describe his art in a word, it would to say that he was a virtuoso. To put that in sumo terms, he would stand up to any challenge from an opponent because he has such a wide range of accomplishments. For example, in the fuseki he would never claim that you had to play this way or that way. Instead he would calmly play according to the opponent he was facing.

I once got his comments on a game I played with a certain high-dan player, giving two stones. In general, a player who takes two stones will lose about ten points anyway and so you shouldn't really play any special strategies or try new schemes, or try to hurry things along. The important thing is to aim at the opponent's weaknesses. As soon as the opponent does play a slack move or shows poor technique that is when you start fighting ferociously. Once that happens, because your opponent is weaker than you the game goes in your favour and the handicap disappears. "People like you," he told me, "try traps and stratagems from the very beginning and because these can go wrong you end up losing."

I felt this was a really interesting comment and it has left a lasting memory even today.

There is nothing special in the actual comment. What is special is that an 8-dan pro felt it had to be made to a 7-dan pro! To improve, the 7-dan needed to adjust his attitude, not his skill.

Perhaps this was behind Yi Se-tol's loss to AlphaGo? He was rather dismissive of his opponent before the event, wasn't he? Perhaps AlphaGo's biggest advantage is that it will never have an attitude problem!

John Fairbairn wrote: Perhaps this was behind Yi Se-tol's loss to AlphaGo? He was rather dismissive of his opponent before the event, wasn't he? Perhaps AlphaGo's biggest advantage is that it will never have an attitude problem!

It's also one of Lee Sedol's greatest strengths. It's often commented no matter how far behind he seems to be, no one can be comfortable against him. He will keep fighting and find ways to win. In Japan, it also seems to be Iyama's strength over his rivals there. He is often behind but he keeps finding ways to make the game difficult for his opponents and gets those victories.

John Fairbairn wrote: It's fairly clear what's NOT vital to the discrimination. For example, there are dozens of pros, even some amateurs, who are better than the most successful pros at life and death, and they tend not just to lag behind but lag far behind (e.g. 4-dan as opposed to 9-dan).

I am less confident about this than you. Listening to older pros today, many are amazed by the reading abilities of today's strong kids. Which is one of the reason so many of today's games turn into whole-board fights rather than patiently developing affairs.

John Fairbairn wrote: Perhaps this was behind Yi Se-tol's loss to AlphaGo? He was rather dismissive of his opponent before the event, wasn't he? Perhaps AlphaGo's biggest advantage is that it will never have an attitude problem!

Perhaps. Or perhaps AG was just stronger then, and is probably still further stronger today, and the era of human dominance is over. I agree though, AG did not have an attitude problem. I also think it's fair to say that LSD's emotions definitely played a role. Relentless opponents can be unnerving.

IMO, Lee Sedol has a strong "attitude" in playing go. His desire to win, and to work hard toward winning, have likely contributed to some of his success. Just a couple of days ago, Myungwan commented on Lee Sedol's seriousness toward reviewing games. At one point, early in his career, Lee Sedol had won something like 7 games in a row against Cho Hunhyun - something extremely rare at the time. But he lost a game and broke that streak. Myungwan said that he would have personally been pretty happy to have had such a great record. But apparently, Lee Sedol was extremely distraught, and reviewed the game that he had lost for something like 7 or 8 hours without taking a break.

That being said, it is true that Lee Sedol was overconfident. He seemed to assess AlphaGo's strength based on the only information that was available to him - the games from back in October. He didn't seem to process the fact that AlphaGo could improve so much in just a few months. When 'deepmind' showed up on Tygem, various "experts" in Korea assumed that this was AlphaGo, and made an assessment of AlphaGo's strength. But in reality, AlphaGo was much stronger than what they had expected.

During one of the post-game interviews, one of the questions had to do with the controversy over the apparent lack of information symmetry in the match - AlphaGo knew about Lee Sedol, but Lee Sedol didn't know about AlphaGo. Demis was quick to point out that AlphaGo was not trained to beat Lee Sedol, and was only trained to be a strong go program. The program, then, didn't have information specific to Lee Sedol, but rather, just general go-playing knowledge.

But my view is that this missed the point of the question. I don't think many suspected that AlphaGo trained some sort of strategy, specific to beat Lee Sedol. But rather, DeepMind knew how strong Lee Sedol was going into the match. Lee Sedol didn't know how strong AlphaGo was. This is the lack of symmetry that I felt people were referring to.

While I strongly believe that Lee Sedol has a great attitude in playing go, I do agree that Lee Sedol, as well as a number of Korean pros, underestimated how strong AlphaGo could become after a few months. Had Lee Sedol understood the magnitude of AlphaGo's strength before the match, could he have performed better? I don't know. Probably, if Lee Sedol could have had the freedom to play many games against AlphaGo, he would have learned more about it and maybe he could have figured out how to beat it consistently. But who really knows? We're just making guesses as to what could happen.

I suppose the lesson you can take from this is to: never underestimate your opponent. But in the case of the mysterious AlphaGo, there was no way to assess its strength, except for the 5 game records that were published.

We could say, "Never assess the strength of your opponent before playing him/her/it". But is that realistic? I'm sure that Nakagawa Kamesaburo 8d had a great attitude. But would he have been able to avoid making an assessment of AlphaGo's strength, given the 5 game records against Fan Hui?

I've noticed two attitudes that tend to show up a lot among top competitors at a variety of sports/games.

The first is a fierce competitiveness that spills out into everything they do. They are equally devastated to lose a friendly side match as a top tournament. Usually they're equally upset to lose something unrelated to their game-of-choice: beating defeated at rock-paper-scissors is enraging. They bring a must-win fire to practice.

The second is a deep passion for the game to which performance comes second. A tsumego is a chance to marvel at the beauty of Go, whether it's in a game deciding match or a practice book flipped through at a book store. If these players are at all unnerved performing under particularly strong scrutiny, that goes away once they lose themselves in the game.

The rest of us vary our approaches between games and practice. Adrenaline courses through our veins in a critical fight in an important match. Our attention lags going through problems in a book. We panic after a bad move or grow gleeful after an opponent's mistake.

I believe we mortals end up optimizing our skills for one mental state and then misapplying them in another. We learn an appropriate amount of aggressiveness to bring to anonymous online games. Then we get excited in an game with a rival and find the added energy pushing us into unnecessary fights. Or we grow overawed at a high dan opponent and play fearful moves we didn't know we'd cultivated.

It's a straightforward diagnosis, but I've never had much success shielding myself from the excitement of competition and the boredom of practice.

Also, after realizing AlphaGo's strength, in the post-game interview, Lee Sedol expressed his respect for the developers of AlphaGo. And his style of play adapted as early as the second game. He realized that his assessment had been incorrect, and paid his opponent the respect it deserved.

I think Lee Sedol's performance throughout the 5-game match, especially in the face of such high pressure, displayed a great example of "good attitude".

A complete lack of emotion is obviously of benefit to a computer when playing Go. As Kirby correctly says, Lee Sedol quickly re-evaluated AlphaGo, which is perhaps a sign in itself of how strong he is.