Life In 19x19

I feel I've found a flaw in my attitude toward go when I'm playing a game. I have been playing for long enough that I've developed "routine" responses to just about any shape I see on the go board. To be sure, every game that I play is unique, and in fact, has different shapes. However, for just about every move, I have the feeling, "yeah, I've seen something like this before". Because of this, when it's my turn to play, even without thinking for a second, I can play a move that is a "typical Kirby move", which is probably a move representative of a player within a couple of stones of my rank. Now I don't always play this way. I do know that I sometimes get into a sticky situation and try to read a little bit.

But invariably, I reach a point in reading where the additional effort that it will take for me to read out the situation overcomes my care for responding "correctly". So I end up thinking, "Meh, I'll just play here". Based on my feeling, maybe this results in a situation like this:



The "Don't care threshold" comes into play when the amount of effort exceeds my care about the result of the move. Throughout the game, this threshold changes, depending on how much I care about the result of that move and/or how difficult it is to read out a position.

But all of the time, I feel that this threshold comes into play. It's not that I couldn't read more - I just don't, because I don't care about that move enough to bother.

Has anyone else encountered this mentality? Any thoughts? I feel that this attitude is quite limiting to my play.

Maybe the "don't care threshold" should actually be vertical, but in any case, the horizontal representation maybe shows that the move quality is lower than what it could be by expending additional effort.

I'd ask what the factors are that influence the level of the caring threshold, and examine whether or not they are accurate. I suspect that you care more about the moves in volatile game situations than those in which you believe only a few points to be on the line. If this is the case, there are two ways in which the Kirby moves are causing you to LOSE games - and that's what it's all about, right?

Aside from losing close games in which just one of those moves, had you cared enough, could have gotten you the missing 2 points, you might ask yourself this: How often am I only risking a few points, and how often am I risking missing much larger opportunities. The chances are fleeting, and the difference between hurting your opponent and killing him off can be the order of moves. Care!

Of course we all struggle with our laziness, and particularly when a move seems reasonable enough we often play it. I think that often this is neither because we don't care, nor because we can't read, but rather because we don't expect that the extra effort will produce significantly better results. While this may in part be an issue of self-esteem, it also has to do with the fact that in many cases, our assessment may in fact be correct. But we also all know that a go game can be decided in an instant, and if we lose, it was often an instant that we were not expecting. That's a reason to care a bit more.

Oh The Care Continuum.

I noticed myself doing this recently.
It was my 3rd or 4th game and there became this big fight and it felt like I had been reading out 100 different moves.

The exact thought was something like

"Wow I don't even... I don't care."

And I just picked the shape move.

Maybe you should add a z-axis and that can be the amount of time that passes.
Because after a certain time my not caring becomes noticeable and I know it's time to take a break.

I don't know if I have ever known anyone that cared enough about that to try to quantify it. The problem with that attitude about playing Go, is that you have some sort of anxiety(real or perceived) caused by thinking out the plays, and that anxiety is greater than is caused by the thought of getting the move wrong. While I am not one to fuss over making a mistake, I generally wouldn't consider thinking about the next move to cause anxiety either, since Go is a pastime.

I ran into this on a tournament game on Saturday (and where were you, Kirby?!). The game had entered ~1 pt gote moves with a ~15 pt lead, so I went on autopilot until I filled up all my own liberties. That was fun.

Anyways, yes, I should put in more effort but my caring was down to 0 at that point.