Have you met any players who just didn’t get it. Those whose attitude was so wrong they definitely couldn’t improve. Those who couldn’t understand simple principles.
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besides myself?
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Nope.
I’d say that someone like that would not insist to play go…
…but I also think that each one of us must have his own plateau where he definitely doesn’t improve. So maybe it only depends on when we meet that plateau.
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Yes, I have.
They didn’t listen to advice, didn’t want to put in any effort to learn on their own, and had poor attitudes when it came to the game.
These people are always “stuck at DDK” and can’t figure out why they aren’t getting better.
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I don’t think I’ve met any but I feel I’m approaching that point!
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No, I’m Spartacus
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Well… I have met and chatted with plenty of players, who are just happy to play the game for the fun of it, without even trying to get better. Not everyone is aiming to get stronger, some ppl are feeling just fine as long as they can quickly find opponents with equal strength.
(says the hopeless guy who has been stuck at ~5k for last 5 years…)
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I used to be active in “Combat Mission” - a really great, realistic WWII game. (I really only stopped because I became too addicted to it).
In that community there was one player who lost every game, without fail. That person was one of the most enthusiastic players in the community - played a lot, participated a lot. I would not say their attitude was wrong. They just didn’t seem to care that it would take more effort than they were willing to put in to learn enough to win. As it happens, I learned that they were an older gentleman. Maybe the learning curve was too high but the gameplay was fun.
I’m mentioning it because there are people who can’t improve, but it’s not always due to “wrong attitude”, and it’s not a problem for them.
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I don’t think I mean the cases where people are just happy to play or don’t study. Or even study but still can’t improve for a long time. I don’t think they’re beyond help, right.
But, you know, some people are impossible to teach, kind of.
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I met a player in my go club,he only stares at his smartphone (probably playing games).
When we finally got him to play with us, he gets angry at me for taking to long to think (
although he hardly even thinks.He does not even listen to the teacher’s advice.
These people are way beyond help.
But on the good side, there are some players who have a good attitude. They play frequently and have a sudden boost in their strength. I like these kind of players.
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I believe this attitude is really crucial for popularizing Go in the west in general. Take chess as an example. It’s very popular, relatively speaking. Chances are you can ask a random stranger if they know how to play chess and they will. However, they’re also likely not very good, don’t know any specific openings other than the one or two they normally play (which they don’t know the names for), and just play every so often for enjoyment. They’ve never considered having a “rank” in chess, so they don’t really feel a need to get better. This is the level of accessible play that can make a game ubiquitous.
With Go, if someone says they know how to play, at least in the US, chances are they know their rank, they know at least a few terms for specific scenarios, etc., and a lack of interest in pursuing knowledge of the game to this degree can be considered “having the wrong attitude”.
If Go were as popular in the west as Chess, a 15k would be in the top percentile of players overall. That’s the level of accessibility that it would take to get it to be as ubiquitous as chess, checkers, or other common games.
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Have you tried playing with a clock? I love slow games if they have a clock. If there’s no clock, I assume my opponent won’t take more than a few seconds (maybe 30 seconds tops on some harder moves) to come up with a move. If they start spending a minute thinking every other move, it gets annoying because I agreed to play without a clock under the understanding that we would both respect eachothers time. I no longer play without a clock.
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Me too. Some players have their hand buried in the go bowl (or whatever you call that)
and play right after you place your stone down. Some make very big noises by thrashing their hand in the go bowl ( does anyone know its name?)
I feel like I’m drifting off topic.
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Japanese call those bowls “goke” ^___^
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I’m a half japanese and i forgot that.
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I always wondered how popular chess is in the east. Also, if Eastern chess players have the same conversations about popularity, but reversed.
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Yeah, I don’t think people got what you meant. I suspect a lot of the posters here don’t get constant requests from random people to teach them.
I used to give everyone free teaching games and reviews, but there are plenty of people who will abuse that, use as much of your time as they can, get angry at being the same rank for X time, refuse to study, argue that their moves were right (when they clearly weren’t), etc.
I now ask that people review their game first before I invest 1-2 hours and go over it with them. About 1 in 20 will actually review their own game…
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I knew from the beginning exactly what you meant because, yes, I have met such a person (online that is). They professed to want to learn, and they were completely pleasant, but they seemed to ignore even the simplest principles they were taught (corners, sides, center). They refused to play humans, except for one or two teaching efforts (by me and others), and continued to play with the same, strange, general strategy they used in all their games. There was no trolling in this; it was authentic. I could only conclude that they were mentally handicapped, and I felt sorry.
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Yes I have. I’ve been stuck at 5D for almost 5 years now
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What a terrible fate. I am so sorry for you. 
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