It’s NOT a bad thing to hope for your opponent to be dumb, blind, or just simply make a mistake! Everyone does that at some point. There’s no need to be drastic about it, or be totally- extreme about it. For example you DON’T need to stare at your screen with eyes bulging, (bloodshot eyes) toenails turning blue, fingers trembling, messy hair, or any of that. That’s just going to make you more likely to MISCLICK. (We’ll get to that next time) I sometimes close my eyes, and when I hear the stone drop sound, I slowly turn, and look at where my opponent has played. (Okay, now that I’ve said it, I feel like It’m crazy) Now, it’s OKAY if he/she didn’t fall for your trick! Better luck next time! (Hope fully you simply master Go and don’t need to play with luck, Lol) If he/she DID, throw your pillow up in the air and start screaming “OMG OMG OMG OMG” while your parents/friends stare at you preparing to call an ambulance-No, I’m just joking, that just proves that your opponent wasn’t careful enough, or you were clearly ahead of the game. It’s not that you’re- smart. I mean, smart is something you GET gradually, not something you ARE. There IS a difference, believe it or not.
So have you ever fallen for a trick and realized it?
Has anyone ever fell for YOUR trick? What kind?
Reply below~
Heyy guys! You can answer the questions I wrote on the bottom of the passage! It’s pretty fun, at least I think…
Sometimes I actually think I have a different opinion of what a trick is. Its a bit complicated.
The first question that has to be answered is “what is a trick?” Well most people might say a trick is a sequence of moves called a “trick play”. But, I actually think what really defines what a trick is when someone plays moves that give them less points if the trick fails (more if it succeeds) in return compared to the move that gives them more points if they just play nice and go with safer moves leading to better exchanges later rather then death situations all over the board.
Where my opinion usually differs with people is that most people will say “if your opponent knew better then why wouldn’t they just play the better move” and to that I say because killing in go is fun and when you see a move that will possibly give you 20 points rather then the simple variation you just sometimes go for it. Except honestly a little too often.
I think at a lower level this happens a little bit and most of the time the player doesn’t actually know they are doing it.
I think the area where trick play is the absolute worse is shodan. You will get situations where the opponent is clearly dead situations like 3 stone eye area and they will avoid saving there group in there head saying “I hope they won’t see me not save my stones while I try to kill and attack something else.” so much to the point that I find it hard to take serious when they have no idea why they can’t improve
OBVIOUSLY this does not apply to everyone. I have met many great shodan players who play very solid and move onto higher ranks very quickly or get stuck because they get confused with the tricks from the other shodans.
This trend continues up the ladder but the higher you get tricks become less used. “Why?” because if we assume that for example a pro is against another pro the pro will say to themselves “If I can read this why should my opponent not be capable of reading this?”
And, this even applies to upper dans sometimes we do trick plays but we also make sure that if were going to trick our opponent that it doesn’t completely destroy our entire match.
So my general advice is if you want to make a trick play consider how complicated it is and if its a general basic mistake trick play. Simply don’t play it and teach yourself to avoid basic-trick plays because they aren’t worth playing and they make your matches look disgusting and I have even seen people who do this say how absolutely disgusting there game looks afterwards.
Also consider how far you are ahead or behind. If you are behind and you don’t see anyway with regular moves back into the game feel free to trick away and flail around like a god damn dinosaur. But, I see it to often where people are ahead and they throw the lead away to try to get some large kill. Which is okay… if the large kill wasn’t a trick play itself resulting in you possibly losing not only points but also losing the game.
If you open a search the forum with the word “trick” you will find some answers already
One of them: https://forums.online-go.com/t/are-trick-moves-wrong/31384
This really encapsulates my relationship with trick moves: for me, trick plays aren’t hopes that my opponent will make a mistake (they will, first of all, and second, relying on your opponent’s blunders implies you’re a bad player). But I regularly trick myself, by believing I can cut / kill something, when in reality it turns out I can’t.