@bugcat, I’m so sad to read your last post. I hope that this decision is not definitive and you want only to get some time to recharge your mental batteries.
Some years ago, (around 20 years ago, just when I took the university degree and started working hard), Go was the only board game that I was playing with passion (that time I was used to collect different board games from any part of the world and Go was a huge discovery). For some reasons, my rank stopped to grow and I’m started to become unhappy playing the game. Any effort spent by me to improve didn’t reflect in my relative strength.
I stopped playing Go for 20 years or so, but in my head I was conscious to have abandoned the only game for which one should spend some time because it can accompany your for the entire life in a never ending ladder towards your personal improvement and depth of reading.
Now (at the age of 50+) I’m here again playing, studying, being excited when I win a close game, being depressed when I lose a game for a stupid error or - worst - when you realize that you made a disaster on the board and cannot recognize any of the thousands golden rules that you spent years to learn.
Before you leave, let me propose something quite new for me.
A no ranked even game against me (I’m around 8-9 kyu) where we describe each turn in terms of our considerations behind the move we have chosen. In a transparent way saying to the other our intention of play. It can be instructive for both understand how someone of similar level thinks (even if actually, I think you are stronger than me, but no matter). Want you?
I just kind of worry we might see a lot of people follow suit. They’ll see their rating nose dive even when winning games (various threads) and just think this game isn’t for me.
Your perceptive observation stands with the immortals. Dante said.“The double grief of a lost bliss is to recall its happy hour in pain” (The Divine Comedy, V, 118, Ciardi trans.).
As someone who has given up many things in his life (for a variety of reasons), I can empathize, but I am indescribably saddened by your decision. I hope you can find something more rewarding and fulfilling as you move forward. Life has, after all, an infinite number of fascinating subjects for our enjoyment and enrichment.
Bugcat, whatever you decide, I wish you all the best with it. I just want to say that it was your influence most of all that led me to become more active here. The ogs experience, which I already found satisfying became all the more so, and in ways I couldn’t possibly have foreseen. (The Christmas go haiku challenge certainly comes to mind).
I guess there are many players here who might have done the same, but it so happened that you were that player for me.
Full right for a break. But I see how much will and energy you put here so I hope that you find first some different point of view from other people, I hope you got a club near you to get some self confidence back because yes falling levels like that is weird and depressing.
I recently slid from 9-10k to 15k and this is 100% of the reason why. I just think “Oh it goes like this, this, this, and bang, I win. Oh damn, I didn’t know they could play that too.”
Well, the purpose of a review is to identify your mistakes, explore how you might have played better, not patting yourself on your back for finding the really great sequence to kill a group. Although the latter is obviously more enjoyable. But you can’t learn something from patting yourself on the back.
Shit, why didn’t I read this when it was happening? Has anybody got bugcat’s info or something, I’d like to buy him a gift card for those books he mentioned elsewhere.