That’s a very interested question, and I’ve been thinking about it in recent years.
Rank is objectively measurable, but “quality of life” is more difficult to evaluate objectively because it must encompass subjective, inner aspects of the person.
Go in my opinion is a quite simple way to work on yourself.
By “working on yourself” I mean, identify negative attitudes and correct them.
It’s like a mirror, it shows how you are. But it’s also a playground, where you can actually practice and this practice causes some change in yourself.
So it offers 2 benefits:
-
know yourself a bit better
- offer some way to improve
The context in which we play go (community, clubs, teacher-student relationship) is an important part of the picture. You can’t improve 100% alone and your attitude towards the community (including books or other resources) will also reflect in your play.
Some years ago I observed a lot how beginners learnt and which obstacles they had to pass. For example:
- accept to lose a game
- accept that someone reviews your game
- accept mistakes pointed by a reviewer
- not being greedy or jalous
- not over-estimate your positions (too confident) or over-estimate opponent’s positions (too fearful)
- understand opposites/dualities (territory vs influence, light vs heavy, strong vs weak)
- learn to use those dualities efficiently depending on situation
- …
This list is not exhaustive and if players were requested to retrospectively look back to their path and list which obstacles they had to overcome, those lists would be very different (and could negatively/implicitly say a lot about what is currently blocking them).
Any person struggling against an obstacle could remain blocked at a certain rank, or cope with it by putting more efforts on other aspects (eg: some player with a lot of greedyness or with poor sense of direction could compensate with strong reading skills).
The “blocking factor” could be overcome later, or not…
Some people with natural skills (eg light speed reading) may reach a high level quite quickly but will stumble against “moral” principles (greed, agressivity,…) or vision of the whole board. So it’s difficult - to correlate the rank with anything.
Also, each “obstacle” is revisited spirally through cycles of improvement:
- the obstacle is totally ignored
- the obstacle is experienced in games against stronger players or randomly in other cases.
- the obstacle is identified (either by yourself or by some teacher)
- a proper knowledge about how to deal with the obstacle is found (medicine found)
- medicine is applied only in clear situations
- medicine works or fails depending of correctness of execution
- medicine is applied correctly and succeeds
- medicine is “forgotten” and now appears totally natural
- medicine is applied not only in “clear” situations but more generally when it is relevant.
- medicine is evaluated in comparison with other tools and part of a broader set of strategic principles.
- medicine is challenged by some strong player (or alphago) showing that medicine may have some limits and some hidden factor lies somewhere… (go back to step 1)
If we take the most basic one, “accept to lose a game” [optionally, against a human]: in the case of go it would manifest but such people would play only computer programs, or would just avoid playing, or would play only weaker player, or would sand-bag,…In any case, it prevents progress.
Any real Art would offer the same benefit of “working on yourself”, but could focus on different qualities. If we adopt a universal repartition of triple aspects of ourselves in body/emotions/mental, the game of go would be focused more on emotion and mental, but less on body. About the body: the hand playing a move by itself; or breathing as a reflection of our emotional state; It’s a very limited use of the body, but as in any high-level practise it is emphasized that the body must be healthy.
Other Arts, like dance or martial arts, for example, might focus more on the body and less on mental. This concept of Art as a way of development is a common concept in Asia (“Way”, or “Do” in Japan) and doesn’t apply only for martial arts but also for calligraphy, music, etc. When speaking of “Way” it’s usually a way of spiritual development, towards the divine in ourself.
In the case of Go, the analogy with the spiritual appears through terminology: “go saint”, “god’s move”, and more recently Alphago being granted a “honorary professional dan certificate […] in recognition of AlphaGo sincere efforts to master Go’s Taoist foundations and reach a level "close to the territory of divinity” (source)
The theoretical existence of a perfect play is equated to “god” in go, but it seems that no human player has been able to achieve this.
If such spiritual dimension actually exists in Go as a “way”, best chances to find a genuine “master” would be in Asia. In my case I’ve not met many pros, but I remember I was impressed by Saijo Masataka 9p as expressing something - as a person - way beyond the mere skill at playing go.
Thus I would conclude that Go can help anyone willing to improve himself.
A virtue of Go is that it’s a game, apparently simple and accessible, with no big stake (unless you put stakes by yourself), so it can offer some help in a smooth and progressive way. People with some initial attraction towards the game will probably benefit from it without knowing explicitly in which way they will improve (“you don’t know what you don’t know”).
. so can other hobbies, like sports or travelling for example. but i would be careful about comparing those who play go as a hobby and feel that it helped them in other respects with those who made it a profession.
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I will let you know once I hit dan