Review request (19x19 4d)

Are you sure? Why do I have a feeling you two play such a style on purpose to intimidate us three 1 kyu players in the same bracket? :crazy_face:

Maybe I used the wrong word? Understanding the psychology behind moves and base your decision on your understanding (not necessarily exploiting opponent’s weakness) is what I meant.

And I think I can feel you to some extent. In the past I think of Go as a pure math game and finding the best move is the only correct way to play Go but that’s nearly impossible and as long as you play competitive Go you can’t really completely be a non-competitor.

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It seems one of the mods has already run a full strength review in case nobody noticed. Beyond making that observation, I think I would do well to not attempt review!

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Without any value judgement which is better, this is an insightful classification. :slight_smile:

It’s terrific (I’m sorry)

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I think it’s the usual “solving vs winning” difference of opinion we keep having here.

Pros are invested in solving Go while practicing, studying and/or at their free time.

During a game, they play to win.

And that concession, that it’s a profession and two humans are involved, is the leg up towards going for the result when the result is the goal. I don’t think a pro who’s good at fighting will torture their soul if they press for fights against another pro who’s not that good on that aspect.

There’s pride and enjoyment, people are involved after all, but there’s also a game to be won and then move on to the next.

Professionals for me are the ones who learn when to put aside higher aspirations for the target at hand.

Not to say they aren’t godly compared to us; but part of the godliness is reining in perfection when it’s not beneficial.

I am not sure I understand what @terrific means. There are two possible interpretations:

  1. Play the man, not only the board. Know your opponent’s style and weaknesses, study your opponent’s games and devise a strategy according to what you think their strengths and weaknesses are.

  2. When your opponent makes a move, don’t just try to read variations and find the best move according to the board position, but also try to read your opponent’s intention, and devise a strategy according to what you think their intention is.

I don’t think those two are mutually exclusive, I’d say they are rather complimentary.

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I am sorry for leading the discussion into this direction and I also want to apologize for giving advice based on my immature theory.

Back to the game, in the second half I didn’t feel much pressure from you, especially when you made life of the group in the center. Just my feeling as your opponent instead of any kind of advice. I don’t think I’m stronger than you so can’t really give you advice.

@jlt About your interpretations, I meant both. This is the first time I’ve written this model down and discussed on it with others, so I phrased poorly. Essentially, mathematicians attempt to find objectively the best move while competitors make better decisions than their opponents. I can open another thread to discuss this if anyone is interested. Let’s not continue here.

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Your categorisation is indeed very insightful, only the thought of putting the goal of winning above everything else is not appealing to me. I did not mean to imply that you are that kind of player, so if I gave that impression, I apologise.

But when behind, I also tend to try playing tricky to create an opening for catching up. So I’m certainly not one who should complain.

I agree that I played multiple slack moves during the second half of the game. Gotta play more sharply under time pressure. I’ll try to work on that :blush:

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For me there is not really a dichotomy between “winning is all that matters” and “playing well is all that matters”. There is a clear overlap between those, namely “doing your best”.

But there are different player styles that determine what your best effort looks like (and this “style” is mostly independent from player level). In-Seong once made a great lecture about this where he categorized his students into a couple of styles (I think he used 8 categories).

A simpler categorization might be the “Japanese style” versus the “Korean style”. The Japanese style focuses more on proper shape and defense, while the Korean style focuses more on sharp moves to attack and take control of the game. The Japanese style is perhaps more beautiful, but it can be a bit passive/slow. The Korean style may be less beautiful, but its sharpness tends to get good results against the Japanese style.

As for this game, I feel that black is a more a Japanese style player, tending to play defensive moves and lacking a bit in sharpness.

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There is no Japanese style any more. It’s all Chinese and Korean. :grinning:

The style since Gu Li and Lee Sedol has an interesting name: Violent Go. It’s all about winning.

At the world class level perhaps, but I think the Japanese style is still alive and kicking in amateur play (including high dan level), although that player group is probably ageing.

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Yeah. And it’s not like those pros don’t know fundamentals. Interestingly Lee Sedol or every player at his time grew up studying Lee Chang-ho, then he started this trend, maybe aiming to break him, some say.

I’m an unashamed adherent of the proverbial attitude play the board, not the player.

A good move is good and a bad move bad regardless of who the opponent is – an overplay is still an overplay even against someone weaker; a timid move is still slack even against a a stronger adversary.

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I feel there is still a style dependent factor. When reviewing with KataGo, in many situations you can find approval for moves that look slack to an aggressive human player and approval for moves that look overplayish to a calm human player.
In many cases, AI judgement is not so clear cut as you might think. We are often biased in our judgement by our own style (read: tunnel vision).

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That and we (OGS, aisensei or Katrain users) might be a bit biased toward katago because it’s available and it provides very useful score estimation along with its winrate.

When one pits katago against other engines like Golaxy one gets interesting results about what moves are “right” or “good”. The points estimation and winrate graphs get much more choppy than human human and human bot games :slight_smile:

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I found an interesting article (October 2003) on Doug’s SL Go blog, about issues of sportsmanship and gamesmanship in Go.

Summarised:

It’s not always easy to legislate the details of actual competitive play between individuals whose interests are not aligned. Thus, we get tournament rules about ethics and sportsmanship, usually undefined (…)

The problem is that it’s difficult to define. First of all, the delaying tactic requires the use of only explicit rights granted by the rules: right to make a move, right to use the time on your clock in any way desired. Second, one can always find situations which seem to land on the edge: making one additional move to run out the clock in a lightning sudden death game, weaker players who may not know which moves are “pointless”, etc. (…)

I’m reminded of the story of the condemned man, who asked the King for a reprieve, promising that he would teach the King’s favorite horse to talk within one year. The King, dubious but curious, agreed. A bystander asked the prisoner what he hoped to gain. In a year, anything can happen, he replied. Perhaps the King will change his mind. Perhaps I will be rescued, or the King will die, or the horse will die. Who knows, perhaps in a year the horse will learn to talk. It’s not like I have anything to lose.

In games with clear and definitive ends, like chess and checkers, the act of playing on in a losing position is unremarkable. (…)

Could one take such an attitude with respect to go? It’s clearly much more difficult to.

I think there is a division, or more realistically a continuum, between the gamesman who will do anything within the rules to win the game and the sportsman who is more interested in the game itself than matters of time control or psychology.

For better or worse, I am the latter.

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I also consider myself more of a sportsman, but I think that (for my level) I tend to resign relatively late. I tend to keep fighting to the point of arimasen: there is no point in continueing, there is nothing left.

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So an advice could be participe more in competitive go. When is the next tournament you can reach to be there?