What's so bad about mirror go?

General Go Discussion
102

I don’t think this is a fair reflection of the difficulty of actually winning a mirror game against a prepared opponent. The mirroring player should expect some kind of trap at some point, but find an escape from the mirror before the trap is laid, so it is not at all an automatic reflection of moves.

Especially if an opponent is prepared to play against mirrors, I’d argue that the mirroring player needs to think more than the mirrored one does in order to gain an advantage from the mirror.

In a way, a mirroring player breaking the mirror exactly after a mistake, could be considered a sign of the mirroring player’s “intellectual” superiority. For the mirrored player to make such a mistake, is a sign that they were underprepared and haven’t thought enough about how to counter this aspect of the game yet.

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103

Seriously? Can they write a sonnet, or a song? Can they survive in the wild? Can they coach a sport team to victory? Can they play a musical instrument or an hour of music from memory? Can they observe a quarry wall and understand the geology they see?

I could extend this list indefinitely, but the point is made.

104

I’m just using the term that @JethOrensin was using in an hyperbolic fashion. Of course I’m not seriously claiming that spotting a single of your opponents mistakes makes you the superior intellectual…

So to say, with milder vocabulary, if a mirroring player knows when to break the mirror, at that point in the game they were playing better than the mirrored player was.

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105

You could be right on this, but I am not sure if the win rate of the idea was considered in this instance, at all. I will admit that it makes no difference to me if it is easier to win if someone opts for a mirror Go strategy or not.

As you said it is all a matter whether the opponent is prepared or not, like luring someone into playing Taisha and you know the joseki and the opponent doesn’t, thus you gain an advantage.
But if they do know the joseki, then it is all 50-50 since it is a joseki, thus considered generating relatively equal results (depending on the whole boards etc, but let us not be too analytic on that). Ergo learning a complex joseki will either result in your advantage or a fair position.

That’s all nice and dandy, because it is engaging. The opponent actually does something and if you do not know what they are doing, then that is something exciting.

Similar to that, a mirror Go strategy will either result in your advantage (if the opponent is unsuspecting or not prepared) or a fair position with a slight advantage (presumably after the opponent plays a sub-optimal move in the hopes that this charade will end) or a slight disadvantage for you if the opponent knows exactly what’s up and knows how to break a mirror Go strategy (which is not trivial, else it would have not been explored in pro games, as someone mentioned).

I understand the appeal of using it. No argument there.

All I am saying is that this is where the similarities with a complex joseki end, since what you are describing is someone waiting in ambush for a mistake or an optimal position to break the mirror. Good for them, but they are not engaging the board/opponent. That is, after all, the point of an ambush. You lie in wait doing nothing.
The opponent is not doing anything.
You are doing all the work and they are just waiting to discern if you do not know much about mirror Go (ergo you are a mark) or you know about it (ergo they should break off first). Again, that’s nice on their end, but I do not see how that is appealing on my end.
I wanted to play a strategy game, not hide and seek.

So, my solution to this issue is to see the trap and avoid it, by not falling for it.
They are doing this to win? Fine. They won. Byeee! :sweat_smile:
Is this an “intellectual” solution? No. I’d say it might be on the simplistic side of things, but that’s what I like in this case.

If you like a funny simile it is like lying in wait for a wild boar to appear so you can hunt it.
The boar sees you, chooses not to appear in your line of sight, but somehow when you return home you realise that the boar sent you some pork chops from the butcher’s :stuck_out_tongue:

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106

I don’t think this is correct.

I’m assuming Black is the mirroring player (as otherwise you can always refuse the mirror by playing tengen). Then mirroring will be more and more disadvantageous the longer the game lasts. The less points there are on the board, the less big moves the mirrored opponent can make a mistake about, and the less advantage you can gain from breaking the mirror. Remember that Black has to break the mirror at some early enough point, and if the opponent did not make an obvious mistake, breaking the mirror will either bring the game to a fair or a disadvantaged position for the player. The chances of the latter happening only grow as the game continues.

Moreover, the mirrored player has control over their moves, and will naturally set up a board position they are comfortable with. E.g. both players might end up with a moyo, but the mirrored player knows they’re good at destroying those, while the mirroring player might not be.

Mirror breakers are not hard to set up, the hard part is setting one up without making a move that is bad enough for the mirroring player to abort the mirror.

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107
108

I am not sure how it is not. Barring some catastrophic mistake there are only three results from any opening strategy:
A) You get the advantage
B) You end up in a fair/joseki situation
C) The opponent gets the advantage.

And I mentioned the main idea of all three of them, in regards of the mirror Go.

Anyway, the fine technicalities of the strategy are not pertinent to my assessment since my point is the lack of engagement, and not whether it is a good/effective meta or not (For a similar reason I’ve never played the “sniper” position in CounterStrike 1.6 back in the day. Camping was the BEST strat, but I wanted to play the game, not just sit there, camp a spot and get frags while some unsuspecting shod walks in my field of view).

Mirror Go might even be a bad idea/strategy to follow.
I might even know the perfect mirror breakers and maybe I could win handily if I stick till move 150+.
I do not care.
Take the win. Take the points.
Give me back my time.
You can now go play “hide and seek” with someone else and I’ll go play a strategy game with someone else.

What’s fairer than that? I honestly do not see what is so controvertial about this.

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109

Well yes, the three outcomes are correct of course, but the reasoning you give are not.

Against an unsuspecting on unprepared opponent, if they play without mistakes for long enough, you end up at a disadvantage, not with an advantage. If the opponent makes a mistake large enough to overcome the komi difference at that stage of the game, you can get a slight advantage by breaking the mirror (although with the added cost that you cannot play your own opening strategy).

Playing a sub-optimal move in the hope to end the mirror, is a sub-optimal strategy against mirror players, since that’s exactly the goal of the mirror player. Instead, playing on long enough without making significant sub-optimal moves is the strategy to counter the mirror.

Or in this case, you may often get into an advantaged position, because setting up mirror breaking ladders, for instance, is not always the best moves on the board, and thus the mirror player again gets what they want (an opponent playing something sub-optimal).

That is, unless the mirror breaking strategy is very well-thought out, which is indeed quite hard.

I mean, part of the frustration you mention stems from the idea that the mirror player has an “easy win”, but that’s only the case if you give them that willingly. It’s usually a hard win.

The main thing I’m miffed about, is that what I consider a very deep, intricate and complicated part of Go strategy, is here being set apart as if it is lazy, mindless, boring, and borderline against the rules.

It goes to show that all the dan players in this thread seem to consider mirror Go unproblematic and some even claim that it is too hard for them to play.

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110

if your main goal is having higher rank or more territory

its also possible to assume that you play against mirror maximizer: user that trying to play as many mirrored moves as possible even after position symmetry broke, while still trying to win with 51% chance

in that case much more interesting goal is to decrease their ability to mirror your moves

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111

It seems to me that continuing a mirror on an asymmetric board is just going to get you killed quite easily, so such opponents are fine by me

112

1000% yes!

How fast does Kata usually break the mirror (in other words, put the mirrorer in a losing position)? I’m curious about the tradeoff of optimality vs. mirror-breaking efficiency.

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113

they would not mirror moves if it will give them 49% winrate. Each time they slightly ahead they would use that resource to play some more mirrored moves

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114

From a techical point of view, I guess KataGo would argue that mirroring is a losing move after like 3 to 6 moves already, otherwise KataGo would mirror more than those moves themselves.

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115

Heh, that’d be an interesting version of KataGo to play: weakening itself to your level by playing your own moves, and then making a save just at the right moment.

I’d guess that’d be very frustrating to play against for a weak enough player. I’d love to try!

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116

Against an unsuspecting opponent, I assume that they will break the strategy at the optimal time or wait for a major blunder from the opponent, while they flail around trying to break the mirroring. Again, I have no interest in the nuances of the strategy itself and whether it is optimal or not.

No! Scour all my posts. Nowhere do I say that.
All I said is that the person playing this strategy obviously thinks that it is to their advantage (else they wouldn’t be employing it, right?) and that’s fine for them.

I have zero problems with that.
On their end everything is 100% fine. Who am I to have an opinion on how the other person would play?

Similarly though, I have the freedom to play as I like, too, right?
Thus, all I am saying is that what I like in this case is to resign and give them the win. No “hard win” struggle needed. There, I’ll give them the points.
What else do they want? :stuck_out_tongue:

That’s my strategy against mirror Go.

Unless I am terribly mistaken, I’ve used none of those terms and concerning of the rules, I’ve said multiple times that it is perfectly legal.
I just want to make that clear.

Good!
They are free to try it.
I am free to resign.
Again, I fail to see where the controversy is.

117

Sure, to me the below seems to paint the mirror playing as a lazy one, who mindlessly plays moves for an easy win:

Many of your posts sound as if the mirror player does not need to put in effort, which is the thing I want to dispute. I’m not really interested in your opinion about playing mirror Go players, or trying to convince you that you should. You play Go (or not) however you want of course.

But I’m not happy with the uninspired picture you sketch of mirror Go players.

(also I do think resigning games 20 or 30 moves in is indeed quite rude, and believe that the consensus within the moderation team is that this is frowned upon; in usual circumstances I’d ask players not to do so, whether the game is a mirror game or not)

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118

they want to see how would you break the mirror
but your resign-suji will make them sad

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119

If that is what you want to interpret things, that’s your prerogative, but “least effort” is not “lazy” nor “mindless”. I missed that memo where those are synonyms, in which case there might be a language barrier issue and I hope we have cleared this misunderstanding :slight_smile:

Maybe it is in the parts of the topic that you didn’t read or skimmed, but the fact that we did mention/discuss that it is a valid strategy in professional games, should also give you an indication that I obviously do not think that the practice is mindless, nor easy, else it would not have been valid on such high level.

Also, I could argue that in many cases in order to find the path of “least effort”, you need to think long and hard about it ( e.g. the people that invented the cars were definitely neither lazy, nor mindless, but they sure did invent a “least effort” machine), so I as far as I am concerned my opinion is represented by what I actually wrote and not any other potential synonyms of the words that were used.

After realising that we have a mirror Go case, I could technically stay around, play 30 iron pillars or try mirroring the other player once they decide to “break the mirror” (if they can do it, so can I), reach move 60+ and then resign.

See? Another “least effort” solution. :wink:

Reading this topic I was informed that AI bots are there to show them the optimal use case for that. Therefore I hardly think that anyone would be disappointed by the lack of input on the problem from me :stuck_out_tongue:

120

Ok, you love point-by-point refutations, and it seems you really want me te repeat your own words. But you consider a mirror Go opponent as someone

I don’t know what you want to say with it, but at the very least it seems to imply that the whole opening of the mirror Go player is depending on your brain and not on both of your brains. It reads to me as if you assign no decision making to your opponent.

You call mirror go:

This again seems to me to leave little interpretation over how much the opponent is thinking, according to your perception of mirror Go. Once again, it is not an automatic reflection.

But “automatic reflection” certainly seems to imply “mindless” to me. Or not?

reads to me as if the mirror player does not consider the moves they play, and lets the opponent decide. But that’s not the case, the mirror player decides each move whether or not it is worth to break the mirror or not, they’re not outsourcing their moves to you.

You moreover at multiple stages imply that mirror Go players do not play for fun or out of interest themselves, but are just interested in getting points. This stance again corroborates that you consider the strategy not just boring for you but for the mirror player as well: you can’t even imagine that the opponent has a legitimate reason for playing it!

They might value their time as well, you resigning early ruins what for them could have been an exciting game up to that point.

No, you discover after 20 moves that you don’t like the style of game your playing, and you’d rather rob your opponent the pleasure they have from playing that type, than to continue playing. It’s like exactly like people who resign after weird joseki.

Also, what’s even more annoying about this: you don’t even play against mirror Go players!

So, of course it makes sense that you go out of your way to besmirch a strategy that a significant number of players enjoy, that has enough depth to have professional players use it, a strategy you seem to barely understand from your comments on it as well, and not even have to deal with.

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121

Just before someone tries that, playing nonsense is generally considered worse than early resigning. Players are supposed to play their games until they are decided, and to play seriously (unless otherwise agreed of course).

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