One of the things you brought up rings very true for me - and that’s the way that interacting with this game can be a huge blow to one’s ego / sense of self.
When I first ran into this game in my mid-30s (somewhere around 2003 or so), I prided myself on being fairly sharp. I had learned and absorbed many other strategy games, and had felt a sense of accomplishment and mastery. But encountering the learning curve of Go felt like smashing my face into a mountain. The worst part was feeling completely lost - making mistake after mistake and not understanding WHY they were mistakes in the first place, or how my human opponents (or the GnuGo AI I kept playing) could find those good moves I kept missing.
That image of myself as a smart, confident, capable person was seriously shaken - and it took a lot of time and mental effort to set the hungry ghost of the ego aside, and focus on improving without all that negative self talk getting in the way.
It took me another 10 years to get really serious about learning this game (like many players here, the AlphaGo / Lee Sedol match in 2016 was the catalyst that got me over the hump), and in the 10 years since I’ve managed to make a very slow climb from 25kyu to my current rank of 7-9kyu (I very rarely play ranked games, so my actual rank is a bit vague).
And yet still - to this day - when I make a major flub in a game - it’s very difficult NOT to take it personally - to not see it as a sign that I’m not as intelligent or capable as I’d like to be.
Also, because I’ve only been playing correspondence games - some of which can last weeks or months - it means that my concentration and multi-tasking capacities can fluctuate up and down based on whatever other stressful events are going on in my real life. At those times, Go can become a mirror - showing me that I am not my best self at times, and it can be difficult to step back, show some kindness to myself, and focus on getting the self-care I need to get back to a place where I can regain access to those resources.
My main take-aways from all this are
- the more I let ego and self-image get in the way, the more difficult it is for me to learn and improve
- the more I set aside all thoughts thoughts of self image - of who I should be and how I should be playing - the easier it is for me to learn from my mistakes, and figure out how to do something different next time - to make the kind of slow, incremental growth that leads to real improvement
The other important thing to remember about that 9 yr old kid is - while the neuroplasticity of youngsters can be a factor - it’s very rare that someone improves so quickly in isolation.
Chances are - especially if that youngster lives anywhere in Asia - that they had a lot of background knowledge and support along the way. Perhaps they grew up watching Go matches on TV. Perhaps they had a parent, aunt, uncle, or grandparent that sat them down and played some hand-holding teaching games.
Go is not a game that anyone just sits down and understands instantly. When you think of other fields that require experiential learning - like Kung Fu or wilderness survival skills - everyone needs to spend some time being bad at it and feeling lost before the school-of-hard-knocks experience of making those mistakes allows one to see how they can get better.
A lot of Go beginners start by trying to figure out the best moves and strategies for attacking, capturing, making eyes - i.e. the most direct route to making points. Learning these types of things have proved successful for mastering other games, why shouldn’t those same approaches work for Go?
However, the thing they miss is - one of the MOST important skills in Go is being able to accurately determine the danger/opportunity levels of the current board position:
- did your opponent’s last move actually threaten you? or can you just ignore that last move and make a threatening move of your own?
- do you have a lethal vulnerability on the board that you need to protect immediately or risk losing all those stones?
- did your opponent leave something undefended that can give you more potential profit than just grabbing an unclaimed part of the board?
Rather than just looking for the next most obvious target, Go requires one to slow down do a LOT of tactical and strategic analysis before you can learn how to answer these questions. And - unfortunately - if you’re unaware of those danger levels to begin with, you will keep making the same mistakes, and feeling lost and confused as to how you ended in those situations.
Getting good at Go isn’t so much learning how to DO - it’s learning how to SEE - reading the risks and opportunities in the landscape of the stones that will show you the range of 3 best moves available to you, and help you understand the relative risk/reward values of each of them so you can choose your best strategy for that moment.
I know this process is frustrating and discouraging - it takes time and effort - not only to go through the steps of learning it, but also to get over all the negative internal voices telling you that you SHOULD be better, or that someone might be progressing faster than you.
My advice is take it easy on yourself. If losing games bothers you - maybe just play some unranked teaching games for a while, or play against the same low-level AI offline so you can try some different things, ask for un-do’s more easily etc. A lot of people here on OGS have offered to help in various ways - maybe just step back and access those resources, and focus on improving instead of needing the satisfaction of a win to somehow justify the effort you’re making. Try to find some joy in this game separate from the agony-of-defeat you keep focusing on. Good luck.