🤯 Why do Go players drop out? Addressing anxiety and stress in Go

Something that tends to disappear at higher level, but I think can be significant at some stage: frustration due to undeserved defeats (or at least perceived as such).

Unlike Chess, a game of Go takes quite a long time, during which you are stressed and on the edge of your seat. And when finally after 45min of that you think you reached the end and you won thanks to some clever moves, you stupidly miss an atari, or the opponent tries a stupid invasion which the AI confirms had no chance to work and is just wasting time but you blunder and this stupid game is now all lost.

Of course there are many rational arguments to explain that this is fine and you shouldn’t see it like that… but still, that leaves a bitter taste.

I’ve grown out of it, but I remember that frustration in the past, and a friend recently got quite annoyed by it too.

1 Like