Another One Bites the Dust
Too many of my game records end up looking like this. How can I stop this from happening?
Growing up in the 1970′s, I was sure flying was a bad idea.
I remember watching the “Airport” movies, each of which featured innocent passengers and plenty of potential death and destruction. And if Hollywood drama wasn’t enough, the evening news was peppered with regular air disasters.
In 1978, a Boeing 727 collided with a small plane near San Diego, just 3 years after the first airport disaster flick starring Charlton Heston movie featured a 747 colliding with a private plane. No wonder my family seemed to drive everywhere.
So, what happened? Hollywood has stopped making airline crash movies, even in this age of remakes. More importantly, the news doesn’t have much to report in the way of airliner downings either. Why are the skies seemingly safer today and in the 1970′s?
Answer: The National Transportation Safety Board and other similar organizations world-wide. It seems they figured out that studying the causes of crashes yielded information about how to improve safety. Go figure . . . (no comment on the pun).
Over the past 30-40 years, the United States and other countries have actually reached the rank of transportation shodan, reducing fatal crashes by some 5,000 percent. They studied what went wrong and followed through on improvements. What does this mean for me besides the fact that my fear of flying is serenely parked on the tarmac? It means that I need my very own Goban Safety Board.
Well, okay, a government agency probably won’t help my game, but I do need to study what goes wrong, especially in the games I lose, and then do something about the weaknesses I find.
A go player called Vultur writes a blog titled “Lose 100 Games.” He advocates embracing your mistakes to learn from them. I like that idea.
“The idea of being patiently mindful of our errors is encouraging, unlike the feeling of frustration that comes from erroneously thinking that losing is necessarily a bad thing.”
The idea of being patiently mindful of our errors is encouraging, unlike the feeling of frustration that comes from erroneously thinking that losing is necessarily a bad thing. Playing should be a learning processes. Perhaps we teach others when they make mistakes in games that we win. Are we then too proud to learn from our mistakes when we lose? We do this I think when we pout about losing. If we’re playing at the right level, winning and losing is a 50/50 thing anyway. I know I’ll enjoy go more when I start to enjoy the losing efforts more. (Ha, maybe I don’t want to enjoy them too much, eh?)
Anyway, I’m going to follow Vultur’s lead and not only lose 100 games (I’ve actually lost many times this already) but I’m also going to review as many as possible when I lose and ask, “Why did this plane crash?” Unlike with aviation, where at least some of the crashes can be blamed on mechanical failure, in go it is always pilot error. Granted there may be opponent induced ice and fog, but . . . well, no excuses, right?
To start off my safety board investigations, here’s a game I lost recently to a player named ‘loot’ on DGS. I played white. The result was Black + 7.5.
I didn’t put hours into the review. Instead I quickly ran through the game to look for any obvious mistakes that cost me the 8 precious points that brought about my crash. I found one at move 128. Check it out and see if you agree with me that it was a simple case of carelessness with perhaps a little greed tossed in for good measure.
Also, I’d love to hear from you about your experiences with improving your safety record on the goban through your own ‘after-crash’ reviews.
Hi!
I noticed yesterday that you were following me on Twitter, and I found your blog. I really much like what you have written, about go and, what I really liked, were the problems you have created for the go newbies, the videos are a nice touch. So I decided to link to your blog, added some good words to entice people into checking it out. I’ll be reading it too. ^^
About this game… I’ve only watched through a few moves, and I must admit I’m not awake anymore, but looking at it anyway, wouldn’t you think a pincer at G16 instead of E17 might be better, not to over-concentrate white on the left?
g16 vs E17 . . . hmmmmm . . . . I think I played E17 because I wanted to take the corner and poke out toward the black stone on D4. I followed up with R14 to keep the top from getting any bigger for black. SO, I’m not sure if a pincer would have been better or not. Probably, advantages either way. But I felt better with a solid group in the corner. If I have started a fight via a pincer there I would have had to be more conservative in the upper right perhaps, where I was not in control of which joseki would be played.
BTW, thanks for linking to my blog. I’ll be sure to check out your blog soon.
I do this too. I think you’re hardly alone. I heard that Yamashita Keigo said that you should pay more attention to the games you lose. I heard that a world checkers expert got where he was by only focusing on eliminating his mistakes.
I try to review every game that I play, although often not immediately. People make mistakes even in the games they win. Of course, if I’m tired, my reading ability goes way way down right away. And, although there are plenty of times I catch a mistake just once and then understand that sequence, more frequently I make the same mistakes over and over again. Right now, one of my bad habits is making long tentacles from groups before securing their life. I’ve done that and lost many games. Plus, there’s no way I can catch all of my mistakes or slack plays, so often I go over variations for moves that I didn’t think were mistakes.
I can’t say if all this is doing me any good. But unless I’m playing while super-tired and not bothering to read anything (always a bad idea), I feel like I’ve gotten a lot stronger in the months that I’ve been doing this.
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In the embedded game, Black has a tesuji starting with move 93. Black should first throw in at N7 and threaten to connect back (White should let black connect back and connect the heavy group).But if white captures, black atari at O8. White connects. Black plays h3 (H3 is the Tesuji. I saw it in getting strong at Joseki) If white J2, black K2. Black captures all of white.