Saturday, January 30, 2021

Change is Hard: I Need a Go Psychologist


plenty-buzzsaw

I’ve been meaning to write this blog post for awhile. Now is a good time to do it because of a game I played last night in the American Yunguseng Dojang, and my feelings associated with it. One would think that a lot was on the line with this game because the winner would stay in the D2 league, and the loser would fall to the D3 league. I cared little if I won or lost the game, and I did not care about whether I fell to the lowest league. I cared about playing a better game, which is not necessarily a won game. I cared about what my teacher would think and what he would say.

I have been told by In-seong to play fewer unnecessary protective moves, and to play more active moves. This has been something that I have been struggling with for months now. In spite of my efforts, the balance has been evading me. I have actually made grave errors in attempting to self correct, often in haste between my EYD and AYD games.

One of the things that In-seong tells me is that I need to see the board from my opponent’s side. That makes sense because if his stones were mine, and they had a weakness, I would see it. If I can see it, then I can exploit it. I’m still struggling with this though. I get caught up in the pace of the game and I fall back into old habits.

In a recent lesson with Clossius, who has diagnosed the same problem, I got some concrete advice about how I might sharpen my ability to make these positive changes. He suggested that I ask the Clossi Approach questions as I review my games. That made so much sense to me. During review I would not be under time pressure, or psychological stress. The result would already be in, and perhaps I could see the board more clearly, and know what I should have seen during the game. I would essentially be kibitzing my own game. They say that when you kibitz that you are three stones stronger. I tried asking the questions during one of my reviews, and I think it paid off last night. I was doing well during my game.

It turned out that I had a winning position, even without the stones I got when my opponent missed an atari. However, I made one fatal mistake at the end that lost the game for me by 11.5. You can see that mistake in the image above. A link to the game in ai-sensei is provided.

I was upset about this blunder. My opponent and I are good friends in YD and we discussed the game immediately afterwards on Discord. I admitted that I was considering not showing up for review. I’ve never done that before. I was ashamed and worried about being present for my public humiliation. By the way, no one is ever publicly humiliated in a YD review, except maybe in their own mind. Although I thought of not going, I remembered that some of my best reviews with In-seong were for lost games. I’d never skipped a review in over four seasons, and I was not about to start doing so regardless of how I felt about a game. I pulled up my big girl pants (it’s a good thing you hadn’t noticed that they were down), and I showed up for the review.

I got sympathy for my mistake. “It happens”. I was told that it was a good game, and I got a lot of specific positive feedback. I ended up feeling a lot better. I was glad I showed up. Always show up.

One thing that might help me moving forward is that I have dropped out of EYD because it was very stressful for my husband to have me devoting eight hours to scheduled go activity every Friday. In spite of being sorry to leave EYD, I do recognize a few benefits to participating in only AYD. First, it was stressful to play two important games only four hours apart. The temptation to try to apply advice from the first game to the second game made it even more stressful for me. Second, I was usually too tired to give my best to the second game. Third, the four hours I spent each Friday on EYD activities can be allocated on other days to playing more games. I won’t be spending any less time on Go. I will just be scheduling it in a way that is less objectionable to my husband.

Luckily I have many YD Go friends who I can talk to about my psychological problems with Go. One of those friends is actually a psychologist, but he says he wants my insurance card. he is only kidding. 

I hear there is a new book about go called “Psychology” which I would like to get, but I may wait for it to come to the GoBooks app. 

I’ve got two more games I need to play today to meet my goal of eight games this week. My Weekly Go Activities blog post is due tomorrow. It is time to stop procrastinating and start playing.

Thanks for listening.


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