Weekend Hiatus Again....

Dirty Dozen Impatience (Credit to Sunny and Fit)

Bleh. I’ve failed so far as to keeping regular blog posts once I go up to Baltimore on the weekends…. I’ll need to fix that. But regardless, I played quite a bit with Todd over the past couple days… and I have to say it’s been frustrating yet enlightening. I know I’ve said this multiple times in the past… but I’d say that the implications of the line that “Go is 98% patience” is “Read ahead you idiot.”

I’m not the first nor will I be the last to say that I believe that Go really does reveal a lot about a person’s character. What I’ve realized… is that I’m not as patient as I thought I was. I like to get things done quickly and to use talent and intuition to hope for the best result. The only problem is that this mindset doesn’t translate well in Go and in the bigger picture… life.

Second epiphany is that my asinine “wanna-be pro” self keeps trying to create all these clever trick plays (e.g. shortage of liberty situations or awesome snapbacks). What does that mean for a player still in the DDK who plays an opponent of shodan strength? Complete and utter failure. As Todd so kindly reminded me, “Go is not about killing stones….” I must’ve heard and read this about a hundred times since I’ve started, yet still it still has not sunk into my brain…. sigh.

So what do I take away from all of this? Two things:

  1. Train my patience as a person so that it will not only impact my ability as a Go player, but the rest of my life as well.
  2. Focus on the fundamentals of Go. Stay away from trying to do anything crazy until the basic are set and stone in my style of play.