I was always taught in Chess to play the board, not the player. But in principle this is wrong if your goal is to increase your chances of winning the game.
The problem with playing your opponent is that if you don't know the proper technique for doing this, it will distract you from the real game. For weaker players, it's enough to just "play the board", anything beyond this will hurt their play. What most people don't understand is that playing your opponent doesn't mean that you suddenly start playing risky unsound moves. Playing your opponent is a very careful and controlled process that should not involve a radical change of playing style. It involves waiting for mistakes, not making them. You will try to encourage these mistakes, but not at great risk to yourself. Also, you must never underestimate your weaker opponent. I mention this because there have been a few posts that imply that you should play normally, change nothing, and just wait for the mistake. In fact, this is almost correct, most of the moves should be like this. If you don't know what you are doing ALL the moves should be like this. But if you want to actually maximize your winning chances, you need to be more sophisticated than this. At least this applies in Chess. I'm sure this must apply to GO too. When books and experts say "don't play the opponent" they are giving beginner advice. Most beginners can't handle this. It should be done in very carefully measured ways. It's obviously counter-productive to start playing high risk moves and throw soundness out the window. But that doesn't mean there is nothing you can do to take advantage of a weaker opponent in a losing position. For most people, the advice to "just play the board" is going to protect them. Playing the opponent is a skill and weaker (chess players) screw up big time when attempting to do this. I'll give one example from chess: What do you do when your opponent is in time-trouble? How do you "play the opponent" and capitalize on this? The knee-jerk reaction is to play extra quickly, to deprive him of thinking on your time. This is foolish. Your opponent will be at his best with the extra adrenaline kick. If you play fast you will be at your worst. The adrenaline rush will wear out your opponent, so in such a situation it is better to play normally or even EXTRA SLOW. In fact, if I see my opponent is excited, I take my sweet time, forcing him to stay at attention a very long time. If I have a choice between complicated and simple positions, I take the complicated position IF and ONLY IF I am totally comfortable with it. After all I have more time to figure it out. I won't play unsoundly just to get a complicated position though. The better players are not really that handicapped when under time pressure - they remain highly focused and do not let themselves get too excited - no point in helping them along with rash moves. YOU are the one that must remain calm and stay 100 percent focused. I did not have to lose very many games that way to figure this out. There are many other ways to take advantage of your opponent in chess that I consider sound if applied in a very measured and careful way. None of them call for making truly unsound moves, especially when you consider that in a losing position, all moves are unsound in some sense. Now you are in a situation of "risk management", you are looking for moves that give you the best chances of winning (a lost game) and usually, it requires a move that makes it the most difficult for your opponent. This is not quite the same as moves that make it easiest for you, which is what you look for in WON positions. Weaker players cannot do this. They are best just sticking with the style that is most comfortable for them. - Don On Mon, 2006-12-25 at 15:23 +0000, Vlad Dumitrescu wrote: > On 12/25/06, Jacques Basaldúa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hideki Kato wrote: > > Nevertheless, I have certain experience (not with > > MC) of computer go with handicap and I can tell: > > Waiting for the opponent to blunder is only a good > > strategy if the handicap is lower than it should. > > E.g. 7 kyu difference & Handi 3. If the handicap > > approaches its real value, that does not work. > > I have seen (many times) GnuGo not being able to > > win a H7 game to an opponent more than 10 kyu > > weaker. That happens because it had to invade > > unclear positions. The more the invasion is > > postponed, the worse. The weaker player simply > > does defensive uninteresting play and so does the > > stronger player (with better yose, but that's not > > enough). If I (manually) use two or three turns > > just to invade, GnuGo tries to save the invading > > stones and that's more than enough to win the game. > > Hi, > > This depends on your definitions. If the position is unclear and GnuGo > doesn't invade, then I'd say *that* is a blunder (especially when > being behind). The idea is to play the best move available, and let > the weaker player make suboptimal ones -- in the end, if the handicap > is correct, the net result should be zero and the result would be the > same as in an even game with an equal partner. > > The best move may be a somewhat risky invasion - of course one has to > assume the partner will not play perfectly, but everybody does that > every time anyway, right? Otherwise nobody would have any hope to win > and so nobody would play ;-) > > best regards, > Vlad > _______________________________________________ > computer-go mailing list > computer-go@computer-go.org > http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/ _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
