Friday, July 28, 2006

Simplicity

The more I play, the more I am realizing that go is all about simplicity. You don't need fancy moves or brilliant tesujis, you don't need to kill everything in sight. If you play good and simple moves, and always take similar or bigger sized moves than your opponent, everything will work out just fine.

Of course, there is the problem of finding that simple and good move. It always seems to be totally obvious in hindsight. But I manage to find lots of bad moves during my games. I manage to make fatal mistakes and have my shape totally collapse on me.

But I can feel and see where simplicity is the answer. One reason I stopped playing jabberwocks, was that I felt I also should be able to play 'basic' go. It is easy to confuse opponent by playing mokuhazushi which he might not be familiar with. It still is my favorite opening, and I will go back to it for sure, but for the moment really working on improving my basic and simple go.

It's amazing how hard it can be to find the simplest move.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great! You have discovered this very fundamental principle:the best move, is often the simplest move on the board.

You are now ready to give opponents a handicap. There you need the patience to just play the best moves and catch up with your weaker opponent in the end game. No reason to hurry, you will see more "simplicity" than he/she and you will narrow the gap.

By the way, nice to see that you played Go in the Netherlands / Leiden years ago. Which yar was that?