Faster

“[Fujisawa Shuko] looked favorably on you because of the speed with which you would play.”

“That’s true. At first I would take two stones … Sensei played very quickly. So fast that he made almost no sound putting his stones on the board.”

“By ‘fast’ do you mean an hour so a game?”

“Not at all! Five or ten minutes.”

from Cho Hun-hyun: Life and Master Games

Recently I’ve been experimenting with playing extremely fast games against 1D bots on KGS. Since these games are high handicap games against bots I find that I feel relaxed and detached. As they only last 5 to 15 minutes, I can play many, many games in a short period of time.

In my even games against humans, even with faster time controls as suggested by In-seong (10 minutes main, 3x30 seconds byo-yomi), they can still take up to forty minutes. Fewer games means it’s harder for insights to stick.

When I first started this experiment, I was losing nearly all of my games. After about 60 losses over two weeks and dropping back to KGS 6 kyu, it’s been somewhat of a blow to my ego. But it was also necessary. I finally started seeing the error of my ways (at least at five stones) and I’ve started winning my games again. I find these games train my intuition for defending weaknesses, attacking weaknesses, and keeping tabs on the territorial balance.

Very fast games against bots certainly isn’t going to become my main approach to the game, but it feels essential to treating Go more like riding a bicycle and less like a theoretical exercise.

The experience has also opened me up again to the idea of playing high handicap games against weaker opponents. Since I’d joined AYD I’d stopped doing that as all of the AYD materials are about even games. Given my weak middle game, this seems like it would be quite useful to bring this back into my practice.