indessed roscivs

Go proverbs are as much about life as anything else. The game of Go is a game of balance, of yin and yang. A greedy player who tries to snatch up everything will end up with nothing. The proper way to play (and usually the correct strategy) is to allow the opponent some territory in exchange for the territory you yourself are taking.

“Play away from thickness” is another Go proverb that has meaning outside the game. “Thickness” means areas where someone is strong. You shouldn’t play near areas where your opponent is strong, for they may attack you. But similarly, you shouldn’t play too near area where you yourself are strong; you should expand further into new territory and become more well-rounded.

“Only after the tenth punch will you see the fist.” When an opponent finds a weak spot in your armor, they will attack it again and again and again, often using the same patterns and exploiting you in the same way. Only after the tenth time (states the proverb) will you realize how every mistake you made was part of the same tapestry. Before that, you didn’t even realize you had a weak spot at all.

Of course, even once you’ve seen the weakness in yourself, you will likely not be able to successfully evade such attacks from your opponent. It will take many attempts before you manage to block the fist. And even then, the process of learning is not over—it will take many, many more attempts to be able to replicate what you see and utilize similar attacks yourself.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 20th, 2007 at 9:16 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.