RazorBrain's Go Journal

The Seven Deadly Sins (of Go) by RazorBrain

In 1996 Janice Kim published the third book of her Learn to Play Go series titled The Dragon Style. When I first read this book I remember it being different than most go books I had encountered and even very different from her first two volumes. She began her third volume with a section on Seven Dangers. These have stuck with me, at least enough to haunt me when I fall into their traps. But for today’s post I’m gong to cut to the chase and refer to these as The Seven Deadly Sins (of Go).

I’m writing about this today because I continue to be guilty of several of these deadly go sins on a regular basis.

The two that I can’t let go of seem to be greed and thoughtlessness. They’re my favorites by far and seem to come quite naturally for me. The full list of seven sins is as follows: 1)  Fear 2) Agitation 3) Greed  4) Thoughtlessness 5) Irrationality  6) Anger  7) Envy.

Yesterday (Friday the 13th) I had the pleasure of playing go with an old friend of mine at his house during my lunch break. We were both excited because it was the first chance we’ve had to use the one piece floor board that he was fortunate enough to find at an estate sale for $30 (with bowls of course).  After some debate of where to put the board, we finally decided on the floor (Yeah, yeah, I know. Sounds obvious but for tow middle-aged Americans who don’t sit on the floor that much, it wasn’t that obvious. But we did the right thing!)

As we played I built a sizable lead (about 40 points). I was feeling pretty relaxed (a prerequisite for thoughtlessness and even greed). As the end game wrapped up I was aware that Dave was trying to set up a trap in the bottom left. Even though i was aware of it I ignored the threat, perhaps because of the lead, perhaps because Dave had misread a couple of other positions earlier (Could over confidence be an eighth sin?). I ended up letting greed (and petty greed at that)  blind me to the building danger that I could have easily avoided, not once, but twice, even with alarm bells going off in my head for several turns prior to the ax dropping.

The video below is just the last dozen moves of the game showing me falling asleep. Though it was my thoughtlessness and greed that helped me throw the game away, I don’t want to take creadit away from Dave. I stuck with a plan and read out the situation well. Perseverance is to be praised in this game!

The lesson for me today? Stay vigilant. As Janice Kim says in her book at the beginning of her chapter on thoughtlessness:

“It’s important to think before every move. Playing automatically is one of the biggest causes of failure.”

Oh really? I guess I can’t say I haven’t noticed the truth of that statement. Later back at my desk for the afternoon, I paused to pen the following go haiku:

Played baduk today
Fell asleep during yose
Sucess was a dream

So what are your most commong go sins? Complete the poll below and help us all feel better by letting us know we are not alone. ;-)

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