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Blunder
Path: Mistake   · Prev: BadStyle   · Next: ClumsyDoubleContact
   

More than 7000 pages on SL and Blunder didn't exist! This must be a taboo we're talking about. Yet it is one of the most heard complaints about one's game.

A blunder (poka in Japanese) is a mistake of which one feels it is way below one's level. There are two issues:


Dieter

See also


Charles: I think the tennis concept of 'unforced error' is useful, as a comparison.

Velobici: A blunder is a result of Go blindness. A situation in which you fail to see what is thud-simple when pointed out to you.

Warp: I don't know if it qualifies as a blunder per se, but it has happened to me that I have resigned a game which I was winning or at least was extremely close and certainly not decided. The position just looked like I was losing by a huge amount and so hopeless that I lost all hope.

I have certainly learnt that just looking quickly at a game position can be very deceiving and that you should certainly count if you are unsure. It has happened to me the other way around as well: I thought I was winning the game, but when the game was finished, I lost by over 40 points! It was so amazing that I couldn't believe my eyes and for a moment thought there was a bug in the program. I had to explicitly count the points myself, one by one, to convince myself.

Bob McGuigan: Blunders happen to people at all levels of Go playing strength. Fujisawa Shuko, the great Japanese pro, was famous for poka or blunders. He lost the Kisei title to Cho Chikun because of one.

DJ: Could you provide some diagrams? I used to have the 1983 Kido Yearbook (I've lost it now) with the whole game recordings, but I couldn't understand much. Not that today I'm any better, though . . .
Meanwhile I have made a page on Shuko and his brilliancies and his Pokas . . .

Bob: Here is the position after 149 moves of [ext] game 7 of the 7th Kisei title match between Cho and Fujisawa.

[Diagram]
Cho(W) vs. Fujisawa(B)



Cho's move 148 was at the marked white stone and Fujisawa responded at the marked black stone. In a commentary in issue 31 of Go World magazine, Cho himself called the marked black stone a silly blunder that loses the game. Instead, playing at B1 in the following diagram was recommended, which would have led to a close game[1], perhaps a half-point decision.

[Diagram]
Cho(W) vs. Fujisawa(B)

If White plays W2, Black easily lives with B5.

The actual game proceeded as follows, with White storming through Black's position.

[Diagram]
Cho(W) vs. Fujisawa(B)




[1] Robert Pauli: It was a close game: W+1.5



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This is a copy of the living page "Blunder" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.