I think this difference is just a misstatement. One thing pounded into me from Go was how a small difference in skill can produce a dominating effect. The handicap system shows the immense differences in ‘strength’ possible—no other game lets you give up first mover advantage AND several moves and still play on a fair level on a regular basis.
Playing Go feels to me like walking a tightrope, and I’m not even dan-level yet. I would characterize it as ‘small advantages escalate’, but the score only measures a relative difference in play quality. Thus it looks linear.
Small mistakes are unlikely to be crippling for two reasons. First, at a lower level, the other player doesn’t realize how to effectively punish it, so you can get away with your mistake. At a higher level, you don’t make blatant errors (too big of an error and you resign anyhow), so when you do make an error, you have enough skill to play flexibly and partially nullify the relative effect of your opponent’s punishing moves.
I think this difference is just a misstatement. One thing pounded into me from Go was how a small difference in skill can produce a dominating effect. The handicap system shows the immense differences in ‘strength’ possible—no other game lets you give up first mover advantage AND several moves and still play on a fair level on a regular basis.
Playing Go feels to me like walking a tightrope, and I’m not even dan-level yet. I would characterize it as ‘small advantages escalate’, but the score only measures a relative difference in play quality. Thus it looks linear.
Small mistakes are unlikely to be crippling for two reasons. First, at a lower level, the other player doesn’t realize how to effectively punish it, so you can get away with your mistake. At a higher level, you don’t make blatant errors (too big of an error and you resign anyhow), so when you do make an error, you have enough skill to play flexibly and partially nullify the relative effect of your opponent’s punishing moves.