Get the Dao Where I Can

It is very safe to say that over the last 12 months I have been immensly influenced by Daoism.  It has been my way of dealing with the loss of my grandfather, and it will probably be how I deal with the loss of my dad.  It also made me want to take up Tai Chi and play Go.

Both are lovely activities, but neither are at this point my true path (pun intended).  I order my time with Daoism by the following hierarchy:

1) Time in nature, with the right silence, openness, and stillness of mind.  This is where perfect days should be spent.

2) Time with the Daodejing.  Last year I copied passages by hand.  This year I will memorize my favorite passages.  In the future, I might take up calligraphy and really make some beautiful copies.  Also, there is the possibility of copying it in Spanish, French, or other languages.

3) Tai Chi.  I plan to pick it up in the winters, when the land has lost most of its scents and bird song.  True story: I was doing quite a bit of Tai Chi in the winter and then one day I went out in February and I could just smell the spring.  After that, I have not learned any new moves.  I mostly just used it for stretches when we got out of the car during our vacation.  I think when nature speaks to me less, I will take up Tai Chi again.  It's a seasonal thing.

4) The game of Go.  So in the end, I am not going with Go.  A dozen games or so of Go forms the basis of some images that serve as metaphors for the Dao, but after that it just a game.  Granted, an absorbing game full of tactics.  Oh my, just in writing, I am getting an itch to play.  But that is nothing that losing a few games to a computer wont fix.

Go as a metaphor can help in my spiritual enlightenment, but the actual practice of Go does not get past being a game.  And as I get older, I find more satisfaction from getting things done in real life and progressing in useful skills.

I also find more purpose in spirituality.  And I want the time I spend in my life to reflect that.

Let's Go With Go

I am indeed starting off again in learning the game of Go.  My first textbook will be River Mountain Go.

It has this advice:

as you read this book, please play at least ten games of Go for every chapter you read. If you play one game of Go per day, spend about a week on each chapter. 

That's the kind of advice I like to hear; I want to play the game and enjoy my summer -- a real summer now that Nationals has ended.

A Turn Back To Go?

While I haven't been blogging much, on account of the learning curve with learning Dvorak, I have been doing a lot of thinking and walking, and some meditating.  There have been many epiphanies, including the meta-epiphany that I can and should have my epiphanies about my craft of teaching, and that is as much of a challenge, and spiritual journey, as any.

In addition, on those long walks, my mind keeps going back to a need to make the spaces at school work for me better.  One idea is plants, another is a desktop sized waterfall, and yet another is the screaming need inside of me to declutter my classroom (naturally, I have started there, working on getting rid of much of what I inherited in the classroom), but lastly I see again and again in my mind's eye a Go board.

The game stands out as a representation of harmony in motion.  This is important because I don't have a window. and thus I have no portal to nature.  A Go game can represent that dynamism, I think. For it to really be beautiful, I will need to understand the game a bit better.  

For beauty's sake, the game of Go may be the next thing I work on.

Mental Gymnastics

My second post in Dvorick.

This one is a bit of a goofy journey.  It started with me watching a few basketball documentaries, you know, to celebrate the start of the summer.  One of them was about when the Knicks were actually good.  It focused briefly on Jerry Lucas, one of the great eccentrics to play the game.

He was odd because he played a lot of memory games, including memorization, counting, and rearranging words by alphabetic order of letters -- the example he gives is "cat" rearranges to "act."

This made me want to get back into memorizing.  I had learned the major memory system on memrise.com and used it to learn a large framework of historical dates.  So I went back to looking for dates to learn.  And as a by-product I started back with French, so that has been fun.

Anyway, I was at a social gathering today. and so I thought I would exercise some of this active mind stuff.  First I tried counting, but it was too dark and it was a bit boring.  I decided to rearrange  the letters in words, but I ran into the problem that I only know the alphabet through the "abc" song.  My solution was to go through the alphabet and use a peg list to associate a number to each letter.  The first five I knew, and of course "z" is 26.  I set out to learn the number for the other 20 letters.

Big progress was made today.  I should more or less have it down with review tomorrow.

Yahtzee: a Solved Game

Yahtzee, it's a fun dice game.  If backgammon is in the sweet-spot of skills and luck (which I believe it is) then Yahtzee moves a little more into the luck category, which can be good for drumming up a game.  In Yahtzee if you roll a Yahtzee and no one else does, you're probably going to win.  If you roll two Yahtzees and no one matches it, you ARE going to win.  So the game is really play slots with someone, trying to see who can get the jackpot.

In the other circumstances, when the Yahtzees equalize out (often at no one getting one) there are some important choices to make that can impact competitive equity.  And if you find yourself playing a lot of Yahtzee, realize that those decisions can be objectively rated, and the game can be studied.

Yahtzee, at least in terms of going for the highest score you can is a solved game, meaning all of the combinations have been calculated.

If one wanted to (and I'm not sure I do; I have a lot of gaming interests going at any one time,) then it would be a simple matter to find an implementation of the Optimal Yahtzee Player and use it to figure out "reference points" for certain kinds of common decisions.  If you pick the right ones, you will have the "borderline cases" memorized so that you not only get those decisions right, but you will also know what to do in cases stronger and weaker.

With all that said, if you opponent rolls two unmatched Yahtzees, then you are going to lose.  But learning itself is fun, and it is often nice to do learning play (it's not really work, now is it?) in the space of games because there can be more objective progress, even if you don't necessarily win more games immediately.

I might be talking myself into studying Yahtzee when I get more time, maybe over the Summer Break.

Update:

Nope.  This is a popular post for some reason, though. . .

Better Backgammon

To any novice level player who wants to improve their game, I recommend  the positions from the book Better Backgammon by Tim Holland.  I finished them in a binge one night.  Then I reviewed the night after, and then took a week off backgammon.  This gave me spaced repetition on the concepts, and the week break allowed me to work on other things at a time that backgammon fever had wrecked my capacity to get things done.

I looked at them a week later, and here I am months later, giving the positions another look.  They really helped me to have GNU backgammon criticize my play less, or other words, you know, to play better backgammon.

Not to Say Games of Chance Don't Have Lessons

I wrote not too long ago about some lessons that you can learn by playing Go, and I came to the conclusion that Go is better served as a game to reinforce those lessons rather than teach them; in other word, you have to be in the right frame of mind.

Backgammon gives me a different set of lessons, with the same proviso that you wont learn (or be reminded) unless you are in an open state of mind.

Being a game of chance, any game can be lost if the dice turn totally against you.  The same sources that read Go as a game of competing with yourself, and Chess as a game of competing against others, therefore conclude that Backgammon is a game of competing against chance.  I to some extend disagree.  Any one game, or small sample, of Backgammon will be about luck, Fate, chance (and that makes it possible to occasionally drum up some games), but Backgammon and Poker helped me to see that such short term results are a illusion.

Back in my younger days -- which Jim Morrison so aptly described as being a time when things were simpler and more confused -- I would worry often about my luck.  I even complained about my bad beats.  I knew this was wrong, but I didn't feel it.  So I make a little log of my good luck.  I but some bad beats on people, sure.  But I also had longer than average streaks of good luck holding up, too.  Doing this changed my outlook on life, and helped me to understand the importance of the long run, a phrase often given lip service, but I don't think truly respected enough.

Games of chance gently whisper the lesson that the ebbs and flows of luck do not heed our wishes.  Will we listen to those whispers or scream at the outcomes?  Perhaps not as great a poet as Jim Morrison, but still a good one, Kipling asks us to "meet with Triumph and Disaster/And treat those two impostors just the same" (seriously, read the poem if you never have).  In the case of Backgammon, because the game's variables are mathematical, and demonstrable by computers, you can see your variance even more clearly, if you are willing to look.  Life really is more mysterious than a game, but all those confounding variables almost beg us to come up with simplistic narratives about why we succeed or fail, which adds an extra layer of illusion to remove.

The understanding that our moment, no matter how pronounced the extremes of their swings, are illusions when taken in isolation, but instead are pieces of a much bigger whole . . . well, that sounds like as much like Eastern philosophy as my musings on Go,

Note: just because others don't see the practice of Backgammon (or Poker) in the same way, but get trapped in the illusions and their bad beat stories, doesn't change how I like the game as meditation-in-action.

Eh, one more note: while I don't let myself play Go when I am less than centered moods, sometimes I let myself play games of chance that way.  I try to keep the experience of Go pure, but I sometimes play Backgammon too quickly, and that means, sometimes, too emotionally.

You can't be perfect all the time. (All things in moderation, including moderation).

The Right Balance

I don't believe work/life balance is the key balance to look track.  I think work should be minimized as much as possible and then after that is accomplished, a focus should be given to living the best life possible.

And to live that best possible life you have to balance action and rest (either actual sleep, or even slow, unstrained meditative thinking).  Now, that action can be what we call productive work, and actually so can that kind of thinking.  But it really doesn't have to be.

Also, balancing works in rhythms and cycles, so that certain times of day are better than others. And really, again, this is about enjoyment.  This is a completely side conversation as to whether someone wants their entire life co-opted by their employer (which just seems bad to me).


Physical
Action -- chores, strength training
Rest --  qigong/tai chi, napping

Gardening
Action -- digging, pruning, moving heavy debris, mowing
Rest --  planting seeds, gentle weeding in a loose bed, strolling about on a nice day, snacking by whim

Mental
Action -- e-mails, lesson planing, writing a quick blog post, working on a skill for a goal nerd goal
Rest -- thinking in silence, writing in cursive in a notebook, reading a good book slowly and pausing to think

Games to Play with Others
Action -- Backgammon, Yahtzee, Poker
Rest -- Go with the right handicap

Solitare games
Action --, Russian Backgammon Solitaire,  Open Face Chinese Poker Solitare (though I often play it when I can't sleep, so maybe it is in between "action" and "rest").
Rest -- Working through Go Joseki

Some Free Go Literature

The American Go Association has a nice page for people learning the game.  I am going to start with River Mountain Go: Volume 1 and at the same time look at problems in Improve Fast in Go as more of a stretch read, so I gather from looking at it.  

Process those both, though, and play a lot, and it looks like I should be a 20 kyu (if that label has any robust meaning).

I'm not sure I can keep ego and notions of progress out of my conception of the game of Go, and mythology around the game notwithstanding, I'm not sure many others have succeeded either.  But I like the game.  I think its beauty stems from its elegance, and I think it is a lovely martial art of the mind.

Also, my thinking on ego has turned away from the thought of its elimination to thinking about its balance with the outside world.

Defending 9X9 Go

I have read that 9X9 Go teaches a new comer bad habits, and should be avoided because it you will have unlearn so much.

I counter that with the following: 9X9 Go is really fun. The games don't take too long, and it easier to hold in my mind the flow of the game, thus even at my level of having 30 games in, I can now look back and usually figure out what move I make the big mistake that cost me winning at my handicap.

I see 9X9 Go more as more like playing scales on a piano.  I have deepened an understanding of "life and death" problems and other aspects of shape. I know that if I play hundreds of games my ability to read would only improve.

For now, Go is one of my favorite free hobbies.  If I still like it after the house is paid off, I might spend money on a library of good Go books.  It is from that reading that I would expect to learn the right habits and really develop the craft.

I have to convince myself over and over again that I am not trying to progress in Go at maximum speed.  With that in mind, why should I care if 9X9 is teaching me bad habits, if I it is the most fun way to play for right now? 

And so I'll play on a 9X9 board as long as it is fun.

Perhaps this Need not be Gibberish

I was reading a discussion of just how much play on a 9X9 Go board is appropriate for a beginner and I came across this: 

Malweth: I learned how to play solely on the 19x19 board - I believe that my first 9x9 game was after I'd broken 20k, and I'm positive that my first 13x13 game was when I was SDK (and versus a ~25k child).There are important things to learn at the 25k level, and as important as life and death is, the opening is IMHO more critical. Basic shape life and death problems take a close second. Look at it this way, the most important part of the game is the fuseki (joseki aside, of course, for the 25 kyu).The progression, as I see it, is:1) Learn the rules 2) Learn the big points and why they are big (start with the 3-4 shimari, then the kakari) 3) Simultaneously with #2, learn the basic nakade.9x9 is good for time purposes - it does teach good tactics, but should be used in conjunction with 19x19. I personally don't find much value in 13x13. I think it is better to play half a 19x19 game than to complete a 13x13 game, not even discussing that playing quickly (15-20 min absolute per side) is perfectly fine for weaker players. 

I might play around with these suggestions, but first I have to learn what "shimari," "kakari," and "nakade" in fact are.  

Vocabulary is always important in learning a new endevour.  

Joseki (Go Strategy)

While I like Go for the big-picture strategy which evokes potent metaphorical understandings of spirituality in practice, and I like to think of one day hooking up with a community of people who play the game for the right reasons, losing all the time to the Fuego is not my favorite experience.

For that reason, I am watching some strategy videos on Youtube.  (In a year and half or so, after the house is paid off, and my spending moratorium is ended, I might even buy Go books  . . . shocking, I know).

The current beginner fundamental for me is Joseki.




Update: just internalizing this concept alone helped me to move up a handicap on the 9X9 board against Fuego.

Go Progress

Through game 15 of losing 50 games as fast as I can.  I actually won a game on a 15X15 board.  I only need a nine stone handicap.  (Let it never be said I was an over-night success at Go).

I enjoyed this lecture on mid-game shapes, from the Sunday Go Lessons Channel:

Go as Meditation in Action

I have been saved the trouble of needing to write further pieces on the philosophical implications of Go by one I have read today.  (This is not to say I wont use Go to express insights into other areas; I have already begun one such piece in my notebook.  Also, if I will write about my Go studies, if nothing else so I can have them scrap-booked for me somewhere.)

Though the piece tries to make the most important implication of Go is an answer to nihilism,  But I don't see that argument as unique to Go.  It is basically that rules make parameters on the chaos of reality, giving us a framework for interaction.  Without that framework we are left in a nihilistic situation:

 When two people confront each other across a Go board, they could do virtually anything—throw the stones at each other, carve their initials in the board, etc. Why play Go? The broader question is, why do anything at all?

To answer that we need to know what kind of beings we are: impermanent and interconnected.  And the stones in Go serve the purpose of showing representing this truth:

 A stone’s real significance lies in its potentiality for interaction with other stones. It can surround territory or disrupt the ability of stones of the other color to do so, and even capture those stones . . .  the significance of any stone or group of stones is subject to the possibility of radical change. A stone or group of stones that is important at one point can become dispensable as a result of later developments . . .  The significance of the vulnerability of the stones accustoms the players to the reality of impermanence, and again this is found to be not a dreadful situation, but one that greatly enriches the experience of playing.

 We are impermanent beings who can only cobble together temporary, contextual truths (much harder to have Truths).  So why not play a game that mirrors that reality?  Throw in some aspects of harmony and interconnections, and adjust the handicaps of the game so that you are only winning 50-60% of the time, and you have an enjoyable game that becomes more of an enjoyable art.

The article is worth the read (and reread).

Basics Things to Think About in Backgammon

Here is one, and two, cheat-sheet style articles of things to think about in backgammon.  And while I'm gathering links, it might be fun to look back at some historically important matches.  Also good is a review of Chris Bray's Seminar: To Slot or Not to Slot?

I feel like studying Backgammon again.  At my current skill level, backgammon is still the most fun in terms of game-play.  Games move quickly, and each individual game takes a short amount of time.  

Go, on the other hand, is a spiritual exercise for me.  But then again, so is my work.  And so is gardening.  And even, with the right frame of mind, the chores around the house. So after a day of holding myself together to be a radiant in my good work, it is nice to have this game for its excitement.

I have taken to something quite odd, but really fun for me.  I set up a Backgammon board beside my computer, so I can play through the moves on it while playing the computer.  I had first thought of doing this with Go, when I one day get a board, but I realized the same principal could transfer.  One of the big reasons I bother my wife to play Backgammon so much with me is because it is an excuse to use real pieces.  I just love the click, click of the game.  And now I can have that as much as I want. Just in time for Winter Break.  

If Left Red-in-the-Face-Embarrassed

. . . it is probably time to take a break.

It's amazing how naturally I go from playing a game, thinking a lot about it, taking those images in my mind's eye and projecting it into my future, imagining playing it having as a significant meaning to my life, learning about the social scene (and social status) of the game, thinking of how I will one day be great, thinking how that means I must be making rapid progress, and being deeply embarrassed  when I suffer the kind of set-back a newbie must come to accept.

I wrote that this all happened naturally, and I love nature, so I love this too . . . right?  No, this pattern may be natural, but it in unbalanced.  This is not the a path that a well-adjusted or centered person will follow for long.

It is natural for any individual, or even a group, to get unbalanced.  But the whole will push back to that part. And when the whole gently pushes back, we can tense up, and redouble our efforts . . . or we can breath, get some perspective, and (re)locate a balance.

All of this came from playing Go.  I thought I was ready to move down another handicap against Fuego.  I thought I understood the concepts to win at the next level down.  I did not.

And that should be okay.  And it is if you play the game for its own merits, instead of following the path outlined above.  I want Go to a game in which I cultivate a different growth than ego-measuring (never will your ego be less than when you are constantly seeking to validate it).  To do that, I should only play it when I am in a mood to do that kind of cultivation.

There is the advice to "lose 50 games as quickly as you can."  And I like that advice.  But, for it to be a real vehicle for harmony in my life -- a stop-gap when I can not get it from natural surroundings bursting with life -- then I need to balance the seeking of 50 games with other values.  To be balanced, I must balance the game-of-balance with clearing my head enough to have an attitude open to balance.

This Humble Student Learns to Accept Hokeyness

I accept that Go will be part of my life.  I accept that Backgammon will be part of my life.  I also, at the age of thirty, accept that I will not an elite player at either.  I will not be world renowned.

Okay, I accept that about Go more than Backgammon.  The only reason is that I first learned Backgammon as a youngster and so there all sorts of buried dreams of playing big games and rolling 6-6 to pull off a miracle upset.

I have been playing Go for only a short time, and have not yet even lost my first 50 games.  But I love the game as an exercise in harmony.

I see myself playing Go as a form of mediation, of relaxation.  I will "advance" when I advance.  I will stall when I stall.  I will neglect to play when I neglect to play.  This last point is especially important in gardening season.  Why use Go as metaphor for the harmonies of nature, when I can just experience them directly?  But rainy days, as well as those that are cold and hot will call for games.

As I want to be as humble as I can in relation to Go.  And not to be arrogant about humility, but I do have a lot of practice being humble, much more than a 10 year old gloating over beating his mother at Backgammon.

As a testament to my humility toward this game, I have watched some videos, really built for beginners.  If I had followed my normal mode of operation, I would have played a few games and starting thinking of "disruptive strategies" that will allow me to have my own style and compete with the big-boys.  Ah, youth,

I learned a lot from the following videos and will probably refer to them as I move up in beating Fuego, the free Go engine I am playing with on my computer.  All of the videos had a common feature that in the past I was have gagged on: they are all a bit hokey.  But somehow, in my more humble, open state, I found myself smiling at them, even if it would not be my style to say. All the videos are on a 9 by 9 board. I plan on getting at least 25 of games in on a 9 by 9, before switching to something a bit bigger.

The first video is a near-total novice playing a more experienced player in a game that just divides the board up:




The second video gives a little more open game from the same players:


The third video is someone beating a computer at different level of stone handicap. Helpful in facing my current Go opponent.

A Game of Harmony (another free hobby)

I have been writing harmonies, and how games can be a step to achieving them.

When I think about harmonies, I almost invariably pictures moves from the game of Go.  I probably should picture something about the give-and-take conversation with myself and nature in a garden, but that is no one moment, but a relationship, and I sense it and should write more about it one day.  Go, on the other hand, gives me a picture of harmony.  In the moves I see some truths: you cannot eradicate your opponent, only out-influence.  To attack in an impossible position can only cause damage to yourself.  Unbalanced aggression can easily be used against you.

I see all this in the game, and I'm not even any good at it.  And perhaps getting good would turn too many aspects of the game into something mechanical.  Go is a great game for the meditative practice of harmony.  I plan to have no plans with it, and instead only play as much as I enjoy.

You can play it for free thanks to GNU; I have been playing against Fuego. 

A Mantra

I am a teacher,

I teach nobility, I teach walking the Path (dao . . . ?)
I am a writer, I am a forager, I am a gardener.
I am a forager, I am a gardener.

This is a mantra to prevent me from just visualizing the movement of pieces.  This obsession would consume my life.  It would be fun, but it must stay in balance.  Game, meta-game, harmony.

I want to visualize a move in backgammon, in Othello  (you get to flip so many pieces), in Go.  I want to slap down a card and quickly move it into place.  This could use up all of my mental space.

So . . .

Visualize pulling up a radish, cutting pine, pulling chickweed, etc.  Picture a pen moving as a good wording comes out.  Those are the noble arts I pursue.

Plant a polyculture, find a way to reflect on the reflective life, to build a better version of myself.

Game, Meta-Game, Harmonies

When I decided to make the game Diplomacy a key part of my speech/communications class it occurred to me that I am completely fascinated by games.  Perhaps easily obsessed is more true.  Or, perhaps I can be generous and say that games give a home.

The rules of a game create limit on the chaos of reality.  I know this leads us right to what Taleb calls the ludic fallacy, but I don't see the path of games leading directly to such mistaken reasoning.  Or maybe it is a trade-off: a game creates an environment that can be rich enough to occupy the human mind for a lifetime in a situation safety, fun, and perhaps friendship.   The price for this the conditioning that makes it seem that all of life can also be a game.

 I have also pointed out that games are can be free: you are producing your own amusement for free (or cheap) rather than consuming entertainment (for maximum price).  Even this has a trade-off, however.  Games are so addictive that becomes hard to do other important things.

For these reasons you must move beyond the level of the game to the meta-game.  That most people do not make this step is not he fault of the game.  A game is as good of a path as any.

The write up about Diplomacy in the classroom shows an example of a game going to the next level:

In this game, Italy, France, Turkey, and Russia had a four-way unbreakable alliance. Their ultimate goal was share supply centers in a game-end tie, refusing to backstab each other for a victory and thus force me to award the piddling of extra-credit I was offering to the winner to all four of them. Essentially, they were using Diplomacy to metagame their class grades, and good for them! THIS was the kind of thing I was hoping would click for some of these kids -- and all of them said as much in their essays.

And though these moments are rare, if there is no game, then there is no meta-game.

One thing I like about turning my speech class into a game is it means, in conjunction with my debate classes, I am now playing games for the majority of the day.   And debate at Norman North is the ultimate quite the meta-game.  We are created an environment where students count on each other and invest in training the next wave of North debaters.  Having the meta-game of nurturing more and more talent then makes us better at the games, but does not eliminate the games, nor the need for them.

The next level up (and even rarer than the meta-game) is an understanding of the essential harmonies. the real pace and rhythms of life,  You see through the illusions of the day to day.  It is the dao, the spirit.  It is right effort without striving.  But even then, when you are well-adjusted and content, games are still fun.  They become as worthy of a use of your time as any.

I love to the give the gift of gifts (the meta-gift for the meta-game of debate), but I also love to give the gift of games.

And I love to play games.

But only as part of a well-balanced life.