The woodcut ‘Raikō shitennō to tsuchigumo’ by Utagawa Kuninaga.

Earlier this week I turned 38. It’s not a very exciting age, I know. But this birthday had an additional meaning to me. Something secret that gave it a certain significance in my mind:

“Only two years left.”

No, this has nothing to do with my expected lifespan (I hope). Rather, what I couldn’t stop thinking about was a bet I made with myself a couple of years ago. But let’s back up a bit.

Go is a completely fascinating game (check out its wikipedia page if you don’t know much about it). I learned about it from a book when I was a teenager, but it wasn’t until I started university that I met others who played. They inspired me to become a proper student of the game.

I started playing online, read strategy books, studied old masters, and so on.

For those unware, Go players usually keep track of their skill using a ranking system similar to the ones in martial arts (e.g. Karate). As a beginner, you start at 30 kyu and work your way downwards to 1 kyu. Knowing your rank is very useful, because it also tells you what advantage the weaker player should get to make for an even game. For example, between two players of rank 10 kyu and 14 kyu there’s a difference of four, so the weaker player should start with four stones on the board – effectively four free moves. This is called being “four stones stronger”. When you play online, the server keeps track of your rank and modifies it based on wins and losses. This works very much like Elo on Chess servers and in other competitive games. When you play casually against others, you often state the rank you believe that you have – to find a suitable opponent at a club, or just to get a feel for how deep someone’s understanding of the game is.

So the rank starts at 30 kyu and goes downwards. But what happens when you reach 1 kyu, you might ask? At that point the rank switches to the dan scale and start counting upwards instead! So someone that is one stone stronger than 1 kyu is 1 dan, then 2 dan, 3 dan, and so on, all the way up to 9 dan. The rank of 1 dan is also called shodan, which translates to something like “first rank”. This is quite an interesting name, because without any context it sounds a lot like the rank you’d start with as a beginner. In other words, when you reach dan level you kind of start over. For a game so deeply steeped in Eastern philosophy, this shouldn’t be surprising – without a beginners mindset it’s very hard to improve at anything. You can’t learn if you believe that you’re already an expert.

Now, it’s debatable how important it is to reach the dan level. A good game is ideally fun even when you’re not that experienced, and Go is a very good game indeed. Some of its beauty is there for you to see after playing just a few times. With a bit of guidance professional games can be thoroughly enjoyed, even though most of their depth lies hidden to amateurs. Still, there’s a shared sense among players that you want to achieve dan level at some point. In a game as deep as Go, winning often feels a bit undeserved. None of the players really knew what was going on, after all! Focusing on self-improvement and your own progress is more productive than sherishing singular victories. Ultimately, your rank might become an obsession.

How long does it take to reach shodan? That is a hard question to answer – some people achieve it within a year after they start playing. Others, like me, never quite get there. A few years ago this started to bother me more and more. I realized that I have played a game (that I love) for about two decades, and I was still a “n00b”..! If I didn’t give it my best shot soon, I might never achieve even this first level of mastery. 😱

I decided to give myself a deadline; I wanted to reach shodan before I turned 40. This felt like a realistic goal. At the time I was maybe 5 kyu and felt that I was improving, although slowly. I knew that the key to getting better is to play a lot of games. Unfortunately, a regular game of Go can be quite long (an hour or more) and my spare time is severely limited, I am a parent of two after all. To get more plays in I started to play short “blitz” games online. This did not go well – I ran out of thinking time a lot and the stress made me play really badly. I started losing against people with much lower ranks, which made my own rank plummet. It was ugly.

Relax, it’s just a game.

After some soul-searching, I managed to find my footing once again. Though I lost a lot of games in a short time, I can feel that I’m actually stronger than I’ve ever been. What matters is my actual skill, a rank is just a number. I have started playing online again, but with slower games. My opponents are really easy now that I get matched against people with such a low rank. I practice as often as I can, but try to not stress about it.

I wrote this article to motivate myself, to be a bit more accountable. In two years I will read it again and see if I reached my goal. It is quite exciting. My predicition is that I will be unsatisfied, no matter the outcome. If I do manage to reach shodan, I’ll most likely want to achieve the next level, and so on. And if not, well then I failed. Perhaps that will make me sad for a while, but I will be fine. I’ll keep at it, and I’ll keep trying to teach my kids.

And maybe (just maybe) I can stop caring about my rank, to find happiness in playing only for the fun of it.