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What You Know Can Hurt You
May 13, 2003
by William Cobb

"If you don't know ladders, you don't know go" is a familiar proverb, but now there's a corollary: "If you do know ladders, you still may not know go." Many go players were quite startled by Lee Sedol's gambit in his game in the Korean KAT Cup on April 23rd when he ran out a ladder for which a ladder breaker was already in place. Every go player knows that when there's a ladder breaker in place you either take the stone or attack the ladder breaker. You certainly do not run out the ladder. So what are we to think when one of the very strongest players in the world does what even mediocre amateurs know should not be done, and wins the game by doing it? What we do is rejoice at the wonders of the world's greatest game. Maybe there really are no limits to this game's possibilities, no ironclad principles of correct play: just an inexhaustible and wondrous world of creative possibilities, and an endless challenge to our creative imaginations. Buddhists insist that the world is open-ended in an unqualified sense. Nothing is fixed absolutely, so everything is possible. Lee Sedol has shown that is certainly true of go. So stay flexible, and enjoy the surprises.

Past columns by William Cobb are archived at http://www.slateandshell.com/billcobb.asp

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