E
ventually you learn all the tricks, and you're still not the best. This is something that expert players of strategy games say over and over. The line differentiating top amateur players from professionals, international masters from grandmasters, regional sharks from WSOP winners, isn't any knowledge per se; it's mentality. It's shaking off the shakes, staying cool, not getting overly excited, staying confident, waiting for your chances, and not letting opportunity pass you by.
On my end, with Go, I'm definitely not even close to that level -- mindset is always important, but there are still a lot of just regular techniques left for me to learn. But I'm really starting to feel the necessity of a good mindset. I've talked about it before, but I can get really carried away in my games, tossed hither and yon by my emotions, and it has a terriby deleterious effect on my play. The path towards mastery is never as straightforward as you think it's going to be at the start (or else everyone would get there). Taming your mind, being realistic about what you lack, and never letting yourself rest on your laurels -- difficult qualities to cultivate. Luckily, nothing much depends on me developing them for Go. But they show up all over the place. Sooner or later, we all have put up or shut up in something important, and we'll hope we have these mental tools when it happens.