Yes absoutely this. At chess, I'm very indulgent of low level players who want to play out to checkmate....the fact that they WANT to means either they don't realise how bad their position is (in which case, they need to play out that tyoe of position), or they want to learn how to 'win a won game' (so they should play it out), or they are hanging on for grim life desperately hoping that I'll make a slip and let them stalemate or something (in which case I take it as a challenge/practice to win as cleanly as I can while admiring their (rather mis-placedez4u wrote:I agree with Bantari on the "absolute right" versus "politeness". However, it is a little more direct than that. I come from a chess background as well. I learned chess in the sixties and Go in the seventies - well before the internet. Yes everyone had the absolute right to play chess until checkmated and everyone had the absolute right to play Go until the end of the game. BUT everyone had the absolute right to refuse to play another game with you. Opponents were in short supply and everyone knew everyone else. You either became well "socialized" regarding your "absolute rights" or you took up another hobby that you could do alone, bird watching maybe. The difference today is that you can get away with behavior on the internet (or sitting alone with your computer) that was impossible back in the 'good old days'.Bantari wrote:There is a difference between "absolute right" and "politeness" - and this might touch a little on the underlying cultural differences between chess and Go. Although in chess as well, I run into players who were shunned in a club because they consistently played on long before the game was done...Joelnelsonb wrote:I've come from a Chess background where every player has an absolute right to play on until checkmated, regardless of the position.
Still, from my observation and experience, in social setting, chess puts more emphasis on the result rather than on how you get there. In Go, personal culture and general politeness plays a much larger role. Part of this is because the game came to the West from Japan, and part because there are historically much fewer Go players than chess players, so annoying people is potentially much more costly. Thus, you try to be polite rather than just racking wins by hook and crook.
If you really enjoy the GAME and don't just want to chalk up the result, it doesn't really matter if a correspondence game drags on. Plans, calculations and combinations played in a dead won position as just as beautiful as in a tight struggle. I think this is much mre annoying in real-time or over-the-board games where you have to wait and 'waste' time that could better be spent elsewhere...