Is it bad to feel good about winningdue to opponent mistake?

[negapesuo]

I've always felt weird about this one. One the one hand, I'm happy I won. But on the other hand, I know that if the opponent played that one move he didn't read out, thing would have gone very different for me. At that point, I don't feel that I've won due to my skill, but by my opponents carelessness.

How do you usually feel in these situations where you know your opponent did not make the optimal move?

EDIT: I guess one good way to ask this question is - Do you play to induce mistakes from your opponent, or do you play to achieve the "perfect game"?

[jlt]

I think that

1. Avoiding blunders is part of go skill.

2. When I win like that, this compensates previous games that I lost because my phone rang and I had to answer while playing.

[dfan]

Not making mistakes is part of the game. Every move matters, both the tricky ones and the just-don't-screw-up ones. The flip side of this is people who think they're better than they really are because they often lose games that they were winning due to "stupid mistakes" and think that somehow that doesn't count. If you win lots of games due to opponent carelessness, it's because you are more careful then they are. That is an actual skill that is just as much part of the game as anything else.

[MikeKyle]

I really hate winning games this way.

I had a relevant experience at a UK tournament recently.

I was playing a strong opponent and he was rightfully slightly in the lead. It was close enough that I couldn't be sure of the count and so before filling dame I fought a half-point ko, just in case it mattered. My opponent failed to read that one of my ko threats was genuine and filled the ko. I followed up on the threat with a value of about 20 points, we counted and I won by about 17 points. It was weirdly devastating to me. I couldn't look my opponent in the eye. I started to really wish I'd asked my opponent to take the move back.

I think that winning or loosing a game by a more simple mistake is really just the same as any other win or loss, but there's definitely more emotional charge sometimes.

[Bill Spight]

I've always felt weird about this one. One the one hand, I'm happy I won. But on the other hand, I know that if the opponent played that one move he didn't read out, thing would have gone very different for me. At that point, I don't feel that I've won due to my skill, but by my opponents carelessness.

If your opponent makes no mistake, you lose.

True, sometimes I feel like an opponent's mistake flaws a game. And when I was learning go in Japan, it was usual among the amateurs I met to let people take moves back. That pretty well avoids winning because of the opponent's obvious blunder. OTOH, sometimes you think about your move and just before you make your play, the opponent takes his move back. That's annoying.

How do you usually feel in these situations where you know your opponent did not make the optimal move?

Die by the blunder, live by the blunder.

EDIT: I guess one good way to ask this question is - Do you play to induce mistakes from your opponent, or do you play to achieve the "perfect game"?

I avoid hamete. OTOH, making life difficult for your opponent is not necessarily bad play. In fact, especially at the kyu level, failure to make life difficult for your opponent is often bad play.

[Kirby]

Is it bad to feel good about winningdue to opponent mistake?

No.

Do you play to induce mistakes from your opponent, or do you play to achieve the "perfect game"?

The latter is better, though when I'm being lazy, I sometimes do the former.

[mycophobia]

I win all my games due to the mistakes of my opponent

[quantumf]

Just lately I have been on a good run of form, at least in terms of winning a lot of games, but had the feeling that in most of these games, my opponent had lost the game rather than me winning it. When I said as much to someone I beat in our national champs, who is 2 stones stronger than me, he said that he didn't see it that way at all. He said that he had felt under pressure the whole game, and that he was struggling to stay in the game. As the game developed he felt the need to take some risks to try and retain some degree of parity. He believed that this was the right strategy for him in the game - the fact that I might be able to capitalize on one of these risky moves and take an unassailable lead (as happened) was a choice he felt he had to make.

My interpretation of the above story is that I am answering both your questions in the affirmative - the effort to play the perfect game will induce mistakes from your opponent.

[Vio]

I'm not attracted by the mistakes of my opponents. If I think they get wrong I check twice and then I may turn them in my advantage but that doesn't make me stronger. In someway it's a boring part of the game. More interesting is that my opponent play beautiful moves and I have to keep up and be consistent with mines.

In fact it took me some time to learn to appreciate the moves of my opponents and not only mines.

[RobertJasiek]

Winning requires the opponent's mistakes so there is no reason to feel bad about winning due to them.

Blunders (such as overlooking ataris on big strings) are a special kind of mistakes that lead to winning essentially regardless of one's own skill. It is easy to feel bad for losing by blunders and maybe for winning by the opponent's blunders.

[Joaz Banbeck]

I'd prefer that my opponent and I play a perfect game. If not, I'd rather that it be he who deviates more.

[BlindGroup]

I think the answer depends on the context, particularly the goal you have for the game.

In a tournament, the focus is on winning. Avoiding blunders is an important part of the game. I'd certainly feel bad for my opponent (who can't empathize with the pain of losing like that), but that's the nature of the game. When I play in person, my goals are a bit different -- there I'm usually interested in being social and learning. Winning is not really important, and I'd be inclined to let an opponent take a move back or even warn them if I saw them making the mistake. For example, I played a game a few days ago where my opponent was about to create a liberty shortage by pushing. It was as simple mistake and he saw it just in time. But had he not seen it, I was going to let him take it back.

Online, things are much more complicated. In normal, anonymous games, I feel like I'm testing myself like in a tournament. But there are a number of players that I've played frequently enough that those games become much more like in person games for me. Same goes for games where I "connect" with my opponent over the in-game chat.

The type of games that I have a very hard time with are playing high handicap games as the stronger player. There one has no choice but to take advantage of mistakes that are to you obvious. And even determining whether or not a move is a blunder or just a typical mistake for the weaker player is no at all clear.