Proposed solution to the escapers problem...

[Kirby]

...
By striving for perfection you are dehumanizing yourself, and by giving in to your desires you are becoming corrupt.

The people abandoning the games they're losing and the people taking offence by them doing so, are partaking of the same folly. You speak as if escapers where members of some great conspiracy of evil. They are only your mirror images.

Escapers are not evil, nor ar they part of an evil conspiracy. They should simply get losses for their games if they have no intention of returning.

Sure, maybe both escapers and I care about winning. I don't think that this is evil.

But leaving the game with no intention of returning should be a loss condition, as it cannot be practically distinguished from a resignation (which is another loss condition).

P.S. By adding a timeout and an option for a mutually-agreed-upon resume later, we can distinguish between leaving the game with no intention of returning and connection issues, for example, in most cases.

[danielm]

The problem with escapers is created from the desire to win. Eradicate this desire and the escapers will disappear.

This would make go, at best, the equivalent of working on collaborative math problems (which may be fun for some people in some circumstances--but leave our ancient competitive games alone). Watching pros sit around and not try to win would be equally enthralling. It wouldn't even make much sense to have two opposing players--just have everyone play some version of Zen Go. Sure, this is fun in study groups, but "eradicating" any desire to win would rip the soul out of the game.

I do not agree with your conclusions. People would still want to do their best, still make the stones dance.

You can backpedal now if you want, and say you really meant "don't get too obsessed with winning" or "don't focus only on winning." I'll forget the hyperbole. (Disclaimer: my argument is intended neither to defend nor oppose any escaper system.)

I said what I meant the first time around. It should be easier to find good moves without having your mind muddled by the desire to win. Become a block of wood.

I completely disagree with this. Go is not mutual Sudoku, it is a fighting game through and through (just in case the "killing" and "cutting" didn't give it away ). A dance is an activity with two participants trying to move in synchronous rhythm, a fight is an activity with two participants trying to make each other trip.

A good analogy would be Badminton, a game that is often played by two people not with the purpose of winning, but simply to keep the ball up for as long as possible. While that can be fun, it has none of the brilliance and spark of a "true" Badminton match, where both players use feints and force not in order to make their partners hit the ball, but to miss it. In short, it becomes a completely different game (to the extend that we have a different name for it).

I feel the same way about Go, the desire to win is what creates unexpected situations and brilliant encounters. E.g. why would one start a fight in a losing position, if not with the intention to turn the game around and win?

You can say that it only happens with the intention to find the best play, but is it really? Or is it objectively incorrect, but played for the reason that it offers the highest chances for your opponent to trip and fall? This does not a dance make.

To me, Go without the desire to win is not Go. But what should go without saying is that this is about winning on the board, not through cheats or regulations. I don't see how there can be any pleasure in the latter, at least as long as no direct benefits are involved.

You may have a very different attitude towards Go and life in general, and perhaps this will help you reach enlightenment sooner than the rest of us, but let us enjoy our bloody game!

[hyperpape]

People use the word desire quite differently. Some people use it like they use "need" or "urge" or "fascination". For them, the desire to win would mean an all-consuming thing. For others, desire means little more than that you try to achieve something.

Clearly, go would not work without the latter. If your moves did not aim at winning, there would be no point to the game. It's something closer to the former notion that we're talking about when we argue about whether a desire to win is good.

[Kirby]

... If your moves did not aim at winning, there would be no point to the game. ...

This is actually what I feel with a number of games: I play with the objective to win. I cannot understand people that say they do not want to win, because the objective of the game, in my mind, is to win.

One of my coworkers says this will change after I have kids. He says that your objective might not always be to win, but to be able to spend time with your kid, and enjoy the fact that s/he is learning new things.

I don't think I am that way now, but I guess I'll find out how I am after having kids.

[topazg]

I said what I meant the first time around. It should be easier to find good moves without having your mind muddled by the desire to win. Become a block of wood.

I completely disagree with this. Go is not mutual Sudoku, it is a fighting game through and through (just in case the "killing" and "cutting" didn't give it away ). A dance is an activity with two participants trying to move in synchronous rhythm, a fight is an activity with two participants trying to make each other trip.

Capoeira anyone?

A good analogy would be Badminton, a game that is often played by two people not with the purpose of winning, but simply to keep the ball up for as long as possible. While that can be fun, it has none of the brilliance and spark of a "true" Badminton match, where both players use feints and force not in order to make their partners hit the ball, but to miss it. In short, it becomes a completely different game (to the extend that we have a different name for it).

I feel the same way about Go, the desire to win is what creates unexpected situations and brilliant encounters. E.g. why would one start a fight in a losing position, if not with the intention to turn the game around and win?

I'm actually going to take Helel's side on this one. Many a game where I've been 10 points ahead I've played namby-pamby moves to secure the win, but at that point, it's less about interesting go, and more a matter of completing a formality. If the result was unimportant, I would be free to read and try for complicated endgame tesujis, and seeing how many points I could squeeze out of the remainder of the game. I naturally will win more games with better play, so striving to win in and of itself is irrelevant, as with "best play" those wins will come anyway.

I remember a somewhat trite but relevant quote from the film "First Knight". Richard Gere, playing Lancelot, was asked what made him so good. He spouted the normal rhetoric about practising every day, and yada yada yada, but his last comment was about ".. not caring whether you live or die". I think to be truly free to play great Go, you have to not care about the result enough to try the most daring and adventurous things you think you can read. Of course you want to win, but that's not the same as playing to win.

[hyperpape]

Distinguish "I desire to win" from "I desire to win above all else" and I don't think you're really disagreeing with me or Kirby, Topazg.

And saying you strive to play the best moves not to win is similarly not a problem. Compare: "I try to make sure the things I say are supported by the evidence. I don't have to think about whether they're true because things that are supported by the evidence are more likely to be true. So I don't really care if the things I say are true."

What we care about is not just winning, but winning as an exercise of our own skill. So it's not as good to win a cakewalk, or win a lost game because your opponent self-ataris. But winning is still a goal, and if winning were not a goal, we would not really have Go.

[Kirby]

...
I'm actually going to take Helel's side on this one. Many a game where I've been 10 points ahead I've played namby-pamby moves to secure the win, but at that point, it's less about interesting go, and more a matter of completing a formality. If the result was unimportant, I would be free to read and try for complicated endgame tesujis, and seeing how many points I could squeeze out of the remainder of the game. I naturally will win more games with better play, so striving to win in and of itself is irrelevant, as with "best play" those wins will come anyway.

I remember a somewhat trite but relevant quote from the film "First Knight". Richard Gere, playing Lancelot, was asked what made him so good. He spouted the normal rhetoric about practising every day, and yada yada yada, but his last comment was about ".. not caring whether you live or die". I think to be truly free to play great Go, you have to not care about the result enough to try the most daring and adventurous things you think you can read.

I kind of agree with this. It is not interesting to play passively and thoughtlessly when you are ahead on points. It's still a good exercise to think about the game seriously, which might help you in future games. I see this as kind of a "theoretic exercise of local situations", though.

If the result of a game has been decided, it's still interesting to train yourself by continuing to think. It's still good to play your best.

From the perspective of game theory, though, go is a still a zero sum game: All that matters is the win or loss. A 50 point win is nice, but it's valued no greater than a 0.5 point win.

So I would say that I feel that, the objective of the game of go is to do whatever is necessary to win - be it by 1/2 point or by 100 points.

But playing passively and thoughtlessly is probably a waste of time - you could be using the exercise as an opportunity to stretch your mind in order to grow for future games.

[shapenaji]

Well, just have a 5 minute window which can't be recharged. (If you disconnect for 2 minutes, then you have 3 minutes for future disconnects)

This seems obvious, no need for a flag. You can also just have an "adjourn" button if players both agree to finish it later.

Why is this complicated?

[Kirby]

Well, just have a 5 minute window which can't be recharged. (If you disconnect for 2 minutes, then you have 3 minutes for future disconnects)

This seems obvious, no need for a flag. You can also just have an "adjourn" button if players both agree to finish it later.

Why is this complicated?

This is exactly my proposal (though, I didn't settle on the name "adjourn").

I guess it gets complicated when people argue about the definition of "escaper". :-p