Life In 19x19

kirkmc wrote:Why would one want to have a win credited to them if they really knew they should have lost? That's the real question.

If you really think about our amatuer games, this statement is pretty absurd. Every moderatively competitive game is a game I should have lost at some point.

Treated objectively, with perfect knowledge, both sides of virtually all of our games reach several moments when, with proper play, the game is lost.

The game is not a game, unless the goal is to win. Yes we want to improve, perhaps more than winning an individual game, but without the pursuit of victory on the board, improvement cannot be achieved.

I say again, to win at go you have to do more than select the ingredients and follow a recipe - you have to actually eat the meal. And if you spend too much time squeezing josekis and dicing tesuji, the fellow who simply slapped together two slices of thickness smothered in aji may well have time to enjoy a feast while you rush, literally and figuratively, to choke the endgame down.

The clock is part of the game. There's a tradeoff between playing quickly and playing well. If you are ahead on the clock but behind on the board, then presumably you could have played slower and better earlier so that you'd be closer on the board. Similarly, your opponent used a significant portion of his time allowance in order to get a better position on the board. To throw away one side of that tradeoff by refusing to make use of your time advantage seems silly.

A guy did exactly this to me at the last tournament I went to. It worked, I lost a corner and lost. I do not mind that he did it. I used too much time in the first half, as HKA said, and did not have time to read life and death. In that instance, I could even have played on additional stone to ensure life, but I was willing to bet the game on byoyomi reading. I used time poorly.

Similarly, if an opponent is not using his clock time at all, but puts himself in atari or makes some similarly boneheaded mistake, he has no excuse. He used time poorly and lost.

I don't know if I'd play specifically to try for a trick kill. Wins are more rewarding when players both play at their best the whole time. However, legitimate aji is legitimate aji. It seems to me that it is not unethical to want to finish any game, and if your opponent cannot read in time, so be it.

That said, in any form of friendly game, I wouldn't use time like this, so maybe I'm a hyppocrite. Maybe it's not unethical, but it's a little... cutthroat? Kind of like playing basketball and intentionally drawing a foul instead of taking a shot. Yes, they should not have committed a foul, but you chose specifically to provide them the opportunity to. So maybe not unethical, but hypercompetetive in a way that I try not to be too often.

It's not unethical, it's strategical. The clock is a part of the game.

...now if someone did do that to me, I will admit I'd feel a bit flustered. And that's why I stay away from time settings where this kind of situation could happen, so I haven't encountered anything like it in years.

In your example, it sounds like you traded your group for some bad aji and a time shortage. Time management is a big part of this game, after all...

I think the presence of a Go Clock is disrespectful both to the integrity of the game of Go, and to the players.

What if the Mona Lisa was painted with da Vinci racing the clock? What if he was forced to paint the smile during a sudden death countdown.

Is Go primarily a sport, emphasizing a winner and a loser, or is Go primarily an art emphasizing the highest possible quality of the craft?

However - I do recognize the very practical reasons, especially in a tournament setting (or during pseudo-anonymous online games), for the presence of a clock.

Time Tesujis and other clock strategies will never be my cup of tea.

rubin427 wrote:What if the Mona Lisa was painted with da Vinci racing the clock? What if he was forced to paint the smile during a sudden death countdown.

I think most artists also work with a deadline, delivery date, or something like that. So in a way they are also on a sudden death time clock.

That's why I like slow games, ideally without a clock.

Some might even go so far as to argue that artists sometimes seem to do their best work under a deadline or some other sort of constraint...

I feel that all games with a noticable time pressure are just training for the real thing. The clock is part of the training, but not of the game.

freegame wrote:I think most artists also work with a deadline...

daniel_the_smith wrote:Some might even go so far as to argue that artists sometimes seem to do their best work under a deadline or some other sort of constraint...

I agree that you both have a point. Sometimes a deadline can bring out the best in a person.

But I still think clocks are peripheral or even unnatural to the game of Go. Could you imagine a situation where two old friends meet after a long absence but regrettably can not play a game of Go because-even though they have access to a board and stones-they lack a clock?

I'll admit this example is absurd, but perhaps it illustrates my opinions towards the Go clock through analogy.

I don't think the situations are really comparable... You won't see two artists taking turns painting the same piece of canvas with a clock between them, either...

Despite I always want to win badly, I would never feel satisfied with winning by such tricks (incl. Hamate). Each game of Go is at least half way a game, in which I want to prove to myself, that I am the stronger player.

I won't say it's unethnical, in the end it's just Tournament-Go.

A win is a win in my book. The only things I find unethical in winning a go game are using distracting sounds or fidgeting, or just plain old cheating however it may come about.

I used time as a weapon in a Midnight Madness tournament (I think the time settings were 45 minutes sudden death), except the game was still pretty close. We were both 4-1, so the champion's black coffee mug was at stake! We had both spent a long time in a complicated fight, and the endgame was leading to a very close finish until I started some business in one of his corners and a nasty ko emerged. At this time I had a few minutes left while he had ~30 seconds. We played out lots of moves in a very short time (we both had speed chess experience), but stones started flying when he got to about 5 seconds. I agreed to stop the clocks to finish out the last few moves in a less chaotic fashion. The damage was done, though, and I won easily.

My first game in that tournament also ended with a time pressure blunder. It went from a 0.5 margin coin flip to absolute victory due to a missed atari.

Personally, I was pleased with each win, but I did not lord the results over my opponents. My opponents were disappointed, but gracious. Everyone knew that the time settings encouraged late-game craziness.