Life In 19x19

I know it's an old post, but...

mw42 wrote:I don't like that there is no dramatic way to resign.

This works, eh?


Reading this thread has been eye-opening. When I watched Hikaru No Go, I assumed the 'Divine Move' was just a melodramatic plot point, but it isn't, is it? Sounds like everyone here is struggling to reach the completely unattainable goal of being Good Enough at Go. The next time I feel like crying because I suck so much, it will cheer me up to remember that those of you who could give me a nine-stone handicap, play with your head submerged in tapioca, and still beat me, feel the exact same way.

What I don't like about Go:
The GOOD equipment costs so much, and I have this terrible craving to own the premium stuff I can't afford.

It is stealing time from my other non-productive obsessive/compulsive pursuits.

I have to quit and play Age of Empires to remind myself what winning feels like.

pitirre wrote:1. i hate having an horrible opening

2. when a player doesnt know when to resign

3. losing

4. losing streaks

5. getting into trouble and i dont know how to stop getting into more trouble

6. that in our part of the world GO isnt well known

I too hate games when the opponent doesn't know when to resign. It even happend that I got nervous and tried to finish game quickly. Then I made some careless mistakes and collapsed. It's my fault of course. I try to learn something from it

Do people really feel that strongly about opponents who don't resign? I tend not to resign unless I'm very far behind, because (i) we're kyus, so seriously, we have no idea what could happen, (ii) I can't count, and (iii) it's still fun.

And likewise, when I win by 30 pts. it doesn't even cross my mind to be upset at my opponent.

jts wrote:Do people really feel that strongly about opponents who don't resign? I tend not to resign unless I'm very far behind, because (i) we're kyus, so seriously, we have no idea what could happen, (ii) I can't count, and (iii) it's still fun.

And likewise, when I win by 30 pts. it doesn't even cross my mind to be upset at my opponent.

I get really bored when someone is far behind and won't resign. So bored, in fact, that I'll lose the game from sheer apathy, as I stop reading anything.

Yes, I really hate it when I'm winning by 30+ points in an online game and my opponent isn't even trying to come back. If we're still early in the game when they fall behind or if they try to start a complicated fight once falling behind I don't blame them, but if they act like they don't even care that they're 30 points behind at the 2k+ level and keep playing to the end I find it to be a complete waste of time, and I will add them to my ignore list on KGS.

There's a sort of sliding scale as to when it starts to become rude to not resign IMO. When I was a DDK, I often couldn't tell if I was winning or losing when I was winning (or losing) by 50+ points. We'd also be constantly making huge mistakes, until the very end of the game, so I don't think not resigning is rude at all at that level.
But once you reach the professional level, you'll rarely see a game be won by 7 or more points because the loser will recognize that it is hopeless and give up before then. Yet if I'm winning or losing by less than 7 points I'll be on the edge of my seat, knowing the game could swing either way still.

Play at the 1-1 points or pass, they'll get the message .

I'm bad at counting in a regular game, and abominable under any kind of time pressure. So I'm often on the wrong end of playing out a hopeless situation. But I do feel guilty. And when I can count well enough to figure out it's hopeless, I resign.

I disagree on the resigning thing. If I'm inescapably behind but I think the rest of the game looks fun, I'll play it rather than resigning. /Unlike Araban, I am not so skilled that even a completely generic endgame is necessarily boring to me.

And as ethanb mentioned, you get to try temperature raising moves (ko and sente instead of connect!) that you normally wouldn't.

What does get my goat are speculative "maybe my opponent will bungle connecting this peep inside his territory!!!!!" plays (its always a rueful laugh when you do bungle it). If it requires appreciable reading I don't mind; inside-territory-tesuji do turn up from time to time. Also in this boat is speculative dame filling. Filling dame of a group that requires reading one move in the future to check it doesn't care about dame liberties in the hope of gaining a point is bad. I don't mind filling dame to encourage your opponent to connect false eyes, but if you fill some completely neutral dame, you better be planning to fill the rest of them too (in perhaps childish pique, I always fill a bunch of dame myself after my opponent "tries" this).

So I guess what annoys me about go is "opponents who make no-thought-refutable plays".

I can respect that--occasionally a game seems too interesting to resign. Like maybe it's the last kill of a total bloodbath, and you have a hard time telling, but you think you might lose by a bunch even if you do manage to kill. In that case, just fight like crazy.

But there's a lot of games where nothing interesting is available. Realizing you've played one of those out and lost by a lot is sad.

Hmmm. Despite the fact that I tend to resign early and count poorly, I basically never mind games where I'm ahead and my opponent doesn't resign. I mean, it's kind of like a victory lap. I get to enjoy winning for longer. It's a shallow and selfish pleasure, kind of like bragging, but it's your opponent who's making the choice to drag it out.

Obviously I feel bad if I lose a won game, but (unless I need to be somewhere else pronto) I tend not to mind playing out a game.

This aduma guy seems to do that a lot, in ranked games. Looks like something admins should handle.

Sometimes it is ridiculous if an opponent continues to play and he has like two major groups that have been captured. I often start to take the last liberties of those groups and eventually capture them off the board, even if filling those liberties does cost me points. Often this helps and they get the message.

Maybe I should try passing instead and see if that works, too.

SpongeBob wrote:Sometimes it is ridiculous if an opponent continues to play and he has like two major groups that have been captured. I often start to take the last liberties of those groups and eventually capture them off the board, even if filling those liberties does cost me points. Often this helps and they get the message.

Maybe I should try passing instead and see if that works, too.

One problem with the pass technique is that they may then pass themselves, and all the sudden you're in scoring with a half-finished game.

Redundant wrote:

SpongeBob wrote:Sometimes it is ridiculous if an opponent continues to play and he has like two major groups that have been captured. I often start to take the last liberties of those groups and eventually capture them off the board, even if filling those liberties does cost me points. Often this helps and they get the message.

Maybe I should try passing instead and see if that works, too.

One problem with the pass technique is that they may then pass themselves, and all the sudden you're in scoring with a half-finished game.

On KGS you can just cancel and resume the game. You can then ask them if they took the effort to count. Most of the time I've done it though they'll either play for a few more moves before resigning or just get the message and resign.