Life In 19x19

(So of course I'll post about it publicly.)

I just resigned a game that I was winning by 20+ points because I lost a big dragon and didn't take the time to actually count. Oops.

To make things slightly worse, I was only two moves away from counting.

You won't be the first or last. I did that at the Go Congress once with a ton of time left on the clock. No reason at all but anger at a misread.

In yunguseng league that I participate in, it's not uncommon for the teacher to say the losing move was resign.

A rule I try to follow is "don't resign for a few moves after a big mistake." I suppose it has the risk of annoying the opponent, but I'll accept that in return for helping avoid a bad decision out of anger.

Also, on the receiving end, I do sometimes get annoyed if a player drags out a hopeless scenario, but a few moves? Who cares?

hyperpape wrote:A rule I try to follow is "don't resign for a few moves after a big mistake." I suppose it has the risk of annoying the opponent, but I'll accept that in return for helping avoid a bad decision out of anger.

Also, on the receiving end, I do sometimes get annoyed if a player drags out a hopeless scenario, but a few moves? Who cares?

I was playing a bot on KGS. I didn't even have to worry about annoying the opponent!

That is a good rule of thumb, though. Usually I'm pretty good about taking a deep breath and assessing the game before I resign, and I almost never resign that close to the end of the game. I was particularly frustrated with myself because I played several endgame moves before realizing the dragon was dead. I won't make that mistake again!

jeromie wrote:(So of course I'll post about it publicly.)

I just resigned a game that I was winning by 20+ points because I lost a big dragon and didn't take the time to actually count. Oops.

LOL. A few days ago I lost a game by losing a big dragon because I didn't take the time to actually connect it. And I was ahead in that game as well.

"This is filling neutral points."
*click, click...*
*fall asleep because I'm lazy*
click, click...*
*huge dragon disappears*
"%$^#$%^ WTF?!"

It was 'connected' like this (but in a much more complicated shape, of course):

The famous Japanese pro Otake Hideo, many times holder of the Meijin title and other titles, had very high standards for his own play. He once resigned a game when he was ahead because he was disgusted with his own play.

gowan wrote:The famous Japanese pro Otake Hideo, many times holder of the Meijin title and other titles, had very high standards for his own play. He once resigned a game when he was ahead because he was disgusted with his own play.

I’m just a measly kyu player but I can relate to that — I’ve also resigned games because I was just too embarrassed about some move(s) I played. But then again … if those are ranked games, ppl could suspect that somebody is preparing for sandbagging …

gowan wrote:The famous Japanese pro Otake Hideo, many times holder of the Meijin title and other titles, had very high standards for his own play. He once resigned a game when he was ahead because he was disgusted with his own play.

In a collection of games from Cho Chikun, about a match against Otake Hideo (my translation):
"Cho would not stop criticising his own play during this match. He felt that his play was so poor that it induced reading mistakes from Otake."
(he won the game, and the match)

Babelardus wrote:It was 'connected' like this (but in a much more complicated shape, of course):

image.jpg (34.46 KiB) Viewed 12082 times

Hi Babelardus, were you B or W ?
Re: Toothpaste .

EdLee wrote:

Babelardus wrote:It was 'connected' like this (but in a much more complicated shape, of course):

image.jpg

Hi Babelardus, were you B or W ?
Re: Toothpaste .

I was white.

And yes, my opponent toothpasted that dragon and it became huge. It was the reason why I was ahead by a lot, because it ate a huge chunk of my opponent's territory.

In the end though, after everything was done, the liberty on the left (in the territory) was the only one left, so the dragon effectively wasn't connected. If I had spent just one move there, it would have been fine.

In Chess, this is called the 'lost image': a situation that exists for so long, that you basically forget about it. For example, a bishop at d2, defending square e1 to prevent checkmate in one on the first line, for 30 moves or so. And then, you move the bishop to f4, because you basically forgot that it defended e1 and you're checkmated at the next move.

Here, I forgot to actually connect the dragon after pushing out.

In the simplified diagram you posted, you can just recapture when Black captures your big toothpaste part and stay connected. I assume the actual situation didn't have that property?

dfan wrote:In the simplified diagram you posted, you can just recapture when Black captures your big toothpaste part and stay connected. I assume the actual situation didn't have that property?

Yes it did have that, and the group on the left would survive, but in the actual game, the four stone part shown here was a string that had 30+ stones or thereabouts snaking around half the board

Oh, I see. Yeah, you really have to keep an eye (ha ha) on those false eyes at the end of the game, when liberties start getting filled in.

Then of course there are the chains of false eyes where you have to stay at least one step ahead of the liberty-filling, like:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$W Oops
$$ . . . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . .
$$ . . . O O O . .
$$ . O O O X X O .
$$ . O X X . X 1 .
$$ . X . X X O . .
$$ X X X O O O . .
$$ . X . . . . .
$$ . . . . . . .[/go]