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Wasting Time In A Lost Game
Path: BadHabits   · Prev: ContinueWhileDozensOfPointsBehind   · Next: ResignRightBeforeTheDameAreFilled
   

I had never seen this until it happened to me tho other night. I suppose it may be a fair ploy in some cases, but I found it quite unnecessary and offensive.

I was playing white in a 4-stone handicap game, and the game was finished. A preliminary count showed that I was ~20 points ahead. We played with a clock, and I had around 2 minutes left, wheras my opponent had around 5 minutes left. The dame were filled and the status of all the groups were clear. (By the way, this was not a blitz.)

He proceeded to continue to play moves inside my territory, leaving me to capture his stones when required or passing, seemingly with the hope that my time would run out before he had reduced me to living groups with just 2 eyes each.

As it happened, he ran out of moves before I ran out of time, and I won by what turned out to be 17 points. But I don't think I will want to play him again anytime soon.

--MortenPahle

Note to programmers of computer Go players: A good number of computer Go programs play this way, and it's very irritating when the human player has already won the game.

--unkx80

Indeed, but recognising whether one has won or lost requires an ability to evaluate the whole board position, which in turn requires the ability to judge the status of all groups on the board; these two judgement calls are very difficult to program into computers. Once they are able to do this reliably, you will likely find that they won't need to know when to resign very often :-)

-- BenFinney

You were ahead on the board, and your opponent was ahead on the clock. In other words, you'd sacrificed time for position, and now your opponent was attempting an upset using what tools he or she had. If you were ahead in territory, and your opponent had received thickness in exchange, would you be mad if they tried to use their thickness to their advantage?

To me, it makes sense to either accept the clock as part of the game or not play with a clock at all.

-- DougRidgway?

I accept cigarette smoke as a part of the club atmosphere and as such as part of a game. But if my opponent continuously blows smoke into my face, I won't play him soon again either. Mortens example is an extreme case of unsporting behaviour. Even passing requires a small amount of time, and if multiplied by the number of empty spaces with liberties on the board, the opponent can win on time in many cases. See also the tournament rules of last Toyota Denso cup in Amstelveen, tipping the balance even too much in favour of sportmanship for my taste.

--Dieter

The opposite thing happened in a tournament I played in January. I was about 30 points or more down on the board, with 10 minutes on the clock. My opponent had about 30 seconds. The tournament rules were sort of like "sudden death": when my opponent ran out of time, he would not be allowed to move; but I could make moves, as long as I had time on the clock. Similar to sudden death, but more like "sudden paralysis" or "sudden coma". So there I was with 9 minutes more than he, about midway through the yose. I thought about engineering a win on time; instead I resigned, to the surprise of everyone. If the board position were less clear, I would have kept playing. But I just didn't feel good about winning on time when the board position was so hopeless by itself. (But I could not fault a player who would keep playing to win on time; it is part of the rules after all.) I guess I don't have the killer instinct. -- TakeNGive



Path: BadHabits   · Prev: ContinueWhileDozensOfPointsBehind   · Next: ResignRightBeforeTheDameAreFilled
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