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Naming all your Excuses for Losing
Path: BadHabits   · Prev: GetAngry   · Next: NegotiatingAfterALoss
    Keywords: Culture & History

The worst excuses for losing a game ranked from bad to worse (#1)

  1. "I wasn't really paying attention"
  2. "After you'd lost that group there I wasn't really playing my best game anymore."
  3. "That move you played there wasn't really possible anyway."
  4. "Actually I would have won the game if I had played so and so."
  5. "I can't see well with this light"
  6. "I was too tired to play well"
  7. "Oh, but I have a cold."
  8. "I had too much to drink" ;)
  9. "We're not playing gomoku?"
  10. "I was curious about that invasion."
  11. "You didn't play joseki there."
  12. "I would have won if there had been/hadn't been komi."

Bad bad bad! Point made, I think :) -- Skelley

Lucky: This is a variant from the #1 expression above, it really happened on IGS. "I was talking on the phone while playing."

adamzero: My usual 'excuse', which is also usually the truth: "I saw my opponent about to make a few points of territory and I got panicked and made a weak group which he then abused until I resigned."

Dansc: I like the excuse 'I would've won, if I had made more territory than you.' I find this a completely acceptable excuse.

Scryer: I had him crushed on the board, but not on the clock.


I've found that *any* drink is too much for my Go :( Strange, I don't notice any other effects after one drink except that I seemingly lose 8 stones strength. -- Karl Knechtel

I find that playing strength can actually *increase* after a drink or two, for some players at least. I have a Nihonjin friend who enjoys a glass of wine or two during the meal, and during the game after dinner; his play is noticeably stronger than before the evening's drinks. Perhaps he's too tense and needs to relax into the game :-) -- Bignose

After two or three beers i play so much better. More freedom in thought, but more direction in action. It just flows more nicely and my concentration is much better. Add another 5 beers or so and i suffer from complete atari-blindness... Hmm, make that board-blindness. -- HansWalthaus


Alex Weldon: I suffer from gradual mood swings, sort of like a mild form of manic-depression, although no doubt far too mild to be considered an actual psychological disorder. Anyway, if I'm depressed, I can't play Go at all, and lose all my games. I guess I just shouldn't play if I'm not in a good mood.

HansWalthaus: Try combining Asperger Syndrom with ADD. Add either a phonecall, a parent walking in or a kid brother who wants help. Or worse two or three dropped connections in a game. See what that does for ones concentration. Oh yeah... I started playing Go as a way to _improve_ my concentration. :(


karmaGfa: Here are a few excuse that my opponents told me and which are not in the list :

  1. "I didn't try to win anyway"
  2. "I wanted to try some new moves"
  3. "I lose because I wanted to win too much" (imply that he would normally win, like in other excuses :-) )
  4. "I don't like to have Black with handi stones: I am obliged to defend all the time, that's why I lose."
  5. "Your first move frustated me, you played in my territory" (reference to the polite 1st move on the goban)
  6. "That's normal that I lose, I am one stone weaker than you."
  7. "I don't like to play with White." (really common)

Hu: I respect #2, new moves. Why not experiment and have some fun? Perhaps it is best to try them out in non-rated games, though.

karmaGfa: Yes, why not. I just listed all the excuse I saw :-)

Nacho: Actually, I think that the best time to experiment is in serious games (rated games, though maybe not in tournament games if you're not so sure of what you're going to try). That way, you'll have an opponent who is really trying hard. I mean, if you're trying that strategy, is because you think is good, so you want someone to show you why it isn't good, or at least to try hard to find weaknesses. And it will work the other way, too: you'll be trying your best to make your strategy work.


BlueWyvern: Two of my least favorite:

  1. "You played so fast and it made me play fast and I didn't think about my moves."
  2. "You made some really odd moves, and it made me play stupid."

While I never actually respond to these, I would really like to say:

  1. "It's not my fault you played fast." and/or "Maybe I'd play slower if you gave me any moves worth thinking about."
  2. "Just because you haven't seen a move before, it doesn't make it odd." or "You are never going to know how to respond to every single one of my moves immediately, that's why we are playing an even game."

The main thing that irritates me about these excuses, and some of the ones listed above, is that they all seem dismissive of the winner's ability and imply that the loser really should have won.


Snappy: Two of my favorites:

  1. "I can never play a serious game against you!"
  2. "I was cooking the chicken."

You know who you are.


DJ: Ah, uhm... I wouldn't like to appear the wise old guy, but it seems that this (very funny) page is almost all dedicated to excuses put forth by our opponents. Well, what about your excuses for losing?

My personal favourite: "I'm just tired. I've been practicing tantra buddhism too much last night."

Alas, not true, as all excuses above!


Velobici: "You played so slowly I lost interest and just wanted the game to end already." That is my excuse and I am sticking to it! Each of the two local Go clubs that I attend has a player that plays only one game a night. That's one game over a two hour period. I like to play two each night. The result is that during my own game I start watching the games being played on either side of me, and reading out their situations. So, distracted, I make a few silly moves.

I may be overcoming this excuse. Last night at Go Club (2003-10-23) played a gentleman that just would not resign. I guess that I should have. In the end he resigned as we started to fill dame. "Oh no! No resignations at this point. We have to count". Well, due to his desparate moves the final count was White(me) 110: Black -4. Yes, negative numbers. Next time, I guess that I will resign instead. The real moral of this story is that I am becoming more patient and playing the board rather than being bothered by waiting.

Go Blindness The inability to see the truly obvious, as in What! Oh! Those stones are/were in atari?


mgoetze: My favourite excuse is "I always make silly mistakes when playing online..." off course, it doesn't work when I lose a game offline, but that doesn't seem to be happening so often nowadays...


Evand: I find "I always make silly mistakes when playing you," to be particularly amusing...


TDerz: I have heard that Emanuel Lasker (Chess World Champion 1894-1906? and Amateur Go player) said something like:

  • "I never won a game vs. a healthy opponent."

Having googled around a bit, the quotation seems to be

  • "I have never had the satisfaction of beating a completely healthy opponent." -- Amos BURN

After a tournament you can occasionally hear dissapointed mumblings by those who failed to win a prize which teach you that:

  • "The player who plays best in a tournament never wins first. He finishes second behind the guy with the most luck. " -- Savielly TARTAKOWER

The honest and true(!) above "I would have won if ... I played differently AND better, so and so ..." is shown sometimes to the winner (who should then feel ashamed? for his/her lucky but not perfect moves):

  • "Analysis: irrefutable proof that you could have won a game that you lost." -- Boden

I personall heard these too:

  • "I had a won position until I blundered." (Imagine this vice-versa!)
  • "You shouldn't have played on in a lost position." (Tell this RinKaiho on how he used to pep up his winning ratio, it's called stamina and relying on once's own strengths.)

[ext] http://www.ex.ac.uk/~dregis/DR/excuses.html

I myself have used this one recently:

  • "I thought it was a different time control." (Köln 2003 with dynamic Canadian Byoyomi = I made it to 30 stones/5 minutes, then collapsed. Of course you can imagine what I used the main time for - daydreaming on the board - visualizing never-to-be-played variations before playing the obvious move (or his bedfellow, the bad move))
  • "I don't like short time controls."

(Neither do my opponents, that's why they play faster in main time.)

RBerenguel: As far as I know, the excuse "I have never had the satisfaction of beating a completely healthy opponent." -- Amos BURN was really said by Savielly Tartacower


Barthoze "Never play go after a sleepless night. "

I tried to do so after a nightly coding rush, to make a seemingly working draughts IA. As I finished my job, I took a break on IGS and tried to play some games. It led to my longest losing streak ever. And I dared name this sorry excuse to explain my losses.


HansWalthaus My favourite excuse after playing 2 or 3 games too many:

"I forgot what colour i was playing."

Happend a couple of days ago. I was white, i was in a ladder and i saw a stone that would function as a ladderbreaker. Too bad i didnt notice the bloody stone was a black one.


Warp: How about making excuses before the game instead of after? I find myself doing so way too often... (eg. "I haven't been playing too well lately so I will probably lose.") I should probably get rid of that bad habit.


ChrisSchack: I sort of tend to do that myself when I'm in a slump, though I just say I'll probably lose. The excuse BlueWyvern gave about playing to keep up with the opponent also applied the other day, except I wasn't claiming that was the case, my opponent pointed it out to me. Then again, the game after was worse: I don't think I played a single move that wasn't a mistake. A few takebacks, too, and joseki correction ... all in the first 10-15 moves. I just resigned, because I wasn't really the one playing, it felt like ... I just guess I react badly to "this is a mistake, this is what you should have done, and let's pretend you did".


Remillard: More in the funny category but:

  • "That would have worked if it hadn't been for those pesky kids and their dog!" (Choose any life and death problem you failed, badly played joseki, badly played tesuji, etc.)


Path: BadHabits   · Prev: GetAngry   · Next: NegotiatingAfterALoss
This is a copy of the living page "Naming all your Excuses for Losing" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.