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The Art of Resignation
Keywords: Culture & History
There are definitely right ways and wrong ways to go about resigning a game of Go. For example, throwing the board across the room is generally seen as a bad way of resigning [1]. I've been interested in the etiquette of resignation ever since I was about 14k and began seeking out challenging games. The novel First Kyu has a passage about "Looking for a place to resign" (can anybody provide a quote?). I think this is the most honorable way to resign a game. I seem to remember reading that a "universal" way to resign the game is to place two stones on the board at once. Has anybody ever run into this? I wonder just how universal it is. In the past, even when the other player doesn't speak English, they invariably understand the anguished look on my face as yet another group falls apart, so the actual phrase "I resign" is almost secondary. Just some thoughts, -- Matt Noonan [1] As mentioned in BadHabits: Throwing The Board Against The Wall Denting The Wall And The Board Prior To Uppercutting Your Opponent unkx80: Putting two stones (sometimes more) seems to be a very universal way to resigning - I have encountered this countless times in a few places - and I resign this way as well. It breaks the language barrier. In other instances I have encountered the opponent saying "I lose" instead. If I am not wrong the Japanese players tend to resign this way (seems that my guess is reinforced by the comic Hikaru No Go). Scryer: In HnG the resigner frequently says (in the English translation) "I have nothing" or words to that effect. What is the Japanese phrase for this? Karl Knechtel: Seems you refer to arimasen. IronChefSakai: When you say put two stones on the board, do you mean play in two places or put two stones together on the edge? I wouldn't want them to think I was cheating if I played in two places ;) unkx80: I mean putting two stones together in any part of the board. :-) Bill Spight: Sweeping the stones off the board is also an internationally understood way of resigning. ;-) AvatarDJFlux: As far as I know, the traditional Japanese way to resign, apart from saying in Japanese "I have lost", is to place a couple (not necessarily two, but more than one... ;-) ) of captured stones on the goban. Ah! And please, do not forget to thank your opponent for the game after you've resigned! ChristianNentwich: Keep also in mind the option of pouring your captured stones into your opponent's bowl (if you have any), that seems to be universally understood. Another bad way of resigning is to put your bowl on the board, scattering the stones, I remember reading that this happened in some famous (old) game. Charles Matthews: I think correct (Japanese) etiquette is to tip your prisoners gently from the lid of your bowl onto the board. This is consistent with the Japanese idea that one tidies the board only by putting one's own stones back in the bowl, moving the opponent's stones gently aside. This isn't a habit of Chinese or Korean players, though. Matt asked for a quote from First Kyu by the late Dr. Sung-Hwa Hong. It's on the next-to-last page:
Bill Spight: Well, that makes a nice story. :-) Looking for a place to resign refers to trying desperation tactics in a technically lost game. How obvious the counter is depends on the opponent. As a rule, it is obvious. However, in my experience, I have sometimes missed the obvious and have sometimes looked for a place to resign without finding it. ;-) As Janice Kim says, "Resign while you still can." Marco75: a Korean friend of mine (an expert player, but don't ask me what his rating was) once told me that a polite way to resign is to play in the very corner of the board in a situation when that move makes no sense. The rationale would be that such a move is so bad that it spells "I resign". He added an anecdote about a player, in a tournament game, playing in the 1-1 corner and his opponent insisting that he resign (and winning that argument). Can anyone confirm that that is a Korean way to surrender? Andre Engels: I should have known that one earlier. I have once made such a move, but not to resign, but to tell my opponent that in my opinion he should resign - something like "I'm so far ahead, that even passing will not bring my position into danger." ian: My favoured method is to press the "Resign" button Don'tgoaway?: Yes, this is indeed my prefered method as well. kokiri: In my experience in Japan, the methods of resigning used were 1) saying 'I resign' 2) pouring your prisoners onto the board 3) playing on the 1-1 point 4) playing two stones in that order; 1 & 2 being far more common than 3 and 4. My games are not at a sufficient standard, however, to feature the idea of looking for a good place to resign. I'm still at the level of making one last desperate invasion and then resigning when it doesn't work which is probably bordering on the Bad Habits -- kokiri Coyotebd?: I think you should say "You have won" to honour your opponent. Not a tradition I heard of, but it's a more positive way of resigning. unkx80: These days I encounter an increasing number of a "new" way of resigning, usually in friendly games. Obviously I have won the game by a large margin because of capture of a large group or some other reason, but the opponent continued playing. Some time after the opponent made a move, and while I was thinking my next move, he will suddenly start saying, "I should have played this move here and..." and then proceeded to rearrange the stones to the position in question. Personally I do not quite like this "new" way of resignation because the action almost always suprised me. Hu: Clearly, in a graceful and esthetic game such as Go, even (or especially) resignation should be graceful. Simple and direct tend to be graceful. Violent and disruptive are not, and they are also signs of lack of self-control and immaturity, as is unkx80's rearranging opponent Thus simply saying "I resign" is simple and direct where there is common understanding of language, as is pressing "Resign" on a Go server. What might help would be a list of How to Resign in Other Languages. It strikes me that the next most graceful way would be one not quite mentioned, which would be to simply move one's bowl lid with opponent prisoners in it over to the opponent. This should be understandable by all. Then the question arises, what does one do when no prisoners have been taken? Placing two stones on the board or the edge of the board seems to be graceful, but might not be understood by many. Standing up and proffering one's hand for shaking would be another way, but some cultures such as Japan are more reluctant to touch hands than the West. Standing up and bowing might be another approach, but might be difficult for prideful Westerners. Tipping prisoners onto the board is unambiguous, but difficult to do gracefully. It also makes it much harder to review the game, and reviewing games with the opponent is almost always a graceful gesture. -- Hu karmaGfa : In Taiwan, I played some people who resigned by :
Another universally understood way of resigning is violently disrupting the position on the board beyond all possible repair while making use of the most colorful phrases your language of choice affords. This usually gets the message across, but do not be surprised if your opponent does not offer you a rematch. Tamsin: Many chess players do not tip over their king anymore, but reach out and shake the opponent's hand to indicate their resignation. This would surely be a very good way to resign when playing go in the West. A firm, friendly handshake puts an end to hostilities and invites a constructive post-mortem. Chestnut: Don't shake hands with any Japanese people! Handshaking is particularly frowned upon in Japanese culture, and when you try to shake a Japanese person's hand you usually end up with a limp and sweaty palm -- it makes them nervous because they're not used to it. Not entirely sure about the Chinese and Koreans but I think their attitude towards gratuitous physical contact is the same. Even if they're living in the West they still seem averse to shaking hands outside of business encounters (where it's mandatory). Sente5?: It seems to me a good way to resign would be to start making a stack of your stones in the middle of the board. You creative types might try arranging the stack into a pyramid or some kind of interesting pattern. Humming, as if out of boredom, while you do this is acceptable as long as you don't hum "It's a small world after all" over and over. Perhaps if you play two stones, you should play them inside the squares (instead of on intersections)? That should make it clear. --Daniel-chan For maximum clarity, I suggest playing them right inside the lid of the opponent's bowl. -- (Sebastian) Naustin-In a game record I was looking at Sakata resigned by retaking a ko immediately instead of playing elsewhere. In some ways it seems one common thread of the mentioned methods other than stating the fact is breaking the rules in some obvious manner. Bob Myers: Could you give us a pointer to this game record? If the illegal move is actually recorded in the game record, it would seem to me that this would not be a resignation, but rather a loss by rule violation (hansoku-make). In the professional world, as far as I know you resign with a little nod of your head.
Hikaru79: Heh, that reminds me of the game Cho Hun-hyun played and lost by making an illegal move. This time, playing a suicide move, probably under the impression that he was taking a ko, seeing as how he had just made a ko threat, and there was a ko very close to the point he played. This is a copy of the living page "The Art of Resignation" at Sensei's Library. ![]() |