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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)
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 :
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:
While I never actually respond to these, I would really like to say:
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:
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. 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:
Having googled around a bit, the quotation seems to be
After a tournament you can occasionally hear dissapointed mumblings by those who failed to win a prize which teach you that:
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):
I personall heard these too:
I myself have used this one recently:
(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:
Path: BadHabits · Prev: GetAngry · Next: NegotiatingAfterALoss This is a copy of the living page "Naming all your Excuses for Losing" at Sensei's Library. ![]() |