Hi all,

This is a sort of childish whining that also include a basic go question. But this pissed me off quite much and I am still writing with an anger that you probably never reached, so forget about it.

Here I played against a same-strenght-opponent that eleceted not to resign even in complete hopeless position, and eventually went on to win when I dodn't noticed an oshitsubushi in a central group. Note that is a CORRESPONDENCE game.

In the opening opponent heavily blundered and lost a corner and ten stones with no compensation at all. I ask: is etiquette continuing to play even if we are middle kyus?

In the middlegame he continued to "play" in a completely lost position and he thought to have some aji in the center: I captured his group and then in a thurst of confidence I forgot a defensive move and finally (for him obv) I blundered and lost.

Again some questions:
1) was white (morally) justified to play in that awful position?
2) Is correspondence game a way to justify it?
3) In chess early resignations due to piece lost is very usual and common even in beginner games. Why in go is never like that?
4) Why on the earth I am NEVER NEVER that lucky and I have to play carefully even against 5kyus and when I'm losing a game my opponent NEVER NEVER blunders?

5) can you comment the game?

_________________
Don't play 1-2-3
Just play 3

(Go proverb)

They got two moves in a row in the lower right corner. That is actually quite a bit of compensation. I just fired up Leela Zero and after move it thinks that White still has a 37% chance of winning.


Sure.


I think so.


I think it is reasonable to play to the end in both live and correspondence games, especially at kyu level, double-especially when there are still tricks in the position, as in this game. This game actually seems to me to be evidence for this behavior, rather than against; the game can't already have been lost, because your opponent won.


Firstly, I think you overestimate the difference in resignation frequency between the two games. People complain about non-resigners in chess too. But I think that there is a difference, and it comes down to the fact that in Go you have to count up the score, so there is not a good equivalent to "I will obviously be checkmated eventually."


I can't answer this, but I suspect you have to play even more carefully than you already do. It is likely that you are better than similarly-ranked players in the opening and worse in fighting (I am like this), and you have to be careful to avoid the trap of thinking "I won this game in the opening, now I just have to coast to victory and/or wait for my opponent to resign" (ask me how I know). In the most recent serious game I played, in the postmortem my opponent said "I was about to resign here, but I decided to try one last thing." (He won.)

By the way, I bet there are plenty of times when you're losing a game, your opponent blunders, and you don't notice it.

the loss in the end was no doubt tragic.

Although you probably dont want to hear it, I want to strongly question your expectation that white should resign at move 35. Having lost the corner is of course bad, but the position isnt actualy that terrible, his chances from there are probably better than in the starting position of a 2 stones handicap game as white, where you probably wouldnt expect a resignation.

To illustrate this, look at this hypothetical game(sort of a concept similar to tewari, I think the second move order makes more sense):



How to estimate the position after 14?
The white move at tengen is probably a little questionable and his decision to not extend after creating the 3 stones in the top right, but this attach to the shimari is well known sequence and blacks p4 for q4 exchange is also strange. I would conclude that this position is still relatively even maybe slightly better for black. How does it compare to your game position at 36(both cases black move)? I think your game is better for black then the other situation, but not by far. black has about 5 points more in the corner(20 vs roughly 15) and slightly more influce toward the right, but white has also one stone more in his top group, which makes it a little bit less weak.

Actually, I would suggest that you should maybe have answered his "ko threat" at 35, because he could not have finished the ko in one move

I know how you feel.

I think there is no overall Go Etiquette and it heavily depends on culture/server/personal background.
For example, there are those that make crazy invasions way too late in the game when they see they're behind. I'd never do that, but sometimes they make it work. How do they do it? Because it preys on mistakes and usually that late in the game, the "winner" is no longer in his fullest concentration and things are possible then. Is it legitimate? It is, and if I lose that way, I won't blame my opponent but myself.

1) was white (morally) justified to play in that awful position?

- I think so. He made a big blunder early on, but at anything but professional level, I think there are still possibilites. I wouldn't call this 'going against etiquette' rather fighting spirit.

2) Is correspondence game a way to justify it?

- Tough to say. Maybe. I don't know

3) In chess early resignations due to piece lost is very usual and common even in beginner games. Why in go is never like that?

- It happens. Some people resign early, others never resign. Who is right and who is wrong? I never blame an opponent for not resigning. Because even if it is 99% lost, there are still things you can learn.

4) Why on the earth I am NEVER NEVER that lucky and I have to play carefully even against 5kyus and when I'm losing a game my opponent NEVER NEVER blunders?

- Because it is correspondence, I think you played the "losing" move too fast. Because you obviously saw it when you looked at the board in concentration. So my guess is that you were already emotionally impatient with this game and it made you stop reacting as you usually would. Your opponent's style clearly had an impact on your take on the game and you lost emotionally, not by skill.
Why don't you ever win by a blundering opponent? Probably because you are too nice and do these weird things that some do when they're behind. I guess you're one of those people (like me) who accept a loss when it's too late (bar blundering, obviously)

How do you fix that? I think you should look over why you get so "mad" at the opponent for playing on. Yes it's a lost position, but it's his game as much as yours. You are both playing and both have a right to play this game. Just try to keep focused and stay strong, and you shouldn't lose with that big an advantage.

Yes, this sort of thing is very annoying. Have an internet hug.


Yes


No, you ignored his ko threat, which was also big. I don't know which is bigger, but my first feeling would be to answer it (as the ko is multi-step for him and it's a lossy threat) and as your 5th line stone is very sad when he follows up. Btw, I checked with Leela Zero and she gives only 61% after you win the ko, a lead but not massive and most kyu games will see bigger swings throughout the game. Haylee played on against Leela Zero in far more hopeless positions (she was 10% by move 50 or so)! Also LZ suggests a novel non-contact answer to the ko threat at r5, an idea I'd never consider: if W takes ko then p3 block is more efficient than natural q4 plus p3, if white crawls then either win ko (and W's follow up is less severe) or extend.


Yes, white's not so bad. Far too early to resign.

1) Yes
2) Fine in other formats too, particular if it a serious/rated game. The kind of situation an early resign is more appropriate is a friendly club game where by resigning you start another game, but in a tournament if you resign that's a loss for that round and you don't get another go.
3) I've not played competitive chess since I was a 9-year old (and my opponent took back after losing his queen so I stormed off in a huff and hid), but maybe it's because Go has a bigger board and is more like lots of separate interacting battles than just one so a setback in one area isn't as catastrophic for the whole board game.
4) a) Selective memory, you remember the unlucky losses more than the lucky wins
b) You resign early, thus not giving your opponents the opportunity to blunder
c) You are careless; this is particularly easy on correspondence games, if DGS has the feature I suggest leaving board notes like some do on OGS e.g. "remember c14 is sente to kill", "don't forget liberties on g10 group" to refresh your memory on re-opening the game.
5) p6 is a bad atari, and r6 is a bad way to connect. White should turn o6 (and maybe push again) before r5 atari to give you an empty triangle (I thought this and LZ agrees). LZ then gives white 60% win, so according to this winrate stuff your mistakes to here were twice as large as black's before (black 50% -> 60% -> 40%). A game of go is usually lost by the player who makes the last mistake, not the first .

I ruefully recall a 5 dan vs. 5 dan game where my opponent got far behind early on, yet continued to play. I kept asking myself, why doesn't he resign. I got irritated and eventually made a careless blunder and lost. The moral failing was mine.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

"glad" to see it happens on every level

Perhaps a difference between stronger and weaker players is shown here; the weaker player captures three of the stronger player's stones and believes in a lead of six points. The stronger player, however, sees twenty-four stones at 50% efficiency and knows who is really leading by six points.

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

dfan's rule of thumb*: if your opponent has to actually remove your stones from the board, it was likely a decent sacrifice.

One way to think about this: if they had to complete capturing your stones, they played at least one move and maybe more inside their own territory, so those moves were worth -1 points apiece to them (in addition to the eventual capture, but the benefit of that gets amortized over all the stones they played). Moves are usually worth much more than that, so it's likely that the moves you got in compensation were worth at least as much.

*Note: this principle was invented by a kyu player, so take it with a grain of salt.

In fact, when I went to look up where I had given this rule of thumb before, I found that it was in response to one of your questions! So I have a feeling that you may overvalue captured stones in general. Something to think about!

(Note that I don't think that White actually made a good sacrifice in this game. But they did get significantly more compensation than you probably think.)

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

The value of a captured stone in go is far less than that of a pawn in chess, by more than your mind may have adjusted.

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

Elf:

I think there is a simple reason: because in go this works! The game is much longer, the potential for a blunder or any kind of change is higher. All the more so if there are still empty areas on the board. I don't play chess these days, but I think games are more likely to play out to their reasonable conclusions there, so less reason to continue.

I cannot comment on the etiquette, but I have seen even high dans continuing with 20-30 pts of deficit, and I think this is actually pretty common. Also there is some contradiction in expecting players to choose a 0% winrate move even over 10%. On the other hand I also understand your annoyance (though as others pointed out you may also overestimated the advantage in this game, at least initially), and may even accept that this habit does not really increase players' go strengths. But go is like this, for better or worse.

I just checked my first game of the 2015 British Championship: after a great result in the first fight which I estimated as a ~25 point lead LZ gives me 98% win at one point (if I played the h4 simplifying reverse sente, I don't really get why it's so much better than playing elsewhere). That ended in a bitter loss by 2.5 points after much excitement, ko and mistakes.

Edit: I definitely did not not expect Andrew K to resign even though I was clearly in a very advantageous position at the lunch break, indeed I think it would be bad sportsmanship to give up and not give your best effort (I've become dispirited and wanted to resign early in other games but fought on, though didn't reverse the game as he managed to). I didn't have any bad feelings about him playing on in such a position, though I was severely disappointed in myself for my many mistakes that let such a lead slip from my fingers. The saving grace was we gave a highly entertaining game to the spectators.