I think in general, passing should indicate the end of the game.
I can concede that there could be misunderstandings, and so continuing after pass is allowed.
The behaviour described here, I would consider as malicious, and would warn the user that such actions are not allowed (whether there is a specific law against it yet, or not).
I’ll have to re-read the thread, because to me there is a HUGE difference between continuing on after a pass once or twice and passing SEVERAL TIMES “just to check the score”
In fact, to my understanding, it is precisely this behaviour that forced us to make bot games auto-scoring… because when players could check the score first, they would simply pass several times until they got a favourable outcome.
It was not as totally conclusive as I recall it being.
One thing that was observed is that our implementation of resumption of play does not match the rules - the opponent is supposed to get to play next if you chose to resume play.
If we had that, it might solve this particular one.
I don’t like the idea of resuming a game multiple times, especially when analysis is disabled.
If you go by the official rulesets, most of them will allow to continue the game if either player requests it. I don’t think any of them requires the player to reason the request. The player could choose a allowed reason anyways, independent of what their true reason is.
Some rulesets end the game if 4 passes occurred in a row, declaring all stones to be alive. OGS neither implements it, nor would it stop trolls.
Since most official rules allow resuming, the quest is: should OGS deviate from official rules?
Don’t show the score until after dead stones are marked and agreed? That’s what happens in real life right. You remove dead stones, and only then count the score. No need to display a score during removal of dead stones phase.
I’ve not checked how it actually works now…
? why is this getting people skin out of joint. Beyond how arrogant typing ‘practice counting’ sounds - perhaps some players want to improve their game play and when a game has a time limit ‘counting’ (badly) reduces their time to ‘play’ and they would prefer to spend their study time trying to assimilate the huge amount of knowledge needed to improve play. And yes counting will ‘improve play’ but there are many things that would improve play more.
If both players pass then ‘game over’ . But doesn’t ‘go’ rules state that if there is a dispute about a dead group then play carries on until it is resolved? Isn’t that the same as ‘we passed, but a group I thought was alive is apparently dead…I don’t think it is - so I will resume to carry on’. which is the same as ‘checking the score then moving on’
This thread sounds so anti-new player I am quite shocked. I thought OGS was friendlier than that.
Yeah I think you’re missing the point. This is more like both players passing because they think the game is over, but the player who is losing continues to try something new to see if he can change the result.
Except it’s not the same when you accept a game with analysis disabled and thereby the score estimator disabled. In these games passing in order to “check the score” is no better than any other type of cheating especially when they “never intended to end the game”. Practice counting was not meant to come across as arrogant (I cannot count for the life of me). I just meant that in this situation players may as well practice as there is no other option.
The score estimator is available all the time. There is no need to pass, pause the clocks, count and then resume.
But I wonder in what situation this is needed anyways. If the game isn’t settled, at least one player should keep playing, making passing really expensive.
I think I may have misunderstood the original post. I thought that was the issue here because I couldn’t imagine another scenario where someone would need to enter scoring phase to see the count.
I suppose that player could have just not known about the score estimator, but still I agree that it seems rather risky to pass if the game isn’t over.
But if player ‘A’ passes and player ‘B’ plays a stone (and player ‘B’ can play a stone they do not also have to pass) then player ‘A’ has lost a stone if he/she then carries on.
If both players ‘pass’ then either of the two might be wrong on their score analysis and either of the two might want to resume if their ‘counting’ (or score estimator) was off the mark.
I don’t see what improvement stopping this would have and it does not assist either player. The only player this assists is one who perhaps should not have won.
If a player is repeatedly passing to see the ‘end score’ then the other player just has to ‘not pass’ and carry on playing to get a much bigger potential advantage.
It could also have been the case that the winning player was passing first and player that was “checking the score” was intentionally trying to annoy their opponent with time wasting and later came up with that excuse when asked by a mod? Hard to really say without knowing the specifics in this case. I don’t see much point in it all to be honest.