Not only a low elo thing only but “totally crushed” in chess works different than go; as like the result of the game isn’t really given with difference of points.
In lower levels it generally happens with one side knowing some tricks that the other side don’t know, as you go higher it generally happens with “gradual snowballing of small advantages that the losing side fails to handle adequately.”
That feels like opening mistake mainly. Some variations may have some "only move"s, which even if the material is equal when you play some other move, simply doesn’t work tactically when you look further (with generally enemy pushing your pieces to tactically bad positions before utilising on it). Or it could be some opening tricks that your opponent learnt somewhere, but you don’t.
One cliche example of positional only move is after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.c3 Nf6 5.d4 exd4 6.cxd4 Bb4+ 7.Bd2 Bxd2 8.Nbxd2 and then the move 8…d5.
You may think like “castling there doesnt cost me anything”, but then white gets to move d5 and e5 themselves, push your pieces to bad positions and win (generally material) with a direct attack.
Assume black to play. Would be draw with white to play yeah.
When it’s black to play, black is forced to play either Kd8 or Kf8, which white can answer with Kf7 or Kd7 and then push the pawn.
I believe that’s more of an exception (like a known opening trap) and that it is much more often about who is making the last significant mistake (i.e. blunder) (which do of course happen very frequently at lower levels).
The higher the level, the smaller the mistakes become. Up to classical games on the highest level where often tiny inaccuracies do make the difference.
It’s not! Like Kd8 Kf7 and there is no way for black to stop the pawn from promoting.
It is always won for white!
There even is a “rule” for that: If the white king is on the sixth rank and the pawn is on the fifth, it is always won for white.
I should apply my rule to not play when tired to also not comment when tired, lol.
Like… I cannot even explain why I thought it would be draw except “I’m tired”
I played chess my whole life and I can have a great time playing in the real world, but studying openings by name and numbers never interested me at all. Playing on the internet doesn’t really do it for me either, I like to hold the pieces and talk with my opponent.
A few months ago I went over to a friend’s house and played on his beautiful ornate set with the knights looking like actual knights, the bishops looking like clergymen reading out of bibles, and so on. I lost the first game because I thought his knight was a bishop and moved my queen into a direct capture. (The pieces all look like standing human figures and also the board is huge and it matters how the piece is turned and so on.) Still it was a really fun experience and I loved going into the imaginary realm suggested by those pieces.
Go, I’d prefer to play in person also but I don’t mind cyber-play as much, maybe because I don’t have the same extensive associations and memories. (I wonder if the same is true for people who grew up physically playing Go.) Sometimes in a physical game I get distracted by the stones not being perfectly placed on intersections, as they are by the computer.
I am grateful to have both games in my life, and the option to use the computer system when I want to.
Not always: the programme Sabaki takes trouble to reproduce the irregularity of real-life stone positioning, and the way playing another stone jostles those nearby!
I haven’t played chess OTB yet, but I think one beautiful thing about Go is how you hold the stones in between your fingers. Japanese players tend to hold it beautifully, and the way they place the stones is like art, just like how Sai does it in Hikaru no Go. Whereas for Chess, you just grab the pieces like how you grab any other normal objects, so there’s the lack of beauty there.
I turn off that function because I can’t stand it that the stones are not on the intersections lol. Same for OTB, I can’t stand it when the stones are off so I will adjust the stones whenever I see one.
It is a little more like playing with toy soldiers, than in Go creating a collaborative artwork—while also trying/pretending to kill each other in both cases. Better than actually killing each other.
Interesting. If I were to ask you not to fiddle with my stones, how would you react?
I like some things to be well aligned, such as cutlery or the spines of books in a pile, but I am fine with moderate irregularity on the Go board. Perhaps this just means I have been thoroughly indoctrinated!
I don’t think it’s against the rules to correct the stones which are not placed correctly, so I would just call the judge. If I keep fiddling with the stones even though they are already correctly placed then that’s another story.
In chess (if you’re fancy/proper) when you do this you say “j’adoube” to clarify that you are adjusting placement not making a move. (I had thought this was “j’ajuste” pronounced “zhadoo” in America but just looked it up apparently it’s adoube for some reason.)
Better to do this on your opponent’s turn.
In some circles the norm is silence and others the norm is talking trash and goofing around, but under all circumstances unless explicitly adjusting you must move the piece you touch and don’t touch it again after you move it. Unless you’re six years old—and even then I will try to help you understand the gravity of this rule.
Ah! Do you mean stones that are so far off that it is unclear where they are meant to be? Of course I think it is fair to correct those, even if, perhaps due to parallax, they seem clear to me. And a lot of the time I will think you are just trying to get comfortable, like a dog going round in circles and scratching the rug before settling down to doze — or, in this case, to read without distractions.
But I might find it bit obsessive if the stones are only very slightly off-centre; it might almost seem like niggling criticism. Perhaps my test is “is there a danger of misreading?”.
I did not realise that was such a special usage, but now I see in fr.wiktionary that
“Le verbe « adouber » ne s’emploie plus en français qu’au jeu d’échecs et pour évoquer la mise de l’armure.” — (Alain Aucouturier, Aux innocents, les mains pleines, 1999)
Adouber is still used in a figurative sense, see other quotes on the same wiktionary page. It’s only the intransitive form of the verb which is specific to chess.
IIRC top players generally say it silently when their opponents are not on the table. (You can probably find some video of it if you search)
I actually see your point (to prevent opponent enforcing touch-rule) but if you keep adjusting the pieces repeadetly during opponent’s turn your opponent is likely to be annoyed.
What I saw most players do is if they are standing/walking around and come to table to think after their opponent had moved, they adjust pieces (with saying jadoube or its equivalent) at the beginning before they start thinking.
It’s also a good idea to use both hands when adjusting pieces (since a proper move is made with one hand, and adjusting multiple pieces is faster with 2 hands than 1 hand lol).
According to rules, you can actually adjust pieces after you made your move and before hitting the clock (kinda a loophole that noone uses since you can just do it properly, I only do that if my opponent isn’t on the table or known to give trouble with touch move enforcement) since any of the pieces you touch wouldnt be able to move legally after you made a proper move on the same turn.
I also remember using my pen if all I want to adjust is a small adjustment on 1 piece, since it means I’m not touching the piece.
Overall, I never had an issue with touch move enforcement and tbf I hadnt really met anyone that tries to enforce it unfairly.
There is more confusion in chess because in go you don’t start a move by picking a piece from the board. So the rule can be more strict. But anyway be go or chess manipulating is a disturbance to your opponent and I would try to avoid it the most possible be chess or go.
