Conversely to this, if you’re resigning early in the mid-game all the time, you and your opponent are both robbed of what is possible to turn around in the end-game.
I’ve read through most of this and found it very interesting. The questions of whether you can come back or not, whether you miscount or not, etc are interesting, but they all relate to the win/lose.
I’ll pose a broader question:
Is winning or losing the only interesting aspect of a game to you?
TL;DR: if your answer is yes, you won’t enjoy playing with me or reading this, so don’t do either.
I usually, but not always, play my games out - but I play absolutely blitz a lot, so there’s a cap on how much time it can take from someone. But the reason I play them out is that while winning or losing the game is interesting and important to me, tons of other configurations in the game may be as well. Every one of us has played out a ko that has no impact on who wins the game just because it can be fun to play out kos. Likewise, even if I’m behind, I still find compelling adventure in seeing who can control one area or another, who can push a border, who can save or kill a group. If there is nothing left except rote stone placement to close the board, that’s not terribly interesting - but also only takes 30 seconds. Anything short of that is some battle, some fight, and even if they don’t impact the win, they can be fun on their own. To me.
If you’re playing not for fun, but to practice – practicing strategy is best accomplished by resigning and playing a new game. If you’re practicing tactics, saving a group in the middle of a 50 point loss requires all the same moves and thinking as saving a group in a tied game, or a 50 point win.
Curious what others think.
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^ 100% this
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There are middle way too, not just fun in one side and practice on the opposite side.
In a absolute blitz most of the time i woud not expect resign under a huge loss and more a kind of game like you describe.
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I sometimes feel the important part is the side who played better needs to win. It is less important if it is me or the opponent. If he outplayed me, I can be curious and ask a bot where did I go wrong - and can expect I WILL learn something.
But spending an hour or two on a game, that is decided by a last minute dice throw (1x50 blunder) not only leaves bad aftertaste, is bad for learning as well. If the opponent survived his loss I won’t learn much - the bot will just show me I played reasonably good and was ahead all game. If it is me who survived a loss I can at least learn from it - but at the same time it serves as an unwelcome reminder how little it mattered if I played worse.
The game is simply too long to make sense if the outcome is not related to the quality of play. Big blunders (SINGLE random events, as opposed to the sum of several random events) from the opponent have nothing to do with my play, and very little to do even with his play.
The consequence of a mistake poorly correlates to the strengthwise importance of it. The SAME mistake (misreading a connection, for example), can have large, small or minimal consequence depending on how big the groups involved are, and what alternative options they have. The strategic size of a mistake equals the AVERAGE consequence it has in one’s games - while the actual consequence in a single game is just another dice throw.
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It’s nice to have a goal to structure our thinking. But surely winning per se is not the only aspect.
You test the validity of your ideas on the board too in some kind of echange-communication of points of view.
Sometimes i met opponent who beyond the will to win were demonstrating the validity of their ideas or the wrongness of mines. Obviously common in teaching games but not only.
What is nice is the modesty brought by the complexity of the game, who can pretend to be Lee SeDol or a Katago? So we have place for improvements or simply bad moves.
I think it depends on the context of the game.
If the game is like a casual practice game or a teaching game, where the main goal is learning and / or having fun and winning is not really important, then the players could decide to undo the 50 point blunder and continue the game, instead of cutting an interesting and enjoyable game short with a resignation.
But if the game is played in a more competitive setting where winning is important, then IMO mishaps like this are just part of the game. In any competition, a small lapse in concentration can be enough to lose the match, even if you performed greatly up to that point. Ability to maintain focus for the whole duration of a match and not buckling under pressure are important parts of competitive skill.
On OGS, when you’re often playing against opponents you don’t know, you don’t know how they approach the game. But it’s fairly likely they will see it as a competitive game, especially when it’s ranked.
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And the same lapse in concentration can be harmless if luck is on your side (like the same misread connection where a partial save remains, or where the loss happens to be smaller than the lead).
I disagree here. Instead of euphemisms and worrying about things beyond your control, it seems more productive to focus efforts on the strategic, non-random parts of the game. Playing better or winning still offers % advantage over playing worse or losing. This is less visible in individual games (like single random samples), but definitely visible in the average of hundreds of games.
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