Someone who is good at working out where to play is good at that. Someone who is good at winning tournaments is good at that. You choose for yourself what you consider to constitute playing well.
I am more interested in the mental contest than the physical (except, perhaps, in blitz), so a good game for me is one where we have both developed our ideas to the best of our ability.
This is a bit of a tangent, but Iām a software engineer and I have a decent amount of pride in my ability to make really efficient source code edits by chaining vim motions and commands. So while I absolutely agree with your overall take on go being about the mental game, it would be fun if there was some tournament where the the skill in handling of stones would also sometimes be a factor in the games.
And obvious rule would be to not allow pausing the clock while removing captures. Imagine having to let your opponent save part of their dragon because you couldnāt possibly remove all the stones during your turn. It would be kinda stupid, but also kinda amazing IMO! Or if there was some player who had practiced picking up stones real quick, or someone who was known to be a bit clumsy, so a capturing race between them would have this extra physical skill dimension to it 
I have long felt that this was back-to-front! Instead the rule should be that you play your stone, ask for the prisoners and press the clock: your opponent is punished for having let you capture them by having to hand over the captives before they can play their move.
In British tournaments we canāt pause the clock for captures. I was once playing a familiar opponent who I had something like a 10-0 record against who would keep on playing when hopelessly behind hoping for a time win or blunder (he was a fast player, I slow). I had killed a big dragon of his so was probably 50-100 points ahead, but in accelerating overtime of 40 or 50 stones in 5 minutes. Had he played atari to force me to capture his ~40 stone dragon near the end of my period, I might have lost on time. I thus decided to not play valuable small endgame moves, but needlessly capture his stones whilst I had time.
Okay, we started with āspiritā and ānatureā, but have arrived at rules and definitions, thatās a bit disappointing.
You asked me why I consider āexecution of stone placementā to be a part of Go, and I answered that question.
If you wanted to know more about why I said itās against ānatureā and āspiritā you shouldāve asked about that.
I said itās against nature because nature does not permit undos. You cannot slap someone in the face and then say āundo! undo!ā. It wonāt unslap the face. And thatās actually true even for online-go.com. The undo-feature just acts like the move was undone and everything agrees to act like that happened, but the truth is that the move was made and there is no way to erase that move from our timeline in our universe. Nevertheless I do concede that this is not a strong argument for the point I was making.
The more important argument is the one regarding the āspirit of the gameā. The move-permanance is one of the features of the Game of Go that, I think, make the game really attractive. Placing a stone has a huge relevance because the stone will stay there for the rest of the game. This gives each move an intense feeling of importance and consequence. And itās not just for the game, itās basically for eternity too, you can find Kifus that are 100s of years old. And some move 34 made by some scholar in the ancient times can still be reviewed today.
I personally just like the thought of this grave importance of each move.
I donāt mind granting undo requests but your argument here is very compelling!
Sure, itās my fault.
I think this is actually an argument for the opposite position.
In real life people have a lot more control when it comes to placing a stone on a board. I can continue to apply pressure to the stone with my fingers and only release when satisfied. The control over my arm and fingers are far less prone to error than trying to click on something with a mouse.
Some people play on touch screens as well. If they fumble or drop a phone, or tablet, they might accidentally touch somewhere on the screen.
In real life you might place the stone in the wrong place. This can also happen online, but in addition you can place a stone when you didnāt even intend to place one at all. The issue is there are additional sources of errors when we use computers/phones/tablets. It makes sense that given the increased chance of accidents we would also introduce something to combat it.
I have to ask, why is clicking a button or tapping a screen in any way in line with the spirit of Go? How is playing with people half way around the world, where we canāt see or talk to them, in line with the spirit of Go? It feels strange to introduce technology which radically changes the experience of the game, and introduces additional sources of accidents, but be against the introduction of anything to try and combat those accidents.
Edit: Misread your comment the first time.
This would be a different topic.
That would be a different topic.
Just to reiterate: Iām not against the introduction of such features. I just personally do not use the undo-feature.
The best way to combat additional sources of accidents is additional focus on good execution. Or maybe new technology to make the input more smooth? Maybe use voice controls?
There will still be more accidents. The best way to combat them would be to only play games OTB. Given that that is not realistic, and that there are more sources of error, it makes sense to try and combat them.
Would you make a distinction in real life between someone placing a stone in the wrong position, e.g. they werenāt paying much attention and put it one space over, and someone who didnāt even intend to place the stone on the board, e.g. someoneās hand is well above the board, the stone accidentally slips out and happens to land on an intersection?
I understand why granting an undo to the former would be against the spirit of the game, and why it would be important to teach the other player a lesson, but I donāt understand why either of these things would apply to the latter.
Exactly. I agree. You should try to combat the sources of error. If people are actually not able to handle mouse/touch input then maybe we need to figure out what else we can do to reduce input errors.
The undo-feature is not removing the source of errors though but is a measurement for damage control if an error has already happened.
This is actually a good point. Well played.
I mean if the stone actually dropped out of the players hand then I would argue that he didnāt intentionally place the stone at all. He would also get an immediate time penalty by having to pick up the stone and placing it again.
Now you will probably say that itās the same with people using their phones and accidentally touching the screen. And I do see some similatities here. I guess the issue is:
Yes I am aware that only (2) is a continuation of my original point. But I think that all of these three points stand on their own.
There definitely is some grey area, but I think there are also some clear signs as to whether or not it was an accidental move.
If itās my turn and Iām thinking through a position, then 30 seconds in my opponent asks for an undo, itās likely that they realised there was a better move while I was thinking. I wouldnāt grant an undo here.
If weāre like 4 moves in and my opponent plays on the very edge of the board and immediately asks for an undo, itās almost certain this was a mistake. I wouldnāt want to continue such a game without granting the undo.
I generally only grant an undo if itās clear to me that it really was an accident.
An additional time control parameter: minimum time per move. If you move faster than the minimum time per move, you lose on time
Or rather than lose on time, combine with this idea:
In other words, you play your move but you can change it until the minimum time has elapsed, at which time it auto-submits.
I think that there is no need for a lose on min time. The system can handle that, obligation to wait before a move being played
.
When I play 3-3 invasion, it will automatically create conditional moves for the two possible next moves.
If username == dokbohm hide score estimator.
Iām going to argue even farther in the opposite direction, even though I do not expect this to be a majority opinion. I play Go not to win (god knows if that was my goal there would be better games for me to play!), I play to participate in well-played games, and to improve through hard-fought matches. Through that lens, Iād be inclined to give my opponent an undo request even if it was just āoops, I made the move I intended to and then realized it was dogshitā. I can still learn when Iām punishing sloppy play, sure, but Iād much rather give my opponent the grace of putting up the strongest opposition to me that they can. And while this is an ethos one could bring to any competitive activity, it exists as a historical throughline in Go culture specifically in a way I have never seen in another game.
I obviously have no desire to force everyone to view undo requests the same way, even if I could, but it means I strongly value having them as an option.
I do think this is orthogonal to your point about the permanence of stones being important, which is also a lovely idea. But just food for thought.