Go Etiquette: new case 2021

Assume the following: Two players are playing a correspondence game.
One player (1) is significantly stronger than the other (2)–as in
really stronger. (2) has a Go alias. He goes to the alias and tries
different scenarios to choose the best move. Then returns to the
regular game and places his stone. (2) realizes this is probably not
cheating, per se, but perhaps unethical/unfair. Now, mind you, (1)
could do the same thing but likely doesn’t need to. What obligations
does (2) have? Inform (1) what he is doing? If (2) wins then inform
(1) and offer to resign if (1) thinks it’s unfair (sort of my preferred
option)? Or three, (2) thinks to himself: “I wanted to give (1) a good
game, he is so much stronger than I, and he could have done it too”?

You’ve lost me here. :slight_smile: Do you mean you … oops, sorry, (2)… replayed the game with himself as opponent trying different variants? Then I don’t see how it’s different from a regular analysis which is perfectly legal in correspondence.

In any case, if you … (2), that is… has any doubts, there is no harm in asking the opponent for his opinion.

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No, if I’m understanding the question. What I did was to go under my “alias” (different account) and play different scenarios to find the best move. Perhaps I could have done that anyway under “Pengyou” in this correspondence game but didn’t try and didn’t know if I could. Anyway, I’m still a newby when it comes to OGS so I don’t know if that was even possible. (I did tell my opponent toward the latter part of the game because I was having too much guilt; he had no problem with it (I was willing to resign if he did). So perhaps I’m wasting the Forum’s time. I just want to play fair. Hope this helps

Against whom? Unless you forked your original game and then asked a stronger player (bot or human) to play against you in that forked game, I still do not see any ethical problems here. Having an alias is not a crime (not on OGS, anyway) and neither is playing more games before finishing the current one.

My opinion is that in correspondence play pretty much everything is fair as long as you do all the thinking yourself. That includes all kinds of manual analysis as well as consulting books and databases, unless the both players agreed otherwise before the game (in particular, OGS has “no analysis” tournaments where players are not supposed to use any aids). On the other hand, things like playing the situation out against a computer engine or asking another player for an advice are not OK without your opponent’s permission.

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I did the thinking myself and lost anyway (but not by a lot, given the strength of my opponent). Thank you for your time in answering my question.

The one point temifar pointed out says mostly everything (in case you didnt realized it fully yet):

On the left side bar, is a button “Game analyze” so you dont need to leave the board or even create a new account to play variations.
If this option is not disabled, it means is explicit allowed to play variations.

Go is about learning Go, analyzing is a part of it. Mostly retrospective, but especialy with a screen based go, it is this an easy but powerfull oiption to improve your understanding of Go.

Even if you play variations with a stonger computer, (actually nobody cant denied to you), but without analyzing you will probably not improve your skills.
(I just imagine someone, who will always use a stonger computer on a second board, to find the best move, his rank will show him nothing more then how good he is in copy&past :sleepy:

…on the other hand: if this satisfys him…why not.

But I think the go comunity is full of people they have interest in improving their minds, and your asking shows more the politness that comes with such a passion :smile:

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New case: some time ago I played a game in an AST, when I received from a third party a PM with a suggestion for a certain move. Although I had considered that move already I felt obliged NOT to play that move.

When I encountered that person in the same AST I stated that I was not pleased with that suggestion. No reaction.

This action spoiled this AST for me completely.

What could/should I have done?
Not opening PMs anymore during ongoing games, report a mod, leave that AST, etc?

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Because of this I probably would have reported to a mod.

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reporting will not help you in fact immediately, but will help this third player to know or understand that’s something not to do on OGS. And help all next players he will play with.

I have had the same experience a long time ago where the advisor was trying to help me, the weaker player, advance in the tournament coincidently coming up against them in the next round.

[Edit] Yes. Please report such interference.

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100% agree. In my opinion, this sort of behavior is worse by far than straight up insulting one of the players.

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What is AST?

Sorry, this should be in the list of abbreviations :grin:
AST = Automatic Sitewide Tournament.

Atlantic Standard Time.

Yup. Report the user. We’ve given chatbans before for people sending move suggestions to others.

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If we can return to the original topic for a moment: it’s my understanding that if analysis has been disabled then to circumvent that rule by using an alternate account to analysis the game, or by copying the board into an SGF editor and analysing there, etc., is considered a form of cheating and violates OGS’ rules.

Am I right in that assumption?

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I guess so. However, there’s no way we can discover it…

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Quite so, it’s a fairly theoretical question.

I just wanted to take the chance to clear the issue up, since this was after all the question that the OP asked, which didn’t seem to have been answered.

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5 posts were split to a new topic: About analysis enabled as a default