In chess, there’s a convention that you resign by toppling your king. Is there an analogous convention in in-person Go?
I understand you can drop two stones on the board to indicate that you resign but my experience is the people just say “I resign”
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People say “You win” in chess too, but the king topple is still common.
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In modern tournaments where time clocks are used, stopping the clock manually is also a way to resign.
In general, illegal actions are also quite common as a sign of resignation (play inside the grid, place more than 1 stone on the board, pick up your own stone, etc.)
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Commit Seppuku directly onto the board.
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There’s a certain elegance to the notion of toppling the king in chess. It’s like a move, but it’s not a move. I’m looking for something like that in Go.
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These are both direct equivalents of that.
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Perhaps place two stones in the corner of the board, on your side. That would require no explanation and would not be discourteous.
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Indeed. This is more of less how I have seen pros do it. All the IRL games I have played have either gone to scoring or else verbally announced “I resign”
Nowadays in chess I don’t see players toppling the king though. They just offer a handshake.
Similarly nowadays in Go players just stop the clock. Or some players may even just start reviewing the game, making the opponent confused.
I think Shogi is still the best. The player must say “I resign” or “Makemashita” before the game is finished. It’s a cruel game because you must resign and you can’t escape to the counting like in Go.
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In the Lee Sedol vs AlphaGo challenge match, we saw two methods for resignation, specifically:
- In game 1, Lee Sedol (playing Black) resigned by picking up a captured White stone and placing it on the board.
- In game 2, Lee Sedol (playing White) resigned by picking up a captured Black stone and placing it on the board.
- In game 3, Lee Sedol (playing Black) resigned by picking up a captured White stone and placing it on the board.
- In game 4, Aja Huang (placing stones for AlphaGo) indicated that AlphaGo (playing Black) resigned by placing two Black stones on the board.
- In game 5, Lee Sedol (playing Black) resigned by picking up a captured White stone and placing it on the board.
The above links are timestamped and should start the video a few seconds before the act of resignation.
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Worth noting there was a language gap in that case, and an unusual event more generally, so behaviour may not be typical of a more normal situation of Korean pro playing Korean Pro in the baduk league with a camera watching, or in an event with no cameras watching, or 2 randoms in a go club.
There have to be some regional differences for “common practices”. And I wonder when and how these customs were formed historically. In Chinese, we have a term for resigning called “投子” which literally means “dropping stone(s)” (Chinese doesn’t have plurals, so it can mean any number). And I am not sure when this term was coined.
In our casual go club, where the environment is somewhat noisy (music is playing in the background, people may be talking), players typically resign by saying “Ik geef op” [I give up], and then they may review some parts of the game (perhaps trying to win at least the game analysis).
I usually resign like that as well, also in regular tournament games, in English (“I resign”) if they don’t speak Dutch, perhaps in Japanese (“Makemashita” [I have lost] or “Arimasen” [there is nothing left]) if they are Japanese.
When we may not have a language in common and/or if the game is more formal (like some championship game, where the room is really quiet) I may put two of my own stones at once and next to each other in a random spot on the board, perhaps accompanied by a brief head bow. Then I stop the clock and start filling out the result form if there is one, marking my opponent as the winner.
There are a few players in the Dutch tournament go scene who might resign in a more unconventional and dramatic manner, like plowing the board position with their hand or storming out of the playing room (perhaps toppling their chair). They are probably known to have issues, and they may apologise for their behaviour after calming down.
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A chair is forcefully shoved back, a player brusquely rises, with a bewildered look on his face, uttering a few guttural growls, grabs his coat and leaves the room, slamming the door.
Silence.
Then someone with a great sense of understatement calmly says: “Well, I think he lost his game.”
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That was my experience in 20 years of low level club chess as well.
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Leaving the game room during a game is not uncommon. How much drama does ones exit need so that it counts as resignation?
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