My background is as a chess player, where touch move is enforced. If I move a piece incorrectly by mistake, it’s too bad for me. Also, I am simply terrible at this point. I’ve only ever played a half-dozen 19x19 games.
Last night I was playing a game and put a stone on the 1st line when I had intended to place it on the 2nd. I was aware there was an undo button but in my mind I was still in the “touch-move” mindset and felt that the stone should remain. This predictably led to the local fight completely coming apart. I then regretted not doing the undo.
Is there any etiquette around the undo? Do I ask first, do I call it out and then wait for them to agree? Do I simply “undo” right away? Thanks for any clarification.
There aren’t any rules for asking for an undo. Every player has a different threshold for what they are willing to give, and for some players it’s zero.
Speaking for myself, I always allow undos for misclicks. You can usually tell—the move should be in a weird place and the request should come in right away. If I was the misclicker, I usually ask for an undo with the understanding that I might not get one.
for me, asking for the undo is totally essential to the process.
To be honest I am usually very focused on the game and the undo requested message goes completely unnoticed by me, while I usually see something moved in the chat window. Also I consider it good manners to appologize and explain it was a misclick. Then there is no reason not to allow the undo. And even if you notice after a move or two it is still possible to roll the game back by chaining the undo requests… After all we want the game to be exciting and fun, not to win because of a silly mistake.
Go tournaments typically has the corresponding rule to chess, once you put a stone on the board and release it, you can’t change your mind.
Online go servers implement undo because it’s boring to have a game messed up by a slip of the mouse/touchpad.
My feeling is that if you tend to do mistakes like that on OGS, you have the option to use the submit button, so a rarely would accept an undo request.
If I play on my tablet or something, I also always enable the submit button option.
My feeling is that undoing a misclick is fine. but it’s also best to make sure everyone understands the situation in chat. I once accepted an undo in a game assuming it was a misclick when it was simply a mistake that he regretted and wanted to change… I was a little miffed but since no discussion had taken place I left it. Ultimately it was brought up after the game but in the future I’ll check in chat whether it was a misclick before blindly accepting.