My opponent paused our game. What to do?

Hi everyone, I’m fairly new to go and OGS (I’ve been playing here for 3 months or so, which is also how long I’ve been playing the game).

I have an ongoing correspondence game where my opponent has paused the game. My question is regarding the etiquette of un-pausing games. In this case my opponent hasn’t said anything about it in chat, they have just paused the game (indefinitely for all I know). Is it considered rude to simply un-pause the game in this case. I don’t mind allowing a pause if my opponent needs it, but the game has been ongoing for almost 2 months and they haven’t used any vacation time in that period so it seems like that might be more appropriate to me given that they must have some vacation time saved up.

Not a big deal, I’m mostly asking out of newbie curiosity.

Cheers,
Stephen

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Ultimately, the decision is totally up to you, and I don’t think you can be faulted for chosing either option…

Both players agreed on some time settings, if one of the players can’t stick to them, it’s his “problem”. So as far as I am concerned, since the other player did not offer any explanation I would consider it totally fine for you to unpause.

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Thanks for the advise! That’s what I was thinking. They can always pause again and offer an explanation and I can reconsider then.

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Personally if it was me, I’d make my move, unpause the game, and ask in chat why your opponent paused. Unless it’s their move then skip step one lol

They can’t continue to pause without explanation because each player has a maximum of 5 pauses

One other point is worth noting. Inactive games are timed out by the system after a certain period of time. It is unclear what this time limit is. Some say 30 days, but I have witnessed both 7 weeks and 3 weeks. I don’t know whether a pause counts as inactive, but I would be concerned. The loss is charged to the person whose turn it is to move (again, unless the pause changes that–I don’t know). I would be a bit worried that a cheat might pause the game on my move and let it go to the default timeout (if the default overrides the pause).

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How I do it.
Disclaimer: I only play correspondence games here.

  • When opponent pauses the game, I assume they have some good reason.
    I don’t ask for explanation (as it wouldn’t change anything anyway :wink: and thus I’d rather assume good about my opponent than bad :slight_smile: ).

  • When I need a pause (I think/hope) I usually explain but rather hit the “vacation” switch on my settings page, and that I sometimes do w/o any explanation.

  • My most frequent uses of “Pause game” are when I notice that my opponent is in danger of timing out; then I press pause and send them a PM.

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You are free to play moves within a paused game, just for the record :slight_smile:

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I also lean towards this. OTOH, if it is in a tournament game (and I have such a case currently), this may hold up the tournament forever. (?) I sort of feel responsible for that too. So I’m not sure what to do TBH.

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I can understand that … not sure but I think I’d probably just watch for 3-4 days, and then perhaps ask the opponent what’s it about (in-game chat as well as PM because they may be shadow-banned). If no reply, I might unpause after a week, again with a note in in-game chat as well as PM.

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I don’t really think pauses should be allowed in tournament games. That’s what vacation time is for. If you’ve used it all, that’s not really the fault of the rest of the tournament participants.

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Totally agree. Totally dude.

Scenario:

  1. In a tournament Person A pauses his game with Person B.
  2. Person B doesn’t mind or doesn’t care or has actually quit playing. (edit: or doesn’t notice.)
  3. Whole tournament ends up paused indefinitely without the permission of person C,D,E etc. until someone realises what’s happened and involves a Mod.

It’s perfectly reasonable to pause a game by mutual consent but in a tournament no consent is sought or given by all the other participants.

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You are completely entitled to resume a paused game. I think part of the problem here is that when a player pauses a game the following appears: Screenshot%20(58)

The words ‘3 pauses left for Black’ implies an entitlement that causes confusion.

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