"No Undo" option?

Oh, yeah, in that case, I agree

(I think the quotation tool has become the undoing of this communication, blastedly useful tool we’ve got here)

Yes, the “touch-move” rule is official part of the chess rules, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_chess#Act_of_moving_the_pieces

I personally do not see the point in undos, there are two scenarios:

  • In ranked games, granting an undo could spoil the game result (which is at least bad for the ranking system)
  • In unranked games one could say it doesn’t matter so much, but why does the undo then matter so much for the one who is asking for it? I sometimes do misclicks when playing on GoQuest on smartphone (due to my big fingers on small touch screen…), and there is no undo button. In some cases, the misclicks later turn out to be really tricky moves causing much confusion on both sides; thus they can widen my experience :wink:
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I generally let my opponents undo their moves, because i feel it doesnt really concern me. Id rather click the accept button and move on, than win due to a mistake my opponent noticed a second too late and risk them getting angry because of it.
Of course all my games are very casual and i make a point of treating them that way in general. In a tournament setting things would be different.

As for misclicks… well… yesterday in an irl game i dropped my stone on the board by accident. there wasnt even a question whether i was allowed to pick it up again and place it where i wanted to.

That said, i do see the value of deciding the possibility of undos before a game. Having to say no to an undo request on the spot will always be an inconvenience and a burden.

EDIT: If i am not mistaken, on KGS players can choose to simply never allow undos, not on a game to game basis, but as a personal policy. i dont know how this is put into action though (does the undo button disappear for the opponent?, or do players who dont want undos just not get the question?).

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That actually happened to me couple of times. But I was always too ashamed to admit it to ask for undo lol.

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Yeah, I’ve done it too. It’s because the reflex to click submit after clicking on the board is so automatic, it’s pure remote control. Placing the stone amounts to clicking submit pretty much - the only thing that having “submit” active gives is saving against an inadvertent click or double click in the same place.

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In my experience, it seems that not granting an undo is more likely to spoil a game. I think the feature serves a legitimate purpose to fix mis-clicks, or work-around bugs or difficulties with the interface.

I’ve only had a few opponents request an undo, and I don’t think any of those cases involved a player abusing the feature to cheat. I would not want to unfairly win from my opponent mis-clicking, hence I am happy to grant these undos.

I’ve requested undos a few times as well. These have all come about from either: making a misclick (on a touch-screen, I’ve even managed to do this with the submit move button) or the UI issue mentioned above.

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I’ve managed to mis-click in correspondence (while using the submit move feature) on two separate occasions (in two different ways):

  1. I placed my move, but then accidentally triggered an additional touch while scrolling down on a touchscreen, right before I hit submit.
  2. I made the error of confusing the submit button for the “Back to Game” button, mistakenly thinking I was in analysis mode when I was not. More about this issue here: A UI tweak to avoid misclick (correspondence)

Maybe, I’m just a klutz, but fortunately in both cases, my opponents were graceful enough grant the undo rather than exploit an obvious clicking error that would have ruined a ranked game.

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I feel it’s worth clarifying that there is no doubt that it is a useful feature serving a legitimate purpose.

That is not debated.

The reason for having an option to say at the beginning of a game “I prefer not to be asked, so lets agree not to ask for this game” is because … some people prefer not to be asked for an undo.

GaJ

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Although most might not be debating that, It seems that at least some people, such as those that I replied to, appear to be broadly against undos in general.

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Certainly some people don’t like undoes. I have found that I for one don’t :slight_smile:

But that’s why an option to agree up front not to have them in a particular game would be useful :slight_smile:

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Well - as always - it depends, and I’ve also already granted undos in the past for fairly obvious misclicks. Nowadays, If I’m asked for accepting an undo, I tend asking back what will be the replacement move. Sometimes, my opponent simply got angry about that, which is a good sign that it was not a misclick … :wink:

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Maybe your opponent was upset that you seemed to be conditioning your willingness to accept an undo based on a judgment of the replacement move, rather than the reason for why they needed an undo.

When granting an undo for a mis-click, I think the intended move is largely irrelevant. I think that rejecting an undo based on the replacement move might risk distorting the game, since that judgment might wind up being based on advantage rather than etiquette.

I think it’s impossible to judge (based on intended vs played) whether it was actually a mis-click, since it is quite possible to mis-click (in various ways) and play either right next to where you intended or somewhere completely different. I know this from personal experience, where I have managed to place stones in wildly different locations due to extraneous touches on a smartphone screen (even while using the submit move button feature).

Perhaps, it is better to ask your opponent why they want an undo, rather than where they intended to move. If you want to reject players that say they want to take back an error in judgment, that’s fine. Otherwise, when a player says that it was simply a mis-click, I prefer to take their word for it.

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I always grant Undoes in my Corr games and am happy to do it. If, in the many minutes since my opponent placed his stone, he keeps pondering and decides on a move he feels is better, fine by me. I haven’t looked at the board or vested any time before I see the Undo Request, so there’s no negative impact to me; had he made a bad move (not a misclick, just a bad overall move), there would be a negative impact to me in that we both would suffer an inferior game.

An aside: in teaching weaker opponents, nice to teach a better set of moves and use serial Undoes by both of us to reset the board so that the weaker player may replay the actual game from a point several moves ago.

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When i misplace a stone and ask my opponent for undo, i usually say what i was trying to play instead. I think its only fair to let my opponent know what he/she would be facing after granting undo.

Also once a stronger player refused my undo by telling me that move i wanted to play would have ended in my gote, where my misclick was somewhat sente. Which was nice. Communication really can help in problematic situations.

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I agree. This would avoid any surprise and possible annoyance of having an undo rejected by a player that doesn’t like granting them.

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Perhaps we could allow a player to click on their intended position within a few seconds of making a misclick during the opponents turn. They could be asked if they want an undo. If they say “Yes”, then a message like “Misclick! I intended to play <intersection>.” could be written to the chat window and an undo requested.

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I don’t think this needs to be added as a feature to the interface. Currently, players can just manually type this message into the chat (and do so in the appropriate language). Adding any sort of auto-generated text to the chat is a bit tricky, since it should be properly translated.

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If I know I win anyway, I grant all the undos. ;D

I’d agree that even without the option you can just ask your opponent at the start of the game “undos yes/no”… doesn’t need to be an option. If you feel strongly about it you can just tell your opponent ahead of time. On KGS it’s established practice to use it in the game description (“no undo unless misclick”, “no undo even for misclick”, etc.)

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