So I just (ab)used the anti-stalling feature for the first time by passing 3 times when I was almost 100 points ahead in endgame (and had been 50 points ahead since midddlegame) and didn’t want to keep playing (there was a bent-four-in-corner and Chinese rules so could foresee opponent not agreeing it was dead, no unremovable ko threats), but boy did it feel dirty. It seems ruder than asking the opponent if they’d like to resign (which might not have worked as I think they were Chinese), but it’s the new OGS way (and at least has no language barrier)!
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Yesterday I had an opponent do this to me toward the end of a tournament game. They passed twice while I closed a couple of open boundaries. I knew that I was losing badly, but the game was almost over and I had been playing quickly (more or less live in a correspondence game) with reasonable although not outcome-altering moves for the second half. I stopped looking for open boundaries and responded to one of their passes with a pass, and the game got scored with a large chunk of both of our territories left uncounted because the boundary hadn’t been closed.
It wasn’t an enjoyable experience for me, and as for my opponent, it left me wondering why had they entered a tournament that clearly promised such large mismatches? (It was about a 6k difference in rank, played with no handicap.)
It also left me wondering why I had patiently suffered through that one ladder game that took forever against an opponent who seemed to have no idea how to play the game, but I hadn’t wanted to be impolite. That experience just wound up weakening my initial enthusiasm for ladders, and I wound up leaving most of the ladders I had been on.
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If you don’t want big gaps in tournaments, then either join handicap tournaments, or tournaments with a large number of participants.
Right. I was fine with the large gap myself, just not fine with the unfinished tournament game.
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I looked at the game, and I think it’s worth noting that it did not end by “Server Decision”, and your opponent only passed once before you did.
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Yes, we had some further game chat, and it turns out they are new to online play and were still getting the hang of things, so my worries were baseless.
My second attempt to play new OGS-triple-pass-Go failed: I passed 3 times, I was still 100% win, but I forgot it needed to be after move 180 but it was move 160 so the game continued (now just 40 points ahead, not 140). Oh noes! I still need to improve my skills at this variant.
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