I would like to hear your opinion on what to do (if you would do anything at all) in a game where you are 50+ points ahead and your opponent “player X” has no real chance to win, but he still continues playing.
And I would like to hear your opinion on second variation, where is true all above, plus that you both are participating in 10 players correspondence tournament, games of everybody else except games of “player X” are already finished and that player is in many cases continuing to play already decided games, which he can not win. What would you do, if you would do anything at all?
Thank you for honest answers in advance both in general and in specific variation of described situation
Motylek
Whilst it can be annoying , there is no rule against it . I find it is usually the lower ranked players who do this , and they might not be aware how far behind they are . Also they might be playing it out , hoping to learn something . We were all beginners once , so please have some patience . That said , a gentle prompt may encourage them to end it . Live and let live
[quote=“Motylek, post:1, topic:5453”]
I would like to hear your opinion on what to do (if you would do anything at all) in a game where you are 50+ points ahead and your opponent “player X” has no real chance to win, but he still continues playing.[/quote]
No REAL change? But some small and unlikely change exists? Some aji still left to explore?
I think that if there is even a slight possibility to turn the tables, it’s totally cool to continue playing.
While i agree that over 50 points margin is HUGE, but if your opponent has still something to do, let him play it
And i suggest you play solid moves and keep your winning margin, no reasons to take risks, you can let him/her take some points here and there in order to avoid complications.
Why not just wait that even those games finish eventually, what’s the rush?
EDIT: i think i have the idea of what tournament/player you are referring to, and in this case… most likely he joined that tournament to learn, not to win games, and you can’t really expect him to be able to judge whole board situation correctly.
When playing in real life, with a friend who is few stones weaker, I sometimes resort to politely noting that the game is as good as over and show him why I think that and encourage him to prove me wrong. (Especially beginners just don’t see — yet — that there is nothing to be done.)
Online, however, I make no such remarks (unless we have specified beforehand that it is OK to comment during the game) and play it out to the end. I welcome it as an exercise in patience.
Unless I suspect my opponent times his moves with intent to manipulate me into timeout, I see no problem with him continuing to play a clearly lost game. The 50+ points margin typically means he’s significally weaker than I, so chances are he wasn’t playing to win in the first place.
As for tournaments, it’s not uncommon to have one or two really slow participants who take forever to finish their games. That’s their right and that’s just how correspondence tournaments are. I’ve stopped to worry about this looong ago.
I’m not a terribly fast player myself, so sometimes it’s my games everyone waits to complete… although usually there is somebody playing slower than me.
For me it varies, depending on the strength of the player in question, and the status of the board.
In my eyes, continuing to play a game when the only way you can possibly win is for your opponent to blunder is disrespectful, so admittedly if I’m facing a player of even rank, and am ahead in such a way, I’ll become a little bit cross if they insist on playing out the game.
that said, everyone has their own thing they want to get out of their experience, and for some people playing the game out will yield some answer they were curious about, so I try not to let it get to me so much.
With players significantly weaker than myself, while the act of finishing the game might be tedious, I’m perfectly chill with them finishing, if for no other reason than because gaining practice in being able to tell when a game is over is invaluable, and (as mentioned above) most of the time they’re probably honestly unaware of just how far behind they are.
During the Sunjang baduk tournament, I played against a 13k player who insisted upon playing to the end. I broke ahead by a huge margin early on, and by the time yose started, I was up by 90 points, but it was still a kinda fun experience to see it through to the end
