There’s no way this should be reportable - this should not be controversial.
Could be controversial: continuing to play all remaining moves of nonzero point value. Some people think this is rude when the game is clearly lost, and there is some merit to this argument: it can turn what should be a 10 minute game into a 45 minute game for essentially no benefit. In my opinion it’s fine for people to practice their endgame in lost positions, and when starting a game you should be prepared for the possibility that the game will go for as long as the time settings allow, but I can see the other point of view.
Can’t be controversial: resigning rather than counting, given that all moves of nonzero point value have been played. If your opponent does this, you have lost nothing. Like, literally nothing. You can immediately use the software to find out what the score would have been. What is there to debate here?
I think I may notice this more often in 9x9 too, in my personal experience (online) – some fairly good 9x9 (mid dan) players resign close to the end (within 2-4 moves of the last moves to close all territories, or at the end), even when it’s a 0,5 point game (which many would typically score) & that doesn’t feel impolite to me.
(often like it involves one or both of those two quotes, at the least)
And in contrast, some other dan players I play with resign even full 19x19s close to the end with a small (2,5-4,5 point) margin too. (something which many would go to scoring with)
I’ve also considered resigning with said players in return, when a small gap doesn’t seem surmountable in the yose.
(or even in general against anyone, in close 19x19 games in yose/late yose where I don’t think I can catch up the 3,5-4,5 point gap against a fairly solid player)
Edit : Other players whom I have played, say something to the effect, online or in person, that they aren’t able to catch up the amount they are behind/it’s impossible (which can be a little or a lot), sometimes rather close to the end – and it feels like one or more of the 3 things @dexonsmith listed; but not impolite or meant to be anitclimactic about not doing the final count.
So the etiquette and intentions can differ from player to player, I think.
I would not call something like this stalling, which typically refers to pointlessly prolonging a game and refusing to concede in clearly lost position. Resigning immediately ends the game, so it really is quite a different thing.
It’s possible that the opponent may have mistakenly thought that they were winning, but only realized at the very end that they had miscounted and were actually behind, and hence resigned at that point.
Even if player realizes that they are in a losing position, it’s reasonable and allowed for them to play the game out to scoring (provided that they aren’t making needless time wasting moves along the way). So, even if they decided at the very last minute (right before scoring) to resign the game instead, is that rude? Or are they maybe just trying to save their opponent some time with the mechanics of scoring? Even if we imagine that someone has done so with the worst of intentions (i.e., they meant for it to be insulting and rude), it seems like a fairly minor transgression and indistinguishable (unless other things are said or done) from other harmless and reasonable cases.
Thus, I recommend giving people the benefit of the doubt in such cases, as it does no good to oneself to assume the worst in others.
Overall I’m bit annoyed about all the noise around “losing your time”. Unless it’s proved that there is that goal in your opponent mind, finishing a game may just be what he wants and none can blame it.
This is a good way to express it - it is logically impossible for the act of resigning to be a form of stalling. It’s of course possible that some form of stalling happened BEFORE the resignation - but that would be the reportable conduct, not resigning.
Interesting insight. I think you’re right that there’s a different feeling about it.
When I regularly played face-to-face (had to look up “FTF”!), which was about a decade ago, I don’t remember resigning close games. Counting together was part of the ritual, before replaying the game and reviewing together. Late resignations only seemed to happen if someone had to go (or we were getting kicked out), or after an endgame blunder that made the game no longer close.
(As a side note: coming back to Go after some years off, I still haven’t recovered the skill to memorize a game while playing it. I guess it’s not as immediately useful, since the game record shows up “for free”, so I’ve been lazy and not practicing it. I think my playing suffers from not having redeveloped it, though, and that replay-and-review ritual is something I miss from in-person.)
I personally feel like its bad etiquette to resign right at the end, but its not against the rules. I mean, sometimes on real board i’ve seen players finishing the game and one player just saying that “no need to count, i lost by a lot”, but i dont think theres anything fundamentally wrong with that.
Why are we so concerned with other humans being perhaps slightly rude and whether we should report them to OGS, when the OGS server itself is more rude/cheating (giving hints to players during scoring, obscuring clocks with notification during games, forcing you to lose games the AI judges you behind if your opponent passes 3 times in middlegame (rude in itself), allowing analysis in live games)?
Oh sorry I meant the counting (or maybe better called estimation) one does before boundaries are completed. Totally agree counting is fast after the game ends regardless of settings.
This is just silly. Feature that you personally don’t like are not “rude”. They are there to serve a purpose that helps players, and they’re always a compromise of some sort. The fact that you personally would choose a different compromise doesn’t make the server itself “rude”. What is rude is interjecting your pet feature peeves into an unrelated thread…
Your criticism of my post (a wordier way to say “chill” by comparing to bigger problem behaviours that OGS endorses) could equally be applied to the original complaint about resigning:
This (thread) is just silly. Feature/behaviour (resigning just before passing) that you personally don’t like are not “rude”. They are there to serve a purpose that helps players (ending the game when they think they’ve lost), and they’re always a compromise of some sort (the other player might want to keep playing). The fact that you personally would choose a different compromise/behaviour (not resigning just before counting) doesn’t make the server/behaviour itself “rude”. What is rude is interjecting your pet feature peeves into an unrelated thread…(ok yeah, there’s no analogue to this).
It’s not very polite, but nothing more. Neither the rules of Go nor Go etiquette regulate when a player can give up and when not.
However, I don’t see a problem with such a surrender. In the end, your opponent lost, so you won. What is the problem?
