I completely disagree. Go, at its heart, is a game of mental skill and not one of hand dexterity. The so-called “brain misclick” is just the prosaic “mistake” or “blunder”. If one or both players don’t have to take responsibility for their mental mistakes on the board then the game is going to be neither legitimate or satisfying.
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I will not be satisfied if I win because blunder of opponent.
So I always accept undo. I’m always OK with chance to see more interesting move.
When we are not in serious tournament, its just a game. No one have to take it seriously. I watch anime when playing, for example.
I don’t like to click “undo” myself, didn’t do it for a year, but I’m happy to accept undo requests of others.
In chess and many other games too simple mistakes are possible too. So “too simple mistakes” have nothing to do with Go.
If keyboard will become part of my brain with technology of future, will it always be “mental” errors and never “mechanical” misclics? Why should it matter if something is mental or mechanical?
I think it only matters if Go move has any sense or not.
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I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I think it’s more that an SDK will make a “20k mistake” from time to time, just less often than a 20k. Similarly for a Dan but much less often and I guess even pros are not infallible and could make such mistakes. I would just expect that it would be very rare.
In other words if an SDK never makes a “20k mistake”, I don’t think they’d be SDK still!
I don’t think this is a very good analogy. Writing and typing is an iterative process by one person and going back, editing and proofing are part of that process. Go is a mind sport between two opponents. Part of the game is thinking and placing a stone and then not moving it. There is no editing in Go. We make allowances for misclicks (I think the IRL equivalent would be dropping a stone while about to play it) but I think those situations should be obvious physical mishaps not just a failure to remember a vital move at some point in the game for example.
Anyway, I understand there are a range of views. I am in the camp of not asking for undos (I think I have only once, hardly more) and just live with my mistakes while I never refuse an undo if asked. But I don’t think undos are really part of the game, just a feature to deal with truly exceptional events. (In my case, a child bumped me while I was considering a move on my phone, I dropped the phone and in trying to catch it accidentally played a 1-1 point somehow. I feel that kind of external factor is the type of thing undos are for. If I’m a bit careless with mouse clicking that’s on me)
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Happened to me too IRL. I wanted to place a stone at A but put it at B.
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When talking about fairness, I think we have to make a distinction about the purpose or goal of the game.
On one side there is the game in a tournament setting, where competition, time management and stress are very important factors of the game. On the other hand, there is casual games, where it is more about both players enjoying themselves and about the core game of Go.
I’d say that undo requests of any kind start appearing more unreasonable the closer the setting is to a tournament setting compared to a casual setting, while not allowing undo’s in a very casual setting is perhaps a bit silly.
However, there is another way of looking at it in a competitive setting, where we assume time controls are of no issue: namely when both players are trying to show the best possible game they could play. In this setting, ideally, both players at the end of the game would need to have the opinion that at no point they could’ve made a better decision than the one they did during the game. In a way both opponents should be so assured of their own strategy and strength, that it does not matter if their opponent chooses a different move: you’re already playing the best move you could.
Perhaps it is comparable to sharing a cake. One person cuts the cake, the other chooses which piece to take. But, to keep both people happy, if the first person cuts the cake, and then is convinced they were slightly off, for example because it looks less fair after cutting than they were expecting, then it is in the interest of fairness to let the person redistribute the cake again. In the end this will allow both people to feel they could not have made better decisions to get a larger piece. If the person is only allowed to cut once and live with it, they may regret cutting at a slightly wonky angle.
I think @stone.defender’s position here is that the goal is to achieve the best game possible where both players are satisfied, rather than trying to win at the cost of a player feeling they could’ve played better.
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I now think that there are two valid ways to look at the competitive aspect of Go from the perspective of a player in match:
- You want yourself and your opponent to deliver the best play you can. => you allow undo requests even for blunders and thinkos. (In my club, we sometimes point out blunders to each other, saying things like “no man, you gotta connect, it’s atari”)
- You want to see whose mind has the most stamina: if you blunder or misclick, you should have been more careful => no undo requests are granted.
So do you want to see the optimal play or the optimal player? Do you want to win because you can think of better moves or because you can keep a cool and steady head?
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I think my issue is that I don’t see these two things as the same type of thing that should be treated the same.
I’d say both as I don’t think they are mutually exclusive
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Hm, well, one is a slip of the mind, and the other one of the hand. Although I agree, that a hand is not as easy to control as the mind, so a misclick by reasons of medical issues or hardware problems is not within control of the player, yes.
But there are players who do not grant a single undo. And I think we both will agree, that this is in some cases unfair, because it precisely is treating blunders and misclicks as the same thing, yes?
So still, you are either not lenient and always say “what has happened, has happened”, demanding the optimal player, mentally and physically; or you grant requests in general (I’m not saying “always”) because you want your opponent to play as best as they can.
You’re right, I think, they’re not mutually exclusive: if you have the optimal player, you can expect their optimal play. And if you yourself are in good form, you make good moves.
Maybe it is also a question of the players’ level. On some levels it’s the first to make a mistake who loses, on others it’s the one who makes one mistake less.
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Absolutely. I think (maybe due to excessive Britishness) I’m of the school that you should always grant but never ask (except for really exceptional circumstances).
I might go further and say that the undo system should be predicated on an offer from the other player… But now I’m drifting into “features that will never be implemented”
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as in… “your move is terrible, do you want to undo?” ???
That would make me feel terrible!!! 
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I’ve been wondering about this for a while. Has anyone tried playing a game (not necessarily go) with a formalized permitted undo system? For example, say you are always allowed to undo up to four moves, for any reason. Obviously you would need something to prevent it from going on forever.
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I know people have used undos as a sort of handicap. In fact, in club this seems to be preferred to going heavy on stones.
I think katrain has a mode for this as well (I don’t use katrain yet, that’s just what I’ve heard)
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yes (maybe)
I’m not talking about exact numbers, I’m talking about idea. You can think about 2dan making 22kyu mistakes if you wish.
When you are not serious, you can make errors in ANY work or game. Skill of being able to be serious or not being serious has nothing to do with Go, its just part of any human.
When 2dan is serious, he will never do 22kyu mistakes. When 2dan eating cake and listening to music he may do 22kyu errors - its not because he forgot joseki, its because he stopped being serious.
UNDO button is way to emulate game of serious tournament while not destroying fun.
When someone wishes to have cake and high quality game at the same time, he may request undo - and I’m happy to let them have both.
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Well that explains all my blunders!
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Worth it TBH
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OMG NOOOO, virtually ALL my games would have to be annulled.
not really worth clicking here 🐶
Mh… mine are quite lyric, I believe, sometimes with the lyrics in M log 
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Well not really a formalized system, but once I played a tournament game in real life with a good friend and we started to grant undo for each other.
That lead to some awful situation and feeling that it’s the one who don’t ask the last undo which is going to lose…
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I accepted an undo in good faith as a “misclick”. When you do it you do expect a move on a neighbouring space, not the other
side of the board. That isn’t a misclick
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Last year I had a period with apparently shaky hands (or not so good hand-eye coordination). So sometimes my stones landed too early or too late somewhere half a board away from where I intended to place it.
The first few times I asked for an undo and got it. But later I decided to stop asking for undo’s. Had some very entertaining games.
Long story short: a miss click can be all over the board and the move that replace it
doesn’t necessarily have to be close to the accidental point.
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