What would you do if your opponent forgot to press the clock after playing?
Or if the clock was not pressed fully and the player’s time still runs.
Assume that it is a serious game from a tournament with monetary prizes.
Don’t worry I set the poll not to show names so you can answer truthfully haha.
Tell the opponent that he didn’t press the clock
Continue playing without saying anything but play at your normal speed
Continue playing without saying anything and try to use up more of your opponent’s time
In case you are lazy to click or you don’t want to go to Reddit, the summary is that in the first game of the Ing Cup Finals, nearing the end of the game where there were only a few dame moves left, Ichiriki did not press the clock correctly and his time kept running even though it was not his turn. His opponent Xie Ke seemed to have noticed this and stopped to think for about 20 seconds even though he had been playing very fast before that. As a result, Ichiriki finished using his basic time and had a penalty of 2 points. Thankfully he was leading by 3 points so he still won by 1 point.
Telling the opponent is good sportsmanship, but not telling them is not bad sportsmanship. Pressing the clock and making sure it runs is entirely the obligation of the player who makes the move.
This kind of casual courtesy is very common in local European tournaments with not much money at stake. But in a world-class international tournament with high stakes, I would never expect it.
I had that situation multiple times in competitive chess. (No price money involved though.) Sometimes I told my oppenent, sometimes not. Probably dependent on my mood and how much I liked them. I also had it happen in games part of a team match. There I never told the opponent, since my decision had an impact on my entire team and I felt I had no right to be generous at their expense.
It would happen at times to me in a recent tournament that the opponent wouldn’t press their clock, and I was trying to figure out with Fischer time who gets the advantage here.
If my opponent has 1 hour on the clock, and I have I don’t know like 5 minutes. They’re comfortable and they’re not losing much time comparatively even if I moved on their clock, but what I lose is any possible increment for moves made on their time.
What I mean is, sometimes I’d go to press the clock but notice it’s still unpressed for them, they didn’t press it after their move. So a few times I’d either mention it to them, or I’d press it twice once for them, once for me.
I think the actual problem is that once they do decide to press the clock I’ve missed out on increment if we don’t keep alternating, and so while I might not have used time for some moves I’m also low on time for future moves.
It could have been interesting to distinguish those two scenarios. I may not have the same reaction if my opponent simply forgets to press the clock, vs. does press the clock but for some reason it did not register.
It all boils down to this:
What is the point of winning, if it didn’t happen with your own merit?
If you both played normally and the opponent just run out of time, then you played well and the opponent didn’t manage to respond to your moves in time, thus you’ve earned your victory on your own merit.
If the opponent did respond to your moves, but the clock is malfunctioning or the opponent forgot to press it and they clocked out due to a non-game related reason (technical or medical or otherwise), then you didn’t win anything.
It doesn’t seem like much, but down that path you might end up like this former pro football athlete who in this interview he says (interpretation):
“Hey, I fell down for a fake penalty, but why did you, as the referee have to award it? I am playing to win. I am competitive even against my own child. If you want to be a champion, there is no fair play and BS like that. I want to win. How? With every possible way. I even cheat on my own son at backgammon in order to win.”
I am not a “pro competitor” like that dude and I do not want to win “with every possible way”.
I want to have fun. And self-respect.
With what “face” would you get up from that table and give your hand to your opponent and say “good game”?
Money? If you are a pro then it’s your job. And maybe there’s also “merit” in noticing that your opponent goofed and taking advantage of it
Note: I’d hate to be in that position, and I’d almost certainly tell them … or so I think right now. But I haven’t been in that position, so I don’t actually know how I’d react.
I feel very admiring of the runners who help their winning opponent over the finish line … there are a few well known cases of that.
Yes, I understand that, which is why I quoted that pro. But at the end of the day is the money from one game really enough to sell your integrity? Everyone has a price, I am old enough to understand that, but in the case of Go isn’t just the prize money from one game/tournament a bit too low?
Here is another professional talking about a LOT of money:
I’ve timestamped it, it is just two minutes. Adam is correct. You only get to sell your integrity once.
You might take the money. You might even need it desperately.
But is it worth it?
That is not an easy answer to give.
If you were kicking the other guy under the table to win, sure. But how is just doing nothing in that situation “selling your integrity”? It’s really a stretch.
One could very well say that remembering to press the clock is part of the skills required for a Go tournament. If I remembered to press it each time and you didn’t, that’s part of the game.
Sure, forgetting the clock is a silly mistake that isn’t representative of your actual skill, but so is missing an obvious atari or other blunders that happen from time to time.
This is interesting. I never thought of the scenario in Fischer where not pressing the clock is actually beneficial for them! They can decide not to press in simple situations and only press in difficult situations when you have to think a lot.
I don’t get the point about benefits on waiting to press besides using your time efficiently which seems the same to me if you’re in Byo Yomi or in Fischer? You’ll try to go to the last second.
This exact situation is actually a very good example of how to set the limit.
What happens on the board is “part of the game” and the real skillset required to play the game.
What happens with the clock is not really part of the skillset of the game. In informal games you have no clocks, or in Go clubs - also if you play online the clock is automatically being taken care of by the server and noone has ever proposed a new feature for a setting for having a “manual button to simulate each player hitting their clock” exactly because it is a tedius task not involved with the skillset of the game itself. For added proof, there is no Go book on “Tournament clocks and how to use them”.
So, again, if you make someone timeout due to playing good moves or initiating a complex fight, then you actually used the board-related skillset in order to make the opponent time-out. That is your objective and skillful win, since you both had the same starting time conditions.
If something happened to the opponents’ clock, they forgot to press it or it the button didn’t register or if they somehow ate something bad and they keep going to the toilet and they lost from time due to things unrelated to the board skillset, then would you really go home and say “yeah, that was a good game. I am happy that I played well and won that match”?
If so, ok. All I am saying is that I wouldn’t.
I might even consider resigning, if I was obviously losing the game. (I have added time in my opponents’ clocks in DGS a couple of times in order to avoid that - avoid resigning, not losing. Iirc, I lost all those games anyway).
Those are on the board and thus are part of the actual game.
I’ve lost a tournament game that I was winning by 20 points, because of a self-atari and the fact that the opponent wouldn’t resign hoping for such a miracle to happen. The opponent had patience with the situation on the board, I got careless (again, with the situation on the board) and I made a mistake on the board. That way he could have been happy to have turned the tables and won, based on what happened on the board.
My flimsy internet or power supply could have also gone down and I could have disconnected and timed out, while the board was still 20 points in my favour.
My opponent would have won in that case as well, but would that really have been his victory?
If you didn’t notice it either, then it is not your fault.
But the original premise is that you DID notice what happened and thus the dilemma.
In this case, deciding to “do nothing” means that you are taking advantage of someone else’s mistake in order to gain/win something you do not deserve.
It is not a stretch at all.
It is a very similar thing with seeing someone walking on the street in front of you with their wallet almost ready to fall out of their pocket/bag/whatever.
You can: a) Warn them and let them keep their wallet. b) Do nothing, the wallet drops and you ignore the person and the wallet and keep walking. (I have no issue with that since you gain nothing.) c) Do nothing, while thinking “oh, when this wallet drops I am getting some free money. Yeehaaaw!”.
Both in B and C you “did nothing”, but in case C, you also actively chose “doing nothing” in order to gain some profit which you did not deserve.
There is no rule nor law that says that C is illegal. It is a matter of ethics.
Anyway, just to be clear, that’s why we have a poll and a discussion, to see the different opinions.
If you consider it a stretch then I obviously have no problem with it. I am just explaining my view, since you asked about it. I do not have anything else to add to this topic.
The rules of the game I’m playing with my opponent include managing the clock that sits next to the board, so it would be fair to consider it as “part of the game”.
To be fair, I do agree there is a limit, just not the same as you. For instance if I win by forfeit because my opponent could not play due to health issues I wouldn’t say this was part of the game. The difference is that being healthy depends on external circumstances beyond one’s control, while managing the clock is just part of the rules of the game we’re playing and it’s fully on you if you fail.
In informal games you have no clocks, or in Go clubs
First, that heavily depends on your club or your friends, there’s plenty of Go clubs using clocks, and I use one most of the times with friends as well. Past discussions on the forum show this is very variable.
Second, I’m not sure why this would be an argument anyway? At best this would mean that a tournament game may have slightly different rules than a casual game. But if we’re playing a tournament game, the tournament rules define what is “part of that game”, and that includes pressing the clock.
would you really go home and say “yeah, that was a good game. I am happy that I played well and won that match”?
Not really because I just won due to a stupid mistake. But my point is that this is exactly the same to me as winning due to my opponent missing an obvious atari or playing some other stupid blunder that should have been a no-brainer.
In both cases, I would be likely to point out such silly mistake to my opponent in a casual setting; not so much in a tournament.
