Which opponent do you like: the one who knows how to use resign button, or the one who just keep continue playing to see the scoring?

you clearly win the game and impossible for your opponent to reverse the condition

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If you know which you like, you can find out if your potential opponent is the kind you like at GotStats.

Thereā€™s a pie chart in there that shows how the player choses to lose their losses.

This is my chart:

It says ā€œthis guy mostly resigns if he is losingā€

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Personally, I really enjoy playing games through to scoring, including full dame (mostly for aesthetics), but I donā€™t mind if my opponent resigns (and if they pass with all territory sealed Iā€™ll pass too). I canā€™t recall what my own internal decision process is for resigning myself. Been too long since I played regularly :sweat_smile:

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I prefer playing games to scoring including dame, but I donā€™t mind resignations anymore, and have therefore stepped up how often I resign

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When the game is not close at all, I prefer resignations over playing a boring endgame. In a game between players around my level (3d), when one player has a huge lead and there is virtually no chance of a reversal, I feel itā€™s disrespectful when the trailing player keeps on playing the endgame while their only hope is that the leading player will make multiple silly blunders.
Even worse is if they play on in a hopeless situation for a hundred moves while nothing really changes, and then they resign just before the game goes to scoring.

But my judgement is completely different when the trailing player is weaker than mid-SDK. If the players donā€™t have the skills necessary to judge if their situation is hopeless, I wonā€™t hold it against them if they keep playing.

Also in large handicap games itā€™s different. The black player starts with a huge lead, but of course white shouldnā€™t resign on their first move. Only if white failed to shrink blackā€™s lead to some 20 points around the start of the large endgame, I may feel that white should resign (assuming that white has the time and skill necessary to roughly evaluate the situation at that stage).

Edit: There is a game in my game history where by my own standards I should have resigned at some point around move 161: Partidă Amicală
I donā€™t remember playing this game in May 2021, but I might excuse myself by noting that this was a blitzy 20 minute game where I gave 8 stones handicap.

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I like both options, when they are meaningful.

If an opponent is 50 points behind and they keep playing nonsense moves, then AI doesnā€™t catch my potential mistakes and thereā€™s nothing for me there to review.

But if my opponent manages to lose by 30 points instead of 50 because they found a weakness and they kill one of my groups, I consider this a good learning opportunity and I eagerly play to the end.

I guess for higher levels thereā€™s not really room for such learning opportunities, but for me I prefer to play to scoring, if my opponent feels the same.

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This is one of the age-old questions even historical Go figures asked hundreds of years ago.

One of the famous records I recently saw from Hayashi Genbi had a section about what he thought about playersā€™ resignations (ęž—å…ƒē¾Ž, the 11th head of the Hayashi Go House in the Edo period, one of the most knowledgable Go players at the time). He said that when Go was about gambling, it made sense for players to play to the end and count the scores. However, if they were playing in a castle game format, why would they still play to the end instead of resigning earlier? And he made the case that older records (compared to his time in the mid-19th century) almost always had players play to the scoring, even for up to 49 points (with many famous Go players playing to 20+ points even 30+ scoring). But his contemporary players would resign when it was just about 10-point difference, and some would even get angry when it was just a 4-point difference, where they might have been playersā€™ own tendency to not give up in ancient times out of their own characters (ę°£éŖØ, sort of hard to translate)

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I donā€™t mind playing until scoring, even if my opponent is way behind, this can be good endgame practice. On the other hand, I find it annoying when my opponent plays until the end, passes to see the score, and resigns instead of accepting the score.

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Agree with this answer. Sometimes we need to be more patient if opponent has lower rank, maybe my opponent wants to practice end game to close the gap.

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That was something I hatred in the face to face world but online I care less because score is quite easy to get.

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Not necessarily. It could say ā€œThis guy keeps getting into the sort of all-or-nothing fights that make the endgame irrelevantā€ (-:

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Depends on the context. In slower games where Iā€™ve got time to count properly, if I know Iā€™m 20+ points ahead, Iā€™ll be playing some slack endgame moves, giving away a few points to avoid the game getting complicated. Itā€™s not interesting for me, and itā€™s not the type of play that helps a weaker opponent to learn.

Itā€™s especially annoying in an in-person club setting: if someone spends two hours or more playing out an obviously lost endgame, meaning that I only get to play one game that day and miss out on a second game, then Iā€™d very much prefer to see a resignation.

Then again, Iā€™ve never been fond of blitz. I guess the equation looks a bit different if youā€™re only talking an extra few minutes. And if youā€™re playing so fast you donā€™t have time to count, itā€™s all a bit more exciting (-:

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Eh, I like to see the score.
Then again, I can see the score on this site if my opponent resigns.

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Would you tell your opponent : please resign, you can see the score later. no need to continue meaningless moves.

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^^ No, this has been discussed, and the conclusion is ā€œPlease donā€™t do thatā€.

There really is no way to do this without being rude.

The correct way to say ā€œthe game is overā€ is by passing.

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Under some condition in extreme cases this is called stalling and there is in fact policies applied on OGS against that.

But in a more general way, I wonā€™t tell my opponent because itā€™s even more rude as what heā€™s doing in many cases.

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Yes - if the other playing is stalling - really playing meaningless moves after you passed - then tell the moderation team with a report, donā€™t get rude with them.

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I donā€™t think you can read it this way correctly.

There are players who continue the game to ā€œfind out the scoreā€ even after losing all-or-nothing fights.

Sometimes Iā€™ll leave a note in Malkovitch chat ā€œmy opponent should have resigned at this point, the score is approximately W+161ā€. Then it will not put pressure on them during the game, but they still may learn some resignation etiquette when Malk chats become visible after.

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If my opponent sends ā€œ???ā€ in the chat, clearly indicating that they donā€™t want me to use my time reading, I tend to take it as a cue that taking my time with my moves might be a good psychological weapon against that player, lol

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