What happened to you can be frustrating. I suggest working on your basics and reading. You need to know if your area has bad aji or not and how to deal with your opponents attacks. Or just understand that some people that play ranked matches have different values and try to win. With good etiquette or no.

See it as a challenge to overcome or avoid ranked.

I do a similar thing with weaker DDKs at our club. I tell them if you can't see why it's alive make me prove it's alive. Ditto with connections or whether a cut works or not, if it's not obvious then test it. I often leave unsettled groups hang around for a while to encourage them to experiment. It is important though, some shapes are alive if and only if you know why the placement/invasion/whatever doesn't work. You can easily amass a collection of living shapes that you make life with if you're not careful.

This caught me this week:

Click Here To Show Diagram Code

[go]$$B
$$ . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . X . X . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . O , O . . |
$$ . . . . a . . . |
$$ . . . . . 1 2 . |
$$ . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . O O . . |
$$ . . . . O X . . |
$$ . . . . , X . . |
$$ . . X . X . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . |
$$ . . . . . . . . |
$$ ----------------+[/go]

I don't remember anyone ever invading at into that shape in one of my games. My first instinct was a, I misread something, decided it didn't work and went with instead. is a totally unreasonable move, but it worked and erased the lead I'd built up in the fuseki.

You make a good point about being willing to try things. But it seems to me that you made at least two reading errors. Part of reading is the assessment of results, and you did not assess the results after as unsatisfactory and unreasonable.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I'm really surprised by all the posts saying it's the op's fault for making the mistake and he should work on his reading. It goes without saying that everyone still has things to learn but who cares? That's completely irrelevant to issue of time scummers. Even if there's a skill level where this doesn't work, it's a poor motivator for getting people there, and telling those that just want to have fun that they need to study harder to avoid bad experiences seems unlikely to do anything other than thin the herd.

I'm not sure what 'time scummers' are.

The original poster had territory he thought was his. (As far as I'm aware, territory still only belongs to you if you can keep it.) Someone else didn't think that territory was secure and played inside it. The op decided to ignore it, lost stones in a group that wasn't as secure as he thought, called the opponent names and escaped, then came here to rant some more.

Yes, it's a game we play for fun. We all make mistakes in Go, and to me, someone playing (possibly) unreasonable moves at the end of a game does far less to kill the fun than a guy who has a tantrum when he loses.

Post the kifu, if you want somebody to agree that the opponent's moves were unreasonable and ridiculous. We only really know that they worked.

Think about this, though: When you say "I lost horribly because my evil opponent played dirty tricks I couldn't see through" instead of "I lost horribly because I made one really stupid mistake," aren't you giving your opponent all the credit for the win?

Well, I for one, being a weak player, can’t really talk about the OP’s way to play, but I do question the attitude of somebody who …

• states explicitly that they hate people (instead of, for example, disliking the way they behave), and who …
• blames and even insults the opponent when they are losing.

_________________
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

Well it seems that my pre-nap reading of this thread was quite different from my post-nap reading.

Edit: Which is to say I take back what I said.
Edit2: Though I do think the op may have had good reason for being annoyed his reaction was clearly out of line.



A scummer is someone who in some way abuses a game system. It doesn't necessarily have such a negative connotation as you might imagine as in single player games it can be a good way to adjust difficulty to match your own desired challenge level.

It was a reaction of anger. Those are usually bad. Not to say that anger excuses everything, but most of us lowly humans aren't at our best when we're extremely pissed.

However, the routine "he's in byoyomi, let's just keep adding stones until he overlooks an atari"* is a jerk routine. It's something people plan and do as a habit. Not something they do by mistake or in the heat of the moment. It's chronical bad attitude and I find it very distasteful.

*this isn't the same as not knowing if a move works and trying it to find out, and obviously we can't tell how big the benefit of doubt should be in this case. But the attitude the OP talks about does exist. I've even been encouraged to play like that by a fellow club member in the past

How do you feel about insisting on filling in all the dame to see if your opponent overlooks an atari or shortage of liberties when your opponent is in byo-yomi? How do you feel about me starting a complicated life and death problem in the corner against you if you're in your last 10s byo-yomi? What about cutting and starting a very complicated fight? All these things are seriously impacted by you being in byo-yomi, same as someone filling in your territory. All that'll change as you get stronger in rank is people will start using less crude approaches to try and encourage you to make an error, filling in someone's territory usually won't catch a 2k but starting some complicated life and death problem in the corner might if they're under time pressure. Time is a resource, if you've gained an advantage on the board by using more time earlier then surely it's ok for me to use my extra time now to my advantage?

Sure they're using factors outside of the board to affect the game but you agreed to a timed game so...

I 100% agree. When I said I retracted my earlier post I meant that I'm no longer sure it applies to this specific situation. I still stand by it as a generalisation.



Sure there are times when the line is unclear but for some people that's because they've gone way way too far past it. I've had games where my opponent is the first to reach byo yomi in a game they have clearly lost and yet they continue to play not just in to endgame but after that as well. Most examples are much less extreme but if the attitude remains the same then it's not okay and the specifics of what's on the board are only significant to the extent that they demonstrate what the players are thinking. I do think it's okay to make game decisions based on relative time left in the bank.

Byoyomi doth make fools of us all.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Sure, I consider it rude and I don't advocate playing moves you know don't work in your opponent's territory to anyone learning from me. It's usually not against the rules though and if someone cares enough about winning to try something like this they're more than entitled to do it. What they're not entitled to is for you to ever give them another game. Put them on ignore/block/whatever, resign if you don't feel like continuing and move on to the next game and forget about them.

It is fun to see whenever I make a thread how it changes and turns in direction.

I used this forum as a tool to vent out some anger, as writing out your problems help.

I still find the conduct of the player I faced very unbecoming. I like to believe that go is something very special when we put our full attention into a game. A duel of the minds. When someone displays such behavior behind a screen it is rude and when for some reason it causes me to mess up it is very frustrating.

Time is a resource that should be used strategically. I personally often feel restricted by time but know that it is a part of the game.

Its just a game... I really dislike this phrase. Even though I am not very good at it I have spent hundreds of hours studying and playing go. As I mentioned before I see go as a duel of the minds. With all of its history and spirit go might even be something sacred. Should you tell a painter that it is just painting? An author that it is just a book? If you play go haphazardly and don't really study or play, fine then it is just a game. But when you use go to better yourself it transcends that.

I am reminded of Hanlon's razor:

“Do not attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.”

Sure, it is possible that your opponent was maliciously trying to frustrate you and win on time with what he knew were pointless moves. But given that he is only 11 kyu, he may also have simply considered the situation beyond his reading ability. And as others have pointed out, it is quite common to teach beginners that it never hurts to try (I do so too).

We have a bunch of DDK level players at our club, and I often see them doing this kind of thing. They'll play small endgame, then suddenly try an invasion. Not out of malice, but simply out of inexperience and an inability to accurately read it out. And sometimes it works, even though it shouldn't, because their opponent makes a mistake (because hey, they're DDK too!).

Now the advantage at our club is that it is all over the board, where there is no anonymity barrier, where your opponent is a real person sitting right across the table from you, quite obviously equally engrossed in the game. Where it is quite obvious no malice is involved. Nobody at our club would even think about trying to annoy their opponent into resigning, or trying to make them run out of time. And also, nobody would even think about flipping out and calling their opponents names.

So please, next time, give your opponent the benefit of the doubt. You may have felt like he ruined your day, but have you considered that your reaction may have come totally out of the blue for him? That he was as much engrossed in the "duel of minds" as you were? That he got an unexpected success in a difficult position, was quite happy to have managed that, and then suddenly had some random stranger on the internet flip out on him and ruin his day?

How timely. I recently posted about the other side of this. What if you don't know if you should play into an area? Or, what if you think trying might yield some gains of the opponent makes a mistake. I was worried that people would respond exactly as the OP did. The consensus however is ..... go for it. Nothing is settled territory until it is truly settled territory. And ignored territory is rarely ever settled.

/shrug

After that previous post and discussion, I am of the mind that even obvious bad moves are still worthy moves. Not time stalling mind you, that is a bit different. But clearly bad moves to see if the opponent might play elsewhere and let your bad move be turned good? Just feels like a different form of Ko threat proposition to me.

Indeed, time stalling is bad -- which seems to be what is actually at issue here (though it too could have been unintentional)

I agree with that core sentiment.

That said, this is why I prefer the timing system where you get X minutes for Y moves instead, whatever they call that system that IGS defaults to. Remember, friends don't let friends play 10 second byo.

At any rate, learning to play calmly in your own territory under pressure is a part of Go, though. They'll be games where your opponent isn't just fishing for a kill. They'll be times where you get caught up in a desperate Ko fight that decides the game and now everything is a threat. Other times there is legit aji and you have to play correctly to prevent a seki or ko from developing.

I suppose one of the other things that helps is being confident in your counting. If you're distinctly ahead and your opponent is desperately trying to time-scum you why tenuki? How does that punish him if he's already losing? Answer him stone-for-stone in settling your own group as directly as possible. It costs you nothing. Instead of him ratcheting up your anxiety you are repeatedly beating him, over and over, until all his pathetic wiggling and worming ends in utter humiliation. It can be a great time to work on your diabolically laughter technique too.

Marty Lund

I'm working my rank up on IGS and very often I find it useful to just start removing opponent's groups when I have a big enough lead. It removes aji and reduces the chances that an opponent will want to continue.

Making two eyes and reducing aji in your position is also worthwhile if you have that big enough lead.

If you don't have that big a lead. It's fair for an opponent to try to find a chance.

Is it not rather N=1 for IGS?