Life In 19x19

deja wrote:I'm looking at this in terms of a regularly timed game.

"Regularly timed games" have a reasonable byo-yomi or some other form of overtime, so this strategy will not work anyway.

Respecting your opponent means playing your best game, which means doing everything allowed within the rules to win. Resigning when you could win is condescending, I feel.

My stance is that its not unethical and I would not oppose my opponent doing it, but neither is it something I would like to do myself to anyone.

I think that games with absolute time settings clearly presuppose that some ways of exploiting the time pressure are unethical. Otherwise, if the sole purpose of the players is winning, the game quickly degenerates into something that I, personally, would not call go anymore. To my mind blitz-games with byo-yomi, too, are slightly degenerated games, though they still qualify for the name of go as long as a minimum of ethical obligations are acknowledged by the players (such as not playing meaningless moves in order to win on time). Time settings that reduce time pressure to a minimum - or no time setting at all - come closest to the true and pure spirit of go, as I see it.

Go without time pressure would still be go, but what would go be without ethics?

If the opponent runs out of time(or makes a mistake) in byo-yomi it's his fault, if he runs out of time in absolute time games it's the rules fault. Since go is simply not made to be played with absolute time.