Resignation II (Go)
Posted by Rob Herman at March 16th, 2006
Tuesday’s article sparked a couple of discussions. One quick, one longer.
First, king-and-rook vs. lone king is an easy drill. Kids learn it in half an hour. My opponent on that fateful day knew it himself and knew I knew it cold. This was not an example of “maybe I could learn something by watching the rest of this game,” which is an acceptable reason to keep going.
[EDIT: I’m going to leave this the way it was written for context, but Fuleng posted a better description of Go resignation etiquitte himself in the comments.]
Next, reader-and-sometimes-commenter Fuleng plays Go at amateur shodan level, or close to it. (My sense is that this is something like a USCF rating of 1800-2000 or so.) Evidently the etiquette in that game is very different from Chess. First, unlike Chess, Go has a margin of victory. At the end of a Go game, you add up and compare the territory controlled by each player. Many American players, evidently, like to play each game to the end, to try for the best score even if it means a loss.
However, in Go culture there is a sense that the stronger player is doing the weaker player a favor by playing against him. (Some might say deigning.) Given this mindset, and the fact that the weaker player also starts with handicap stones on the board, strong players often expect a resignation as soon as the position is decided. These players are insulted and offended when the weaker player fights on. And not without reason: They correctly claim that playing through an unbalanced game is nothing like playing a real game. Conservative play isn’t that difficult in Go, and the player who’s already given up for lost has no reason to play well and see how a game develops from there.
A note of cultural and game comparison: Chess offers more opportunities than Go for risky play to pay off. So a 400-point upset is nothing unheard of, while a 4k upset in a no-handicap game is rare. Unless the margin of strength is larger than this, stronger players seem fairly willing to play weaker ones. Also, a blitz game of Chess (game in 5 minutes per side, often done in less), takes less time than a blitz game of Go (game in 5-15 minutes per side, but it probably takes the whole time).
Uh… almost. Actually, only a very pompous American or European strong player will be offended by a late resignation or no resignation, even if the situtation is extremely clear cut. In Japan, the situtation is very different, so it is probably closer to being accurate to say that in in _Japanese_ Go culture there is a sense that the stronger player is doing the weaker player a favor by playing against him. The best expression of this feeling I’ve seen is from an online journal kept by a Japanese go professional living in Italy, who was initially quite shocked that Americans played until the bitter end. I can’t find the exact quote, but she said that she realized one day that to Americans, it’s just a game. She wrote that a Japanese player might play a game of Mahjong even while far behind, because to them Mahjong and many other games are “just a game” in a way that Go evidently is not. I can’t really describe the difference in cultural thought better than that.
This also extends to the idea that a stronger player “deigns” to play a weaker one to some degree. In Japan, this is very true, but then Japanese society is very stratified, so people ’superior’ to you deign to do a lot of things Americans would take for granted. In Japan, anyone older than you who teaches you anything is your “sensei,” with real Mr. Miyagi-type expectations of reciprocal duty and obligation. In the more relaxed American go scene, it is understood that a stronger player is being nice, and you should thank them after the game, but it’s also true that a strong player who refuses to play with weak players is considered to be something of a jackass. Only the very loftiest of master level players are afforded a little more latitude.
I really can’t say much about the Go scene in other Asian countries.
Also, to better describe why a resignation might be expected, imagine a game where there are ten “cards” up for grabs - once a player has won a card, he places it in front of him and it cannot be moved or discarded, and whoever gets the most cards wins. Clearly, when a player has six cards, he will know he has already won, and would not be considered overly rude to point out to his opponent that even if he wins every victory for the rest of the game, he still can’t win.
Go works in something of the same way; over the course of the game, the players will divide the board of 361 intersections into “secure territory” belonging to one player or the other. The strong player is then expecting resignation when his score is greater than his opponents score + the number of unclaimed points. Of course, in Go, the concept of “secure territory” is actually quite subtle and complicated. It might be that the weaker player doesn’t realize that he is already too far down, because he sees weakly held territory as secure, or vice-versa. No strong player in the world will hold it against a weaker player if he keeps playing a lost position because he doesn’t realize that it’s lost. A very few times, I’ve had a strong player explain exactly why I just didn’t have enough points, and then gently suggest that the game is over; this is usually valuable to the weaker player because it gives some insight into how the positions work. Many more times, I’ve had strong players see how far they could beat me down instead. Of course, that’s valuable too.
Now I understand even better. Thank you!