friends do that in a joking way but I would not say that to someone I did not know!

Sometimes its difficult to know whether to resign or not. Some players like to play to the end, win or lose. To put 'lousy game' is plain ignorant when your opponent might have only carried on out of politeness to you. If it bothers you ask them to resign, they'd probably be glad to.

Saying GG is good sportsmanship, I do it all the time, not saying so shows a lack of class especially when your opponent has won. Nothing wrong in being decent and acknowledging your opponent played well.

I hate to see all the bickering on this board. this is such a wonderful site. however, each person must do what they must do or say --I just want to say re: resigning a game---I am resigning my games because I am going in for cancer surgery next week and I don't want my opponents to have to wait for our games to TIME OUT. so there is one more good reason for a 'resigned' game. I don't have time to put down my REASONS for the resign either and am hoping most of my players will read this or already know about my health and will understand why I am resigning. Please be kind to each other, have fun today because tomorrow some of us may not be able to === I am trying to stay positive and believe that I will be back on site in a few weeks/month, as I said I just want as many ppl on here to know why I am resigning thus I am posting on this board.

Good luck with it all Patty!

I hope everything goes well for you and good luck to you! I hope and pray everything will turn out ok for you Patty!!!!!!!!!

My prayers will be with you Patty.

Tony-- I HATE it when an opponent plays on in an obviously lost position. Sometimes amng friends, we will do so just to goof around and to continue the conversation thread, maybe even placing stones in silly places on the edge of the board for a laugh. But otherwise, I just find it a pain. I think a good time to resign in pente is when the other player has an open 4 (with no interrupting captures) or has just threatened a 5th capture that cannot be defended. Why play on at that point? There are only two reasons: 1) hope that the opponent times out or 2) make a 4 of your own somewhere and hope that your opponent forgets what was happening in the game and forgets that he just made a game winning open 4.

Either way, I think the sportsmanlike thing to do is to simply resign, say "good game," and move on.

Of course, there may be an exception-- if you find yourself in a lost position that you are ONLY in because you made a careless error yourself in a game that you woul have otherwise won, then of course you will probably want to play it out until the final moment to see if your opponent accidentally returns the favor with a similar error.

There are two things you can do:

1) Along the lines of what Harley said-- when you have a clear forced win, say "Good game" to your opponent and maybe he wil get the idea and resign. You cna even explain (politely) your forced win.

Drawback-- what if you are wrong and are overlooking soemthing? You will look like a fool, and worse, your opponent might think you were actually trying to pull the wool over his eyes!

2) If you have a forced win and the opponent is dragging the game out needlesly, you can do the same back at him! Keep taking captures to really turen it into an ass-whopping, or keep making trias and other threats, passing up winning moves as long as you cna drag it out, and then maybe next time the player will resign with some dignity.

But-- another possibility-- a beginning player might not see a forced win by his opponent as early as the opponent sees it; that is something else to keep in mind.

There is really only one thing that truly upsets me, that I consider completely unacceptable--

If the opponents says to you "Well, good game, you got me, I have lost, well played, I can't stop you now, etc. etc. etc.," BUT then instead of resigning or just playing at A1 or T19 (which players often do as a means of showing they are giving up), the player will instead make a meaningless 4 of his own somewhere on the board. I hate that. One should not talk up his opponent as if the game were over and then try something sneaky like that.

Either 1) Just make your own 4 somewhere and don't say anything, or 2) congratulate him and resign.

But please, don't make a big deal out of congratulating someone as if you are accepting defeat only to try to get him off guard and miss your meaningless threat. I think that is extremely poor game ettiquette, and also a very cheap tactic.

... and I always though "gg" was a double grin, as if one wouldn't have been enough!

double grin :))

The in game language is interesting.. Often when one says "gg," in fact, it was a total blowout, and not a particularly good game, but, what I think is really meant by "good game" is that the other person was polite and a good sport about it. But, many of our little phrases in English are used without regard to what they actually mean. FOr instance, everyone says "HIm good luck" at the start of a game (well, almost everyone), but, do you really want your opponent to have good luck against you? Of course not. BUt, I say it too. I guess it could mean "I hope we have a good solid game where I am able to win by some means other than a careless error," because those are the gmnaes that are really challenging and lead to improvement.

So, I often say "good luck" to my opponents as well. If for no other reason than just to be polite and get conversation started.

Please move this to the pente board. This is about the site in general. There is a board for pente issues, thisis not it. Why do you think there is a pente board? why can't this discussion be carried on there??

jon-- chill! let's not have any more flame-ups on the boards. Relax. Now, this is about game ettiquette in general, not just pente. What is being discussed applies to all games, not just pente, and it applies to the general attitude of players during games. I was using pente as a convenient example, but the issue is applicable to any game.