Early Resign

[Krazula]

Yesterday an opponent tried to resign a single game when there was slightly under a 1% chance of me winning gammon (12/1296 exactly), I don't recall the score but it was a score where gammons for me had value. This resignation was done to try to make me make a mistake of accepting it when I shouldn't, it was not an oversight by my opponent. I wonder what members of the forum think about using this tactic. Personally I choose option 2, this isn't a tactic that I use but I don't mind if my opponents use it because the rules state that either player can offer a resignation of normal gammon or backgammon at any time. Please vote and leave an explanation if you want to.

[diane]

By all means give it a go..you wont catch me that easily...buuuut, please dont whine and deride me when I refuse. Or call me greedy for going for the gammon because the percentage chance is very low..while it is still on the table, even at a low probability, I wont take the resign.

[moonshadow]

I've never purposefully tried to trick an opponent in this manner and I don't like it when others try this tactic on me, though I have inadvertently resigned single when there was a 1% chance of gammon due to my not paying attention.

A few times over the years I've mistakenly resigned single when I intended to resign gammon (in a match where gammons had value) and my opponent actually accepted! I would apologize and resign the next game in the match to make the score what it should have been, though "by rule" I would have been well within my rights to play on.

[NIHILIST]

I think it's cheap gamesmanship, but it's FIBS, so it's to be expected. When I resign, I resign a BG so there's no doubt over the issue.

I wonder how all you people with situational ethics would view it if your opponent tried this trick in a real money or tourney situation.

Bob

[RickrInSF]

it is a cheap trick, one that i would think only works on newbies. I know i got stung by that a few times when i was just starting. If someone does that to me now, i make them play the game out all the way to the end, just to show that i never have to accept a resignation, then i don't play them again.

[diane]

I think it's cheap gamesmanship, but it's FIBS, so it's to be expected. When I resign, I resign a BG so there's no doubt over the issue.

I wonder how all you people with situational ethics would view it if your opponent tried this trick in a real money or tourney situation.

Thats a change for the better - well done 

I can easily imagine it being tried in a live tournament, I have seen everything else in the dirty tricks bag come out. So again - it is worth noting that it can happen, be aware of it and happy with saying no and continuing play. Again, fibs provides a safe environment in which to learn some of the harsher backgammon lessons.

Perhaps this needs a 16th point 

Fifteen Ways To Irritate Your Opponent
9 December 1999
by Phil Simborg

We all know that an irritated, distracted opponent will play worse. Here are some "advanced" tips for you:

1. Call his worst rolls for him.

2. Call your second best roll, and if you roll your best roll, complain.

3. If he wins a game or match, tell him how lucky he was.

4. If you win a game or match, tell him how amazing it was you won with all those bad rolls.

5. Whenever he's thinking about a tough play, or counting pips, tap the table impatiently, sigh heavily, and keep shaking your dice to distract him.

6. Whenever you get a perfect roll that closes him out or ends the game, pretend you don't see it right away and make the play very slowly, acting like you're thinking about doing something else.

7. Whenever he makes a daring play, like leaving a voluntary shot, or gambling for a G instead of doubling, and it doesn't work--be sure to tell him you wouldn't have done that.

8. If you gammon him, tell him he was very lucky not to get backgammoned.

9. Whenever he rolls a repeater, even if it's a terrible roll, remind him that he really should shake his dice.

10. Practice your rolling technique so that whenever you have an important roll the dice will be off the table and you'll have to roll over several times.

11. If you are sure you are not going to double, finger the doubling cube for a while and then change your mind.

12. Yell "YES!" whenever he rolls a really bad roll.

13. Especially if you are playing with his board, eat something really messy while you play and drip food all over the checkers and the board. (If you smoke, ashes look lovely on an opponent's board.)

14. Whenever he has a forced play, tell him it's forced and move his checkers for him.

15. And lastly, if you win, be sure to report it to the tournament director in the loudest possible voice.

[Patti]

I answered no, but I'll do it sometimes by mutual agreement... "This isn't worth our time to play out."

[socksey]

I find passing an inappropriate cube a bit rude, and I don't make it a practice although i have tried it a couple of times just for fun.  If someone else does it to me and I accept by mistake, I only blame myself for not paying attention.   

socksey



"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." - Will Rogers

[dorbel]

I don't think an early wrong resign as described is that reprehensible, although I don't intentionally do it myself, but there are some other tricks that are much more damaging. I saw one a few years ago that goes like this. You are about to be gammoned for certain and you own the cube and the gammon loss will cost you the match. You resign a single. Your opponent clicks on reject. You do it again, he rejects, again, reject, again, reject. At some point in the sequence you double and with any luck at all your steaming opponent with his mouse pointer poised over reject will auto-click! Bingo! I saw this actually work in an online tournament.
Even more common is the manouevre currently practised by a well known cheater, although not confined to him. You play a newby, phone players are best. When about to lose, you drop, then invite to start a new game. This often works, but if they are already up to this, you invite to resume then immediately invite for a new game. With any luck at all, they are just about to accept as your new invite comes in. If both these manouevres fail, you drop anyway. A repbot complaint, if they even know about repbot, from somebody with 27 experience doesn't hurt much. The invite resume/invite new game manouevre used to work with bots at one time, which is now the reason that they don't join when you invite resume, they invite you instead.
Bonehead has an amusing bug which is that it will accept a single resign when you are about to be gammoned! As this also means that you can take almost any cube based on a gammon threat, it is a source of points that is heavily plundered by a knowledgeable few, which now includes you.
I've never seen it done online, but a common and legitimate single resign is often seen in clubs, when a player has a single checker closed out and all his other checkers are home. His wins and gammon losses are widely thought to be about equal, around 7%, so a single settlement hurts nobody and saves some boring rolling.

[Krazula]

II've never seen it done online, but a common and legitimate single resign is often seen in clubs, when a player has a single checker closed out and all his other checkers are home. His wins and gammon losses are widely thought to be about equal, around 7%, so a single settlement hurts nobody and saves some boring rolling.

Gammons should be twice his wins to make this a fair resign. The difference between losing 1 point and losing 2 points is 1, the difference between losing 1point and winning 1 point is 2. With gnu's analysis, no rollout, this resign seems to cost the resigner .04-.06 depending on exactly where all the checkers are.

[dorbel]

Yes you are entirely correct, twice as many gammons as losses is the correct equation and it used to be thought that that was the case.  In fact I agree that the wins and losses are about equal, in varying amounts depending on where the spares are placed (but probably always less than 5%) and I agree that this will cost the resigner about 0.06 points per game, if the cube is on 2, which it will be of course in money play with Jacoby in operation. Of course many money players regularly give up that much in disadvantageous settlements to avoid big swings. If the cube was on 16 for example, resigning 16 points would cost him half a point, which many would think a price worth paying to cut out the risk of losing 32 points in a game!

[sunyata]

Sorry to raise this thread from the dead, but it seemed more appropriate than starting a new thread on a similar topic.

I would certainly never offer a single resign to trick my opponent into accepting it rather than a gammon.  Nonetheless, I think that there are legitimate times when this is both fair play and the correct thing to do.  Just such a situation happened in a game I played yesterday

The situation was this: I was leading by one game in a Crawford game.  I.e. a win for me or a gammon for my opponent would win the match.  We both had our home boards nearly secure and were roughly equal on pips.  I had one counter on the bar and one on the opponents home 5-point.  My opponent had several blots I could take a shot at if I got back off the bar.  So this all meant that if I were to roll a 5 (30.5% probability in one turn, 51% probability in two turns), I had a good probability to win the game, whereas if i did not roll a 5 my opponent had a good probability for a gammon.

I decided to offer a single resign rather than risk the gammon.  It seemed fair enough - my opponent could decide for themselves if they wanted to stake the match on whether i threw a 5.

Unfortunately my opponent did not see it this way (after accepting the resign without thinking it through) and reacted as though I had cheated.  (in fact they abandoned the match to avoid losing when I was about to win at the end of the next game).

I feel pretty sure that what I did was quite fair.  Certainly it was not intended to trick him into accidentally accepting a single resign.  However, I have a nagging suspicion that my opponent may have been justified to feel offended.  I would appreciate the opinions of other board member on this.

If I ever am in a position to do this again, I'll certainly kibitz my opponent in advance to make sure they understand.

[Tom]

Yes it is good to discuss it in kibitz, but in general I would not consider such a resign unless the board was non-contact.

The board you described sounded like there was a LOT of contact!

It is best to offer only very CLEAR single resigns.

Tom

[dorbel]

It is entirely fair and quite within the rules to offer to resign a game at any time, single or gammon. The other player can accept or reject after all. If you deliberately offer a single when you are certain to lose a gammon though, I would say that that is very unsporting and you shouldn't do it. Doesn't sound like that was the situation here though and if your opponent accepted the single resign, that's his lookout!