Can we stop conceding with one move to go?

[Archisian]

Well, it's better as long as they end up coming back at some point, finishing the game normally. If they never come back, then that forces the other player to kick them out or wait until the game reaches its maximum duration, which would still lead to the same problem of ending up with a conceded win rather than a "real" win.

The post was more so trying to understand the mentality of people who concede. If you don't want to waste time waiting for the other player to make their move, why not just go back to the game at a later point (when the site warns you that it's your turn to play) instead of conceding?

I think people who concede aren't conceding because they don't want to waste the time of a player to make a particular move, but rather that they know the game is lost regardless of what happens. I look at it similarly to how chess is played. Conceding can be an act of courtesy. It can also be that handing the win early in a lost effort is a way to gracefully admit defeat why saving some bit of face for the loser. Because who wants to see all their pieces get wiped out when it's already a forgone conclusion? The only thing it that does is give enjoyment to the winner. It, in no way, benefits the loser.

The reason I think that winners hate conceders is because they it's a power move, one that's meant to take away their enjoyment of the game. I mean, I guess you could view it that way, but I think it begs the question of is it the role of the loser in a game to give that enjoyment to the winner? Furthermore, must we expect the loser of a game to do more than simply acknowledging they lost? (i.e. keep playing even though they have no chance, tell the winner "gg" regardless if they lost by double digits+, etc.) If so, why? What do both winners and losers gain from this expectation? Should losers gain anything at all?

These are just some things that I ask anti-conceders because I literally cannot comprehend their position.

You literally cannot comprehend the position even though it has been explained many times over in every thread on this topic?

The only point that I can reasonably understand is that anti-conceders believe it to be uncouth for one to concede. While, in your case, it's the final turn, which I get. I don't necessarily agree because it always assumes ill intent, which I don't think anyone can know. However, a point you made that your argument is based on about the final statistics being finalized is somehow helpful to the loser is something I don't understand. If you lost, you lost. Unless the game was literally neck and neck, a loser knows that they have lost and why. The final results aren't going to help the loser understand why the lost. They can look at the replay and see what went wrong if they don't remember the moves. Essentially, what I'm saying is if you lost 77-100 in a game of Wingspan, there's nothing to glean from that. You got smacked and that's all she wrote. Either you did something wrong or your opponent did something right, all of which you can see in the replay. I just don't see how seeing 77-100 in the box score is going to help understand why they lost more than if they conceded the turn before the end.

[Archisian]

I think people who concede aren't conceding because they don't want to waste the time of a player to make a particular move, but rather that they know the game is lost regardless of what happens. I look at it similarly to how chess is played. Conceding can be an act of courtesy. It can also be that handing the win early in a lost effort is a way to gracefully admit defeat why saving some bit of face for the loser. Because who wants to see all their pieces get wiped out when it's already a forgone conclusion? The only thing it that does is give enjoyment to the winner. It, in no way, benefits the loser.

Your post seems contradictory, because how can it be graceful and an act of courtesy when you are as you say robbing your opponent the satisfaction of ending the game in the way they want and planned for? Calling it courtesy is evidently disingenuous. You yourself admit that conceding benefits the loser.

When you lose a game, it's basic decency to recognize that and let the player dictate how they want the game to end. It certainly shouldn't be the losing player who gets the benefit of doing that, they lost the game. Deciding to ruin the fun and all the efforts their opponent put into constructing a good game because they want to "save face" seems quite immature and goes against the spirit of why games exist in the first place. Why would you choose to defend the person who wants to dismantle the board in the end, rather than the one who is trying to play well?

It's also important to note that most board games don't work like chess, where it's possible to just wipe out the whole opponent's board when you have the advantage. The "beautiful" way to win chess is to devise a smart checkmate, which is more along the lines of what conceding players on this site are trying to ruin, not letting the winning player get their beautiful ending, but instead an unfinished board and a lame 1-0 win.

I didn't say they are robbing the satisfaction from the winner. That is the perception of the winner. The loser can concede without any intention of taking away the winner's satisfaction. I was extrapolating it out more to demonstrate the playing a lost cause is a one way street.

To your second point, I disagree. I don't think it's basic decency that just because someone lost that the winner then gets to dictate what the loser must do. What a cruel world that would be if we had winners make losers do things that don't want to do, including things that potentially humiliate them. Of course, that's an extreme example. However, my counter-argument is that the primary argument of "Well, I won. Now you do what I say otherwise you're a bad person." is not a good one to make and creates moral dilemmas in certain situations. Losers shouldn't totally acquiesce just because they lost. Your point could be stretched to justify humiliating someone, though I don't think that was your intention. Overall, I think you still need to demonstrate why losers must give that "beautiful ending" outside of "You lost, so you must do so."

I'm a bit confused about your point that "this goes against the spirit of why games exist in the first place." Why do you think games exist and what relevance does that have here?

[tbhp]

I didn't say they are robbing the satisfaction from the winner. That is the perception of the winner. The loser can concede without any intention of taking away the winner's satisfaction. I was extrapolating it out more to demonstrate the playing a lost cause is a one way street.

To your second point, I disagree. I don't think it's basic decency that just because someone lost that the winner then gets to dictate what the loser must do. What a cruel world that would be if we had winners make losers do things that don't want to do, including things that potentially humiliate them. Of course, that's an extreme example. However, my counter-argument is that the primary argument of "Well, I won. Now you do what I say otherwise you're a bad person." is not a good one to make and creates moral dilemmas in certain situations. Losers shouldn't totally acquiesce just because they lost. Your point could be stretched to justify humiliating someone, though I don't think that was your intention. Overall, I think you still need to demonstrate why losers must give that "beautiful ending" outside of "You lost, so you must do so."

I'm a bit confused about your point that "this goes against the spirit of why games exist in the first place." Why do you think games exist and what relevance does that have here?

It's irrelevant what their intention was, the problem is the harm that their action may cause. Of course I know that some people concede mindlessly, and I also know that some players may not be bothered by winning in that way. But it is always a lack of regard for the other person when someone concedes, because they aren't even stopping to think about whether the other person is going to be happy that the game is ending abruptly. They are only thinking of themselves, when they are the one who lost and therefore should extend their opponent the courtesy of concluding the game in the way they like.

If a player views their loss as humiliating, that's their perspective on the matter. It probably isn't the intention of the winning player in most cases, who is probably just trying to win the game in the way they find the most satisfying (which is not the same as trying to humiliate someone). But regardless of what their intentions may be, the point remains that they are the one who won, and therefore it's only right that they get to experience the win they fought for. Granting that favor to the person who lost makes no sense whatsoever, and that too would go against the spirit of games. Victories are supposed to be good for the victorious, and defeats are supposed to be bad for the defeated. This is what games are, it's what you sign for when you enter a competition, and it's what gives it its meaning. What is the sense of wanting to be "nice" to the loser?

The position that it's a cruel world for winners to decide doesn't make much sense, because this isn't real life, this is a game. Real life should have no winners and losers. Real life should be about maximizing the happiness of everyone. But games are the exception to that rule. Games are about having winners and losers, that's their whole point, so the sort of logic you'd generally apply to real life doesn't work here.

[Jellby]

If conceding "harms" the winner... doesn't winning harm the loser?

[Grimwold]

I'm the kind of people that keep fighting as long as I have at leat one chance in a million to win, but forfeit as soon I got zero chance.
Not to deny my opponent anything, but because the game is over, let's move to something else.
About forfeiting on the last turn ... I don't do that if I play a game where my turn takes a few seconds (like yam) because it would be litterally longer to forfeit than to finish.
But in a game of Terraforming Mars, if the end phase trigger early in the turn and I see that whatever I play I can't catch up, I won't go a full phase, then the 'build one last forest' for nothing.

It depends. If people don't agree with me and are unhappy I forfeit, they can red thumb le.
And if my opponent resign on a last turn of yam ... something I would not do ... well ... I won and no harm is done.

[FDHenneberg]

But it is always a lack of regard for the other person when someone concedes, because they aren't even stopping to think about whether the other person is going to be happy that the game is ending abruptly. They are only thinking of themselves, when they are the one who lost and therefore should extend their opponent the courtesy of concluding the game in the way they like.

I see why people dislike when their opponent concedes very late in the game, say with more than 95% progress. There are suggestions for changing that. But you seem to have a very strong opinion about conceding in general. You might know that already as it comes up constantly in these discussions, but in Chess, conceding is common courtesy. So if someone concedes, they might not be as egoistic as you think. I absolutely see where you’re coming from, but I think you took it a bit too far in making assumptions about people’s character (edit: or rather, their thoughts or lack thereof).

[tbhp]

Conceding exists in chess because the winning player can potentially decide to make the game go on forever, wiping out the opponent's board and then playing around with them indefinitely. That would definitely be poor sportsmanship and just a way to humiliate them, so chess comes with this ingrained rule that you can concede.

Most board games don't have a similar situation, they'll just naturally end as the game nears its completion, so in those cases conceding is useless. Also important to note that for most games, unlike chess, the option to concede is not part of the actual rules of the game, it's only an option given by BGA's implementation. So the situations are not comparable, conceding is part of chess culture whereas it feels unnatural in other games. In chess you can admire a final situation even if the checkmate isn't realized yet, there is a beauty in that. Although I'm still not sure why a chess player would want to concede one move away from their opponent's victory. Here again, it seems like a way to taint the opponent's victory and make it about them instead. So not a fan of conceding in chess either, although it's not as bad as in most games.

[FrankJones]

I think people who concede aren't conceding because they don't want to waste the time of a player to make a particular move, but rather that they know the game is lost regardless of what happens. I look at it similarly to how chess is played. Conceding can be an act of courtesy. It can also be that handing the win early in a lost effort is a way to gracefully admit defeat why saving some bit of face for the loser. Because who wants to see all their pieces get wiped out when it's already a forgone conclusion? The only thing it that does is give enjoyment to the winner. It, in no way, benefits the loser.

Your post seems contradictory, because how can it be graceful and an act of courtesy when you are, as you say, robbing your opponent the satisfaction of ending the game in the way they want and planned for? Calling it courtesy is evidently disingenuous. You yourself admit that conceding benefits the loser.

When you lose a game, it's basic decency to recognize that and let the player dictate how they want the game to end. It certainly shouldn't be the losing player who gets the benefit of doing that, they lost the game. Deciding to ruin the fun and all the efforts their opponent put into constructing a good game because they want to "save face" seems quite immature and goes against the spirit of why games exist in the first place. Why would you choose to defend the person who wants to dismantle the board in the end, rather than the one who is trying to play well?

It's also important to note that most board games don't work like chess, where it's possible to just wipe out the whole opponent's board when you have the advantage. The "beautiful" way to win chess is to devise a smart checkmate, which is more along the lines of what conceding players on this site are trying to prevent, not letting the winning player get their beautiful ending, but instead an unfinished board and a lame 1-0 win.

Exactly.

Ans this point has been made almost verbatim many times, including in some of the threads in which the same people keep repeating that they do not understand why conceding at the last move bothers people.

Chess, as you noted, is a poor analogy. A game of chess and its end position do not have a "score" other than 1-0, 0-1, or 1-1 (in the case of a stalemate). There are no end-game stats.

Varius other games have a meaningful end-game position and sometimes a large number of statistics and information that is not displayed when the game is conceded.

Whether I win OR lose, I view those end-game stats and use them for analysis. (Thus negating the somewhat tiresome opposition argument of "Oh, so you just want to ego-stroke and see how badly you beat your opponent.")

An argument that relies on an unfounded assumption of a negative character trait of "ego-stroking" is a weak argument.

[FrankJones]

The only point that I can reasonably understand is that anti-conceders believe it to be uncouth for one to concede. While, in your case, it's the final turn, which I get. I don't necessarily agree because it always assumes ill intent, which I don't think anyone can know. However, a point you made that your argument is based on about the final statistics being finalized is somehow helpful to the loser is something I don't understand. If you lost, you lost. Unless the game was literally neck and neck, a loser knows that they have lost and why. The final results aren't going to help the loser understand why the lost. They can look at the replay and see what went wrong if they don't remember the moves. Essentially, what I'm saying is if you lost 77-100 in a game of Wingspan, there's nothing to glean from that. You got smacked and that's all she wrote. Either you did something wrong or your opponent did something right, all of which you can see in the replay. I just don't see how seeing 77-100 in the box score is going to help understand why they lost more than if they conceded the turn before the end.

You're just completely ignoring that a last-minute concession needlessly removes the highly useful statistics that many games display at the end. And by not showing the actual score, a player might not know whether some plays actually scored the expected umber of points or actually worked out as intended.

Your point is that the player can just recreate the entire game state by viewing the game reply? This could take hours, if the player wishes to gather and analyze that statistics that the program would have computed and displayed automatically had the opponent simply just played the final turn and allow the game to end naturally.

[FrankJones]

Conceding exists in chess because the winning player can potentially decide to make the game go on forever, wiping out the opponent's board and then playing around with them indefinitely. That would definitely be poor sportsmanship and just a way to humiliate them, so chess comes with this ingrained rule that you can concede.

Most board games don't have a similar situation, they'll just naturally end as the game nears its completion, so in those cases conceding is useless. Also important to note that for most games, unlike chess, the option to concede is not part of the actual rules of the game, it's only an option given by BGA's implementation. So the situations are not comparable, conceding is part of chess culture whereas it feels unnatural in other games. In chess you can admire a final situation even if the checkmate isn't realized yet, there is a beauty in that. Although I'm still not sure why a chess player would want to concede one move away from their opponent's victory. Here again, it seems like a way to taint the opponent's victory and make it about them instead. So not a fan of conceding in chess either, although it's not as bad as in most games.

[Just to be clear, I am agreeing with you.]


In chess, conceding is an accepted and recognized tactic. The person conceding is saying, "I acknowledge your imminent checkmate, well done." There are no lost statistics, because chess doesn't have end-game statistics.

This is just not analogous to a game of, let's say, "Earth" or "Viticulture", in which the end-game stats yield a lot of information that can be valuable to either player and also to the community.