# Cry babies who quit online backgammon when they start to lose **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [February 14, 2012, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cry-babies-who-quit-online-backgammon-when-they-start-to-lose/612792 "2012-02-14T04:53:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cry-babies-who-quit-online-backgammon-when-they-start-to-lose/612792/61 "2012-02-16T23:17:56Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > What Johan Huizinga (author of _Homo Ludens_, the seminal work on play theory) had to say about spoilsports: > > > [@](#): > > > > “It is curious to note how much more lenient society is to the cheat than the spoil-sport. This is because the spoil-sport shatters the play-world itself. By withdrawing from the game he reveals the relativity and fragility of the play-world in which he temporarily shut himself in with others. He robs play of its illusion – a pregnant word which means literally ‘in play’ (from inlusio, illudere, or inludere). Therefore he must be cast out, for he threatens the existence of the play-community.” And [Rich Burlew](http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0606.html) put it this way: > [@](#): > > “Nudge die rolls, palm cards, “forget” penalties … but you have to sit down to play first. As long as the people at the table see a fellow player across from them, they’ll tolerate you. A crooked player is a pain in the ass, but someone who refuses to play at all makes them start questioning their own lives and people hate to think. They’d rather lose to a cheater than dwell too long on why they’re playing in the first place.” ---
**Author:** ![Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omg_a_Black_Conservative)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cry-babies-who-quit-online-backgammon-when-they-start-to-lose/612792/62 "2012-02-16T23:59:01Z")
> [@Malacandra](#): > > Just as well. Anyone can get an 1800 rating if they play on when they’re winning and take a penalty-free disconnect when they’re losing. :rolleyes: Well, no. As I said earlier in the thread, if you got something like five disconnects, you would lose a ton of rating as penalty. But as I said, I haven’t played Zone chess or rage quit in years. Nowadays I just quietly rage to myself when online gaming. > [@RTFirefly](#): > > Technically. > > Yep, folks, this OMG conservative is getting himself off on a technicality!! Ehhh. Again I say, it was 10+ years ago. I seriously can’t believe some of y’all are seriously flipping out about an anecdote from **that** long ago. If you want something to get mad over then once, when I was like 9 or 10, I stole a piece of $.50 taffy from Food Lion on a dare. I know. I’m just a terrible human being. Never mind the fact I haven’t stolen anything since. > [@](#): > > Ah, conservative values in action. 🙂 Well, this was like 9th grade of high school, so I was pretty apolitical aside from knowing that Republicans hated Black people. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2012, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cry-babies-who-quit-online-backgammon-when-they-start-to-lose/612792/63 "2012-02-17T00:16:38Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > And [Rich Burlew](http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0606.html) put it this way: Ha! I’d read that strip and never made the connection with Huizinga. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2012, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cry-babies-who-quit-online-backgammon-when-they-start-to-lose/612792/64 "2012-02-17T01:26:27Z")
> [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > Ehhh. Again I say, it was 10+ years ago. I seriously can’t believe some of y’all are seriously flipping out about an anecdote from **that** long ago. Flipping out? Nah. But you’ve taken your own measure here. If your attitude had been one of, “I did this when I was younger, and it’s not exactly something I’m proud of,” y’know, we’ve _all_ done stupid shit when we were younger, we’ve all been assholes, etc., that would have been no problem. Recognizing wrong as wrong when it’s you who have done it is part of what it means to be a decent human being. But however long ago it happened, and however young you were at the time, you’re _right now, here in this thread_, finding excuses and justifications for what you did back then. ‘I didn’t do it all the time,’ ‘a lot of other people were doing it,’ ‘it would have cost me a bunch of rating points,’ ‘it wasn’t _technically_ cheating.’ With these words, you have defined yourself, in the here and now. No need to say what you’ve defined yourself as. The words speak for themselves. ---
**Author:** ![Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omg_a_Black_Conservative)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2012, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cry-babies-who-quit-online-backgammon-when-they-start-to-lose/612792/65 "2012-02-17T06:59:11Z")
Well, seeing as how it was an online game well over a decade ago, no, I’m not going to man up to something I had largely forgotten about until I read the thread. Not exactly like it was a life or death situation or really all that important. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2012, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cry-babies-who-quit-online-backgammon-when-they-start-to-lose/612792/66 "2012-02-17T07:33:42Z")
How you treat your opponents shows how you view other humans. Your attitude was that you were going to win at any cost, even if it meant that you cheated someone out of a victory. Since you don’t say “Well, I regret doing that”, we can assume that this is STILL your attitude…that you want to come out ahead whether or not you are screwing the other guy over. Basically, you are not respecting the other person. They say that a test of your moral character is how you act if you are sure that you won’t get caught. This is a paraphrase, but I think that it’s valid. You cheated, you don’t appear to be sorry that you cheated, and in fact you’re trying to justify your cheating. When I play, if I can’t win fairly, then I take my lumps and try to learn from my mistakes. Apparently, you see nothing wrong with gaming the system if it’s to your advantage. This says a lot about your character, or rather, your lack of character. You weren’t interested in being a more skillful player of the game, but rather a more skillful player of the system. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2012, 10:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cry-babies-who-quit-online-backgammon-when-they-start-to-lose/612792/67 "2012-02-17T10:13:47Z")
> [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > Well, seeing as how it was an online game well over a decade ago Oh yeah, ‘it happened a long time ago,’ I forgot to include that one. > [@](#): > > Not exactly like it was a life or death situation or really all that important. I’ll add this one to the list too. > [@](#): > > , no, I’m not going to man up to something I had largely forgotten about until I read the thread. What could have been easier? Maybe this bit of your past was all but forgotten until this thread jogged your memory, but once you brought it back up of your own volition, you inevitably had _some_ sort of view of your long-past behavior. It would have been practically a freebie to say to a bunch of near-strangers who can’t be all \*that \*important to you yet, ‘Yeah, I did this thing, and in retrospect it was kinda scummy, that happened a while back and I certainly wouldn’t do something like that again now.’ But your view was that it was justifiable or at least excusable. And given that this was a thread Pitting people who quit games in the middle, you might’ve had the brains God gave a turkey sandwich, and thought to yourself, “this is a thread dumping on people who did basically what I did. They’re likely to dump on me too, if I bring this up. Can I defend it? Should I admit I goofed? Should I just shut up? What?” As you know, I posted here about an instance where an acquaintance and I disappeared from a game in the middle. As the post makes clear, I believe it was defensible, and accepted the possibility that someone might challenge that notion and I might have to defend it, on the grounds that what the other players did was so totally against the ethos of the game that it was already broken before we left. Your attitude seems to be, “it was defensible, but I shouldn’t have to be bothered to defend it; anyone who harps on it is being a meanie because it happened a long time ago.” That’s against the ethos of _this_ place. Good luck with that here. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2012, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cry-babies-who-quit-online-backgammon-when-they-start-to-lose/612792/68 "2012-02-17T14:48:12Z")
I’m going to call foul on OMG actually being a Conservative. One true Conservative value is courageously taking personal responsibility when you screw up (or act unethically to the extent that it hurts others). A little guilt doesn’t hurt, either. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2012, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cry-babies-who-quit-online-backgammon-when-they-start-to-lose/612792/69 "2012-02-17T14:57:10Z")
> [@digs](#): > > I’m going to call foul on OMG actually being a Conservative. One true Conservative value is courageously taking personal responsibility when you screw up (or act unethically to the extent that it hurts others). Nah, that has nothing to do with the difference between conservative and liberal. It’s the difference between being a _mensch_ and being a _schmuck._ ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2012, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cry-babies-who-quit-online-backgammon-when-they-start-to-lose/612792/70 "2012-02-17T17:25:24Z")
> [@](#): > > And given that this was a thread Pitting people who quit games in the middle, you might’ve had the brains God gave a turkey sandwich I don’t believe in God. I do believe in turkey sandwiches, as I just had one for lunch. There were no brains in that sandwich. Or was that your point? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2012, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cry-babies-who-quit-online-backgammon-when-they-start-to-lose/612792/71 "2012-02-17T17:32:55Z")
> [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > I was, like 15/16. Sue me. But, yes, if you were ranked 1800+ you had no reason losing to someone ranked less than 1300, hence the disconnect. I liked my rank, plus I worked hard to get it. > > But if you’re wondering how I would lose to someone ranked less than 1300 well, it’s easy. Sometimes I just played a crappy game. Sometimes I played sloppily because I figured I’d win even if I didn’t play my best. Sometimes I played a “speed game”, which I was really bad at. Sometimes I just ran out of time. And sometimes my opponent just played the best games of their life. Holy shit. I don’t typically dislike people. OMG has been a test of this general principle in the past. In fact, probably one of the hardest tests I’ve ever had to go through on that account. I didn’t pass. And now I’m failing even harder. I mean, OMG, you’re like some kind of light form of psychopath or something. You literally have no moral clue. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2012, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cry-babies-who-quit-online-backgammon-when-they-start-to-lose/612792/72 "2012-02-17T17:34:30Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > Whatever you were doing to screw up against a player of such a low caliber, you earned it, and you should have owned it. Exactly. And that’s a value _conservatives_ typically think they own! ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2012, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cry-babies-who-quit-online-backgammon-when-they-start-to-lose/612792/73 "2012-02-17T17:35:45Z")
> [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > This reminds me… Long, long, long ago (I’m talking like 10 years ago), I used to play ranked chess on Zone. Now I didn’t mind losing, unless it was to someone with a sub-1300 rank, because it would kill your rank if you were 1800+. If/when I was about to lose to some lowly ranked person, I would disconnect the modem so it would appear as a disconnect, with came with no penalties unless you acquired a few of them, rather than a loss, which would result in losing like a hundred points. > > /randomanecdote **OMG** , what do you think now, many years later, about such actions? ---
**Author:** ![Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omg_a_Black_Conservative)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2012, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cry-babies-who-quit-online-backgammon-when-they-start-to-lose/612792/74 "2012-02-17T18:03:20Z")
Oh, I’m not too concerned over things I did years ago online. I probably did worse things which, unfortunately, I’ve long since forgotten. You guys and gals can be mad about it, though. I’ll forget about it all the same in a few weeks time anyway. And, for what it’s worth, I’m really not sorry about it (though I most certainly don’t do it now), especially not to the point I feel any guilt or remorse. So whatchu’ gonna do about it. ---
**Author:** ![Sicks\_Ate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Sicks\_Ate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sicks_Ate)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2012, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cry-babies-who-quit-online-backgammon-when-they-start-to-lose/612792/75 "2012-02-17T18:04:44Z")
> [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > And, for what it’s worth, I’m really not sorry about it (though I most certainly don’t do it now), especially not to the point I feel any guilt or remorse. So whatchu’ gonna do about it. Nothing, except wonder if you are actually a sociopath. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2012, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cry-babies-who-quit-online-backgammon-when-they-start-to-lose/612792/76 "2012-02-17T18:05:17Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > I don’t believe in God. I do believe in turkey sandwiches, as I just had one for lunch. Which for some reason reminds me of the old joke: “Do you believe in infant baptism?” “_Believe_ it? Why, I’ve even _seen_ it!” OK, please stop throwing things! > [@](#): > > There were no brains in that sandwich. > > Or was that your point? 😉 Might’ve been. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omg_a_Black_Conservative)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2012, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cry-babies-who-quit-online-backgammon-when-they-start-to-lose/612792/77 "2012-02-17T18:08:57Z")
> [@Sicks\_Ate](#): > > Nothing, except wonder if you are actually a sociopath. …Yeah… I don’t think not being exactly remorseful about disconnecting from an online game of chess over 10 years ago makes one a sociopath. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2012, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cry-babies-who-quit-online-backgammon-when-they-start-to-lose/612792/78 "2012-02-17T18:16:56Z")
> [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > You guys and gals can be mad about it Who’s mad? Gotta admit, it’s kinda fun, being able to point out in detail that someone who sure _seemed_ like a schmuck has totally _proven_ he’s a schmuck. > [@](#): > > So whatchu’ gonna do about it. Nothing! You’ve punk’d yourself like a pro. My congratulations. ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_Ellis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/977dab/32.png) [@Michael\_Ellis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Michael_Ellis)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2012, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cry-babies-who-quit-online-backgammon-when-they-start-to-lose/612792/79 "2012-02-17T18:20:47Z")
Holy shit who gives a fuck you dumbass it’s fucking online backgammon. I can’t possibly imagine anyone lamer than the OP if they aren’t anime-obsessed obese furry shut-ins. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2012, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cry-babies-who-quit-online-backgammon-when-they-start-to-lose/612792/80 "2012-02-17T18:21:19Z")
> [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > Oh, I’m not too concerned over things I did years ago online. I probably did worse things which, unfortunately, I’ve long since forgotten. You guys and gals can be mad about it, though. I’ll forget about it all the same in a few weeks time anyway. And, for what it’s worth, I’m really not sorry about it (though I most certainly don’t do it now), especially not to the point I feel any guilt or remorse. So whatchu’ gonna do about it. What people are more taken aback by is not what you did 10 years ago but the attitude you seem to have about it now. Here you said you “most certainly don’t do it now.” But why not? If you don’t feel bad about doing it then, why don’t you do it now? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cry-babies-who-quit-online-backgammon-when-they-start-to-lose/612792.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cry-babies-who-quit-online-backgammon-when-they-start-to-lose/612792.md?page=5)