For the first time in my life, I am intentionally losing a game

The Game Room
1

Playing a chess game “correspondence” style with a friend online. He and I go back to high school–where we were best friends, and also fierce rivals on the chess board. (Emotions were involved.)

I beat him the great majority of games back then.

Lately we’ve started playing online. He is now a Chess coach for high schoolers, and is rated much, much much higher than me. In every objective way, he’s a better Chess player than me.

And yet, still–after several games online, he’s only won one of them against me!

Good humor is displayed all around etc etc, but he has said “sonofabitch” and “there’s a lot of suffering in Chess” upon losing–not completely emotionally neutral statements.

But it’s just a game, and we’re intelligent mature adults etc… right?

But in our latest game he was winning a difficult endgame, but he’s just made this awful blunder throwing away a key piece. I should take it. I should win.

But something moved me to check out his recent game history. It’s full of losses and draws. Against players with a wide range of ratings.

I just… plain… feel bad for him. Something’s going on, and I don’t want to add to it, whatever it is. His off-board friend/on-board nemesis from high school… continuing to beat him even now when he’s certified to be a much better player. As part of an aggravating, puzzling string of losses.

It’s too much. I don’t want that to happen to him!

So I didn’t take advantage of the blunder. Just pretending I failed to notice it. I’ve thrown the game.

After I made my intentional mistake, I then played fiercely with all my might, but my loss is a foregone conclusion.

I gave him the game.

And now I feel… dirty. I’m a liar.

2

There was a day when I tried to intentionally lose a game, and for the life of me I couldn’t.

It was Christmas Day, and I had gotten my nephew Don’t Break the Ice. Every time he lost he’d have a crying fit and wail that “it’s not fair!”, but he always insisted on playing again. He just wouldn’t give up. And he lost every single time.

Strategy for winning: Try to lose. The clumsier and more violent you get with that little plastic hammer, the cleaner the blocks come out.

Come to think of it, years later I tried to lose to him at chess. I couldn’t do that either.

3

Or you acted in some random emotional way, caused no harm. If you feel your friend is entitled to hear the truth, you can tell him, and then he won’t believe you. But chess is a game of deception anyway. You and your friend agreed to deceive each other. Really, you’ve done nothing but choose a poor playing strategy.

4

That is what I try to say to myself. :wink:

Another voice in my head, though (starts with K, rhymes with aunt), whispers “For all you know he’s losing a lot because of brain cancer and if you’d have beat him honestly like you should have he may have finally realized he needs to go see a doctor!”

Would be hard for me to disagree more strongly with this. Deception has no place in Chess whatsoever.

5

'scuse me? You want your opponent to know what moves you are planning?

6

There’s a difference, I think, between deception and obfuscation.

7

As CandidGamera said obfuscation is distinct from deception.

Yet still…

I’m not actually opposed to telling my opponent what I plan to do, so long as he’s willing to do the same. Granted this makes it almost more of a cooperative game than a competitive game–but either way, it’s chess. Obfuscation is not a necessary component.

Obfuscation aside, my main point is that deception has no place in Chess. Another way to put the point: If you won by deception, then you didn’t win because you’re good at Chess.

8

Not only this, but it’s impossible; all of the information is available for all to see. Any conclusions one draws about one’s strategy that is incorrect is that person’s own fault. I suppose there could be some deception if one includes chatter between opponents, but that’s the meta-game, not the game of chess itself.
Either way, I strongly disagree with ever deliberately throwing a game for any reason where your opponent expects you to be giving your best. I wouldn’t try my best against a young and notably much less skilled opponent or I’ve deliberately fumbled when it makes sense as part of a mutual joke, but in the latter its typically already understood that I was almost certainly going to win anyway.

Personally, I think it’s part of fair play. Sure, everyone agrees cheating is wrong, which falsely inflates one’s apparent skill, but throwing a game is pretty much the same in the opposite direction. The thing is, slumps happen, but taking it easy on your opponent because he’s in a slump isn’t really fair to him because he then thinks he’s doing better than he is and, as a competitive person myself, I want to know that I’m facing the best my opponent is able to offer and it would be insulting to know he’s just letting me win because he feels bad for me. Really, if you feel bad for him, as his friend, the best thing to do is to be a friend and talk to him about it.

9

Perhaps you just failed to fall into an elaborate trap he was setting for you?

10

I think one could validly argue that chess typically involves deception of one sort or another – I mean, one does set traps, attempts to make the opponent believe one has made a worse move than one actually has, feign weakness and the like.

11

I don’t think there really is a difference, except in connotation. In any event, we mean the same thing in the end. I don’t think you did anything remotely immoral unless you’ve had some kind of detailed discussion about the subject with your friend, and you had agreed not to engage in that practice. Nobody is bound to compete in any particular manner as long as they play by the rules.

12

That was kind of you, Frylock.

13

I agree, pretty kind of you.

Going to move this to the Game Room, though!

14

I find it hard to lose against my kid. OP, you’re a better person than I. :wink:

15

Personally, I play much better chess offline than on. It’s hard for me to keep a strategy in my head for days on end in Facebook chess, and so I make some dumb moves. Maybe that’s what’s going on?

16

Beyond deception and obfuscation is … Obsession. By Calvin Klein. At finer stores everywhere.

17

I was a darn good tetherball player back in school, so when there was a tetherball pole at the park when we had a company picnic, I thought I’d try to “hustle” people into playing me by looking like I was bad (and by “hustle”, I simply mean that they’d lose to a secretly much better player, not lose to a secretly much better player for money.)

So I started limp-wristedly slapping the ball around for a minute or so, at about one third the speed that I normally would casually slap it (and about 1/5 the average speed I’d hit it with if I were playing competitively.) Then I asked if anyone wanted to play me but they shouted “you’re too good for us!” Mission fail.

18

I’m pretty similar, I love competition and always play for an honest win, and have no hard feelings for the times when I lose. I will usually play sportingly, however, toning back a game I’m better at, instead of just crushing someone. I acknowledge that it is no fun playing if you are just being crushed by someone vastly better (think playing one-on-one against Michael Jordan, what’s the point?).

I had two good friends that invited me out to play racquetball once, something I’ve played for many years and am fairly good at. They were also pretty good players. We had an amazing day of intense matches that I just barely eked out wins against. They never invited me to play with them again because they were at the top of their racquetball peers and almost never lost. If I’d lost, I would have happily continued playing, I truly don’t understand the sore loser personality.

19

I don’t get it either. I do get mad at losing, myself, but mostly in WoW, where most of my losses in PvP can be ascribed to matchup imbalances which, really, there’s no way to fix without making overall balance worse. But I don’t think I EVER get mad at my OPPONENT–it’s always at my teammates (see also, why Zeriel doesn’t do random battlegrounds much) or at myself or at the game rules if perceived as unfair.

Hell, when an opponent dominates me in a fair fight, I want to go again and tweak my strategy/play. It’s improved my game immensely regardless of what my game is at the time.

20

Personally, were I in the OP’s shoes, I would have said “Are you sure you want to do that?”, and let him take back the move (of course, if he doesn’t, that’s his problem). I will never intentionally lose, but I will allow my opponent the opportunity to learn. I would have no qualms at all about letting someone take back a move like that in a friendly game: My personal code puts that in an entirely different category from letting someone win.

Now, if it were a sanctioned tournament, or for a prize, or something like that, that’d be different. But I would try to avoid getting into a situation like that with a friend to begin with.