A Message For Classical Players

What's that?

MISCLICKS

Picture this: you've spent quite some time on a game, and you're in the lead.

You then proceed to demolish all your advantage by making a blunder. Not just a regular blunder–a misclick!

Maybe some of us would think:

“Oh yes, but my opponent is nice and will accept my takeback request! Yeay!”

If that's true, great! However, we need to remember: they can 100% freely decline.

I found this out the hard way, and hopefully nobody else has to. I'll tell you how it happened. (Just a heads up, I'll ramble about it a bit)

A true story

I was playing a classical game here in Lichess. While contemplating a move, there it goes: a misclick.

I swiftly requested takeback, and thought that my opponent would accept, especially since I've previously accepted their takeback request.

It'll be accepted, RIGHT?
RIGHT?

No. My opponent declined and said it's because they want the rating points.

Original photo by Monstera in pexels.com

“This person has previously asked for a takeback which I accepted!”, I thought to myself.

I was disappointed and shocked (putting it lightly). I said I can't play like this, so I offered a draw. It was also declined.

Afterwards, I found myself arguing something quite pointless with my opponent. I admit I was slightly harsh–I called that person "immature" at some point.

Then what happened? That person reported me, and Lichess gave me a warning.

I found myself arguing with Lichess whether accepting/declining takebacks is an unconditional right. (An unconditional right means that it doesn't matter what and why it happened. In this case,we are always free to accept/decline)

That was months ago.

At the end of the day, I now agree with Lichess. It should be an unconditional right. Anyone can freely accept/decline no matter what.

Yes, my opponent was inconsiderate, but in reality it was my fault for not preventing that misclick!

It was personally hard for me to accept that.

Moral of the story

There are people out there who won't consider how their opponents feel, and we can't expect that anyone we play with would accept our requests.

Thus, what can we do to avoid such a mental-draining incident?

Thankfully, Lichess has a solution for this: go to Preferences > Game behavior and set Move confirmation to Classical (you can also add other modes if you want–personally, I chose everything except blitz).

What does that do? It'll ask you to confirm every move you make.

In other words, every time we make a move, Lichess will give a prompt to make sure that wasn't a misclick.

It might be annoying at first, but believe me that it is a lifesaver–I've lost count of how many times it's prevented me from making misclicks!

Why only classical players?

In my opinion, this only applies for classical (and maybe rapid) players, especially those with intermediate-high ratings because:

• When we make a blunder, it's not like our opponent would blunder right back. The same can't be said for some faster games.
• We have plenty of time! A simple confirmation prompt wouldn't waste time like it would in bullet and blitz games.

This applies to not only rated games, but also unrated games.

Consider asking

We can also consider accepting our opponents' takeback requests, like asking "Was that a misclick?" or whatever you'd consider fair.

Let's put ourselves in their shoes–how would it feel like to be the one playing against us?

That's all!

Thanks for reading :)