MaurizioN’s first opponent (doskee(B)), joined their game, played the first move and then went to watch other games in the tournament because opponent appeared to be a no-show. The anti-escaper feature awarded the win to the absent player, MaurizioN, by disconnection and they both continued into the next round.
MaurizioN was saved from a TO loss in the first round. A TO loss would have removed MaurizioN from the tournament. As a result, Round 2 involved six players and only one actual game of Go.
Proposal:
Anti-escaper feature/timer should only apply after both players have played in the game. This would allow the present player to rely on the move indicator to alert them if their opponent shows up.
Totally agree but it is completely counter-intuitive that someone can lose a game (by disconnection) to an opponent that never joined/started the game in the first place. In all likelihood the player that was awarded the win in this game was not even connected to the site when the tournament began.
Respectfully @smurph, I think you are over complicating it. The TO rules work okay, albeit slowly, on their own.
The proposed fix is fairly straightforward. A game has to meaningfully start before the anti-escaper feature can be active. This is potentially the same point in the game where it passes from “Cancellable” to “Resignable”. ie. after both players have played a move. What the lawyers might call, ‘A meeting of minds’. ‘Yes there is an actual game going on now and disconnecting would be escaping’.
I guess this “special casey ness” of this situation is that the tourney participant who’s opponent doesn’t show up can’t hit Cancel, which would be the normal thing in this situation?
I’m pretty sure you don’t mean a whole new separate 'Show up and play a move" timer, just different clock settings?
That could work with fischer timing (eg. 2m + 20s up to 2m) and imho, would probably be a very good idea but changing the default clock to fischer is a much bigger topic requiring broader consultation.
Nb1: Current time setting is byo-yomi 5m + 3x30s and frankly this is a bit painful if you have to wait for a no-show to time-out.
Nb2: Generally speaking, fischer +n seconds is a slower game than byo-yomi +m x n seconds because with fischer it’s easier to use the whole time. That’s why my example in paragraph 2 used +20s.
I mean Player 1 has (for example) 2 mins from game start to make their first move or they lose. Player 2 has 1 min from Player 1’s first move to make their first move or they lose… after this, normal timeout and zeus applies.
While I would enjoy something like that, I suspect it has less chance of being implemented than my original proposal. My fischer idea is also less likely to be implemented.
