Till now there is no proof (test, statistics…) that a 99% +10pts estimation by AI and 3 passes is covering only cases of stalling. The 3 passes especially will make it hard to figure if it works as intended. There is just a feeling that should probably be the case. I can’t figure it myself and so i don’t adhere to that choice. I think the few feedback we got are already pertinent to be careful how it’s modifying the game.
The first determining criteria is very doubtful to me too. Not sure that adding the +10pts and 3 passes will give good results globally (eliminating stalling and preserving all the fun of the game)
This selection by AI will obviously select a bunch of not stalling games, which will come then under a let see if i can win by passing 3 times (and keep the AI criteria active). That’s not what I would call an anti-stalling but a mere variant of go.
Since no one else seems to have pointed it out yet, I just need to mention that according to the official Japanese rules (as of 1989), any group with an adjacent unfilled dame at the end of the game is in seki, and can’t score any points.
I understand that no online server in the world actually implements this rule, but nevertheless…
I just lost a game when I was disconnected for perhaps 20 seconds, with over a minute left on the clock, with a new message, “Black Wins by Disconnection”.
My internet access is pretty good but I sometime get short 10-30 second outages. I hate to lose games that way if my clock is still running.
I’ve added your post to this thread, because your issue relates to the feature discussed here. The developers implemented this feature to prevent players from avoiding losses by disconnecting. In your case, the popup appeared after 30 seconds, and your opponent clicked it right away.
I understand how this would be frustrating when you were ahead and having a genuine technical issue. The anti-escaping system is meant to find the right balance between preventing abuse and allowing for occasional connection problems. The developers are constantly working to refine the feature based on feedback like yours. Real-world examples like this help them do that.
I agree the case above is harsh. Whilst I do appreciate the need for dealing with escapers, I do find it odd that you can be sitting in a 30 minute game with 25 minutes left on your clock and on your move you can sit there with the tab open for 25 minutes pondering your move, life the universe and everything and not lose, but if your connection drops for 30 seconds (even if not your move?) then bam you lose. Or if my opponent was talking a long time to move I would go to the chat room for a quick chat and return to the game when the move counter badge incremented, but now doing that for more than 30 seconds is a loss (if opponent wants). Also it seems the forced return to a live game you escaped from means you can no longer look at your opponent’s game history to vet them once the game has started, but you as challenge creator can’t do it any other time on OGS due to the nature of the game challenge workflow with no challenge confirm dialog like on KGS.
Thirty seconds? That seems tight. Looking at my logs, my very occasional network outages last 1-20 seconds, but then it takes quite a few seconds for me to realize there’s an issue and to press refresh, or for the page itself to reconnect.
In blitz, when a player disconnects with less than a minute on the clock, I often pause the game, and quite often they come back and continue to play a good game, or if they don’t I just unpause the game in a minute or two and little time islost.
I hate winning because of someone’s technical issues!
In the game in question, which was blitz and in which the other player was far down, I consider that action by my opponent unethical and I won’t play them again: they could easily have waited 30 more seconds for my clock to run out.
My theory is that just cranking that timeout up a bit, to 90 seconds or even less, would completely eliminate the issue.
My experience with bad networks is that either you get a tiny blip, or it goes down for several minutes or hours. Even just 60 seconds would handle the tiny outages, and not make it too easy for escapers.
Again, thanks for your hard work on our behalf! I play a lot of blitz, and I know that makes me an outlier.
We’ve recently implemented warnings when we detect that the internet is out for you.
When playing blitz, we’re checking very often - every few seconds.
However, with slower time settings, we’re checking slower - to avoid “irritating false warnings”.
If you have an issue with “timeout due to internet connection” it will be very helpful to report it with a screenshot of the browser console, so we can learn what might need tweaking.
I lifted it from the Total War: Shogun game. When your enemy broke completely and ran from the field, a voice clip would play that said “It appears that the enemy Taisho has forsaken his honour, and is running like a whipped dog!”
Anyway I thought it would be a nice script to use for escapees, but I can see the matter is in hand
Given that you need to have 99% winning chances for this to be activated, and those winning chances have to stay at 99% after three unanswered moves by your opponent, it seems unlikely that this would actually save you from your bad endgame except in maybe a very small fraction of your games.
That game is an example of the autoscore bug, which I have been warning about since Eugene first discovered it in August 2020. It was greatly reduced by the autoscore update in 2021, but then started getting worse again in the past year, Other cases are noted here: A compendium of OGS's terrible scoring system confusing beginners. I also have 20 or 30 more examples that I have never bothered to post. This bug happens a lot now.
It’s not a bug in this case. Autoscore is intentionally not used when there’s a Server Decision, since the score is not based on counting the current state of the board. The outcome B+10.1 is an AI estimate.
