Hi,
I suggest that, when a challenge game with handicap is created, a warning appear if a player want to accept the challenge.
A warning like " Are you sur you want to play a handicap game ?"
Because TOO MANY times (maybe about 50%) players look like to not read they accept a handicap game,
and cancel game at the beginning.
Counter argument: there are a ton of parameters, and you have the chance to check them all when you get the “really want to accept” dialog.
Should we have a series of questions, like "are you sure you want to play correspondence? Are you sure you want to play black? Are you sure you want to play handicap? Are you sure you want to play this person?
Right now, all those questions are in one dialog, and you can check the ones you care about.
(and we already have special warnings for really strange things, like custom komi, as you can see. But is handicap that unusual?)
ok GreenAsJade,
BUT U ARE WRONG,
( Sorry, but I’m really TIRED with all the bullshit that this pb create).
So, I’m speaking about SHORT GAMES , and, looks like the window you are talking about doesn’t appear in this case.
So, my request seems to be justified
I’m very often wrong, but my experience is certainly different to yours:
I do agree that “unexpected handicap” is something that is likely to cause someone to cancel immediately.
However, the weird thing is that people will still accept ^^^ THAT ^^ challenge, and then complain about the komi.
So even if we did things like “move the handicap to the top” or other things to make it more obvious, I’m not sure it would help.
People just don’t read stuff, even with warning triangles next to it…
Really we should have a pop up that asks “are you sure you want to play a game without handicap?” when someone is accepting a game that specifies no handicap and the rank difference is more than a couple of stones…
I think the actual underlying problem is just the nature of the way custom games are presented and accepted.
The busier the server becomes the more game offers get offered and accepted immediately, meaning if you want a game quickly you don’t have time to read a popup. People will be more likely to see a game that looks roughly suitable (mainly the time setting or the player rank) and then accept and not read anything else (handicap, ruleset etc).
I don’t mean everyone will do it, but I mean it kind of encourages this way of accepting without reading since you want to accept quickly.
So what I mean is, I don’t think any amount of pop ups will really make a difference to the kind of person that won’t read the popup anyway.
If we could speed up how the automatch works however…
Yes, this is why I rarely accept open challenges; I just wait for mine to be accepted, because it’s always a race to accept before someone else does
I think the solution would be to have a button next to the challenge which “claimed” the challenge for some short period of time, like 10-15 seconds, during which you are looking at the info popup about the game settings along with a countdown to 0, and noone else can claim the challenge, and can choose to either click “accept challenge” or “cancel”. If you click cancel or the time runs out, then the challenge goes back to being available to accept for everyone. If the person who made the open challenge happens to be looking there when you claim it, it would be nice if they saw the same countdown and your username while they waited
I think some Tygem-likes do something like this with automatch? it’s been forever since I played there
The custom komi warning is rather too trigger happy, “Warning: 6.5 komi!” is crying wolf so people may learn to ignore it.
The warning is that the komi is non standard.
This is a yes/no question, not a matter of degree.
I’m not convinced that people “learn to ignore it”. Evidence (based on complaints about silly custom komi) suggests that people simply ignore the warning altogether - as in, they are blind to it.
This is the same as a game I was trying to test this business with that I named
DO NOT ACCEPT JUST TESTING.
3 people in a row accepted this game.
People just don’t read stuff. Quite likely many of these are not English speakers and maybe the translation isn’t great 
But I agree with Shuito’s assessment: we need auto-match to work better so that we all don’t have to be so quick-draw on accepting custom live.
So, may be it would be possible to create “warning boxes” with pre written messages, translated
in the player’s language
pre written messages as :
" game with handicap"
or “take care komi”
…
Indeed, but I think it should be a matter of degree: someone making a 9x9 game with a fair 6.5 komi to workaround OGS making it unfair 4.5 by default gets the same scary warning as some troll with -100 komi. Only warning if non-standard and outside 0 - 7.5 would be better IMO.
You’ve phrased your suggestion in a way that the practical component can’t be addressed due to the assertion stated as fact embedded in it, which we’d have to appear to either accept or waste time refuting.
I agree with this idea (recognising that it’s probably quite tricky to implement)
I remember being surprised initially that when I clicked on a challenge and read the details that I then couldn’t start it as someone else had instead.
I very quickly learned that the secret is to not read anything and just click click quick quick…
Some kind of holding or reserving phase would be good.
Wasn’t small board komi fixed at some point?
But I agree, komi shouldn’t really be warned on if it’s standard/fair by some other official definition.
For example, if we assume fair komi is 7.0 on some board, and OGS standardizes 6.5, I think a custom 7.5 game is equally valid and playable. Hardly equivalent to a komi = 100 game which should be warned on.
I agree iff 6.5 komi is neither fair (most likely komi to lead to a draw under that ruleset with best engine play) nor perfect (komi which results in closest to 50% winrate (counting draws as 1/2 win) under that ruleset with best engine play). So 6.5 or 6.0 should be the only ones to not get a warning under most territory rulesets, and 7.0 should be the only one to not get a warning under most area rulesets
Yes, that means that by default Chinese rule games will trigger the warning because of the 7.5 komi. That’s on them
Wonderful! I am happy to hear this.
Funny how rather than clinging to the “OGS is right, the rest of the go world is wrong” mantra with endless forum discussions, dexonsmith realised that the 4.5 komi on OGS 9x9 was the result of a bug, and fixed it. More of that please.
So here we have the hilarious situation of Uberdude hijacking the thread with his komi beef that’s already fixed 
… and still managing to frame that as a complaint.
Meanwhile … what do we all think about a more explicit dialog about handicap or not?
Personally I think it is true that people who create games with handicap experience a painful amount of cancellations by other folk who weren’t expecting that…
Note that this is a “pro-handicap” proposal in a sense: it’s addressing a bad experience of people trying to get acceptors to play their handicap game.
Another way to think is that players are not enough commited when selecting an offer.
Introducing a delay before chosing a new challenge may push everyone to be a bit more responsible on their choice.
No thanks 
I wouldn’t mind it being added to the list of “warning triangle” things, even if it would only deter a few.
I think that’s exaggerated. During WSC I played over 100 blitz games, with handicap in the automatch preferences. Most of the time my opponent had a similar rank, so games were even or with 0.5 komi. I did get a few cancellations but not more than about 10-15% of the time.
