I’ve recently learned how McMahon pairing works and I really like it as it is basically how I select opponents (around my rank). I thought it is a great idea to play tournaments instead of selecting oponents myself, but… then I looked at current monthlies: there are 12, oldest began on 17 Jan 2016 and is still in round 2! None of the 12 active monthlies has reached round 3 until now, and only 4 from 12 are in round 2. So it looks like it takes like 1,5 year to finish a monthly.
Maybe weeklies are faster but I can’t tell due to some search bug - searching for “Weekly” or “McMahon” gives no results.
I must say this is a little discouraging as one monthly takes longer to finish than the whole time I was playing go Were there any thoughts of making it faster somehow?
I joined 3 of these type of tournaments over Christmas as I didn’t think they lasted so long. Looks like I will have 20 odd correspondence games going for the next few years. Not to worry tho. I had no plans for 2017/8 anyway
Simultaneous tournaments are fast comparing to non-simultaneous ones
Well, that’s the idea. You join tournaments, you get games. Some of tourneys eventually finish, some don’t, do no let it bother you.
I don’t think it’s possible to make things go faster without significantly reducing the player pool which is not that big to start with. Although you can always start your own tourney with faster time controls than the default ones. But the thing is, the current defaults are already considered by many correspondence players to be unreasonably fast.
There was a bit of drama when the max time for the ladder games was reduced to 3 days with a part of the OGS “old guard” leaving the ladders as the result, you can search the forums for details if you are interested.
Yes, I’ve seen the “ladder drama” I also think the settings are pretty fast, but some players just lag behind and make the whole tournament wait. It’s hard to think of any better solution though.
Better solution (for me, of course, I am sure that not everyone will agree)
No weekend pause, no vacations, higher Fischer maximum, lower increment.
If the maximum is 10 days, this allows for most reasonable vacations. If the increment is 8 hours, games are a lot faster than they are now and this is easily attained by putting josekis in conditional moves.
At the moment, between vacations and weekend pauses, the 1 day increment means that people can get by with 2 moves per week.
For me, this would mean that I could hardly join any correspondence tournaments anymore since sometimes I have to be away from home with flaky or even not internet access at all
Nobody says this should be the only tournament format (or even the default one). It’s for more dedicated players who care about the competitive side of tournaments. That is, not for me either.
I think i’m more like part of the problem than part of the solution, but…
Yeah those tournaments take a lot of time to finish, and you most likely need to wait new round to start months after you’re done with your own games
It is mostly the result of “some” players have joined corr tournaments every now and then for years, stacking up more games they can handle. It’s treacherous when you suddenly start randomly getting bunch of new games from older tournaments on top of tens of already ongoing ones xDD
Yup, just pick a group like Fast Correspondence and crate a new one with settings you want, you can also use forum/chat for little advertisement if you want lot of players ^^
Default settings for sitewide tourneys are actually really fast for correspondence playing
8 hours also results a ton of timeouts between players who are literally opposite sides of the earth, especially if neither of them can’t play more then once or twice a game. It takes 2 players for game to start dragging into forever xD
For those interested, I’ve started to sometimes run fast correspondance tournaments under the OGS Teaching Ladder group (shameless plug now that I’m a group admin). Time control is Fisher, 2 days starting time plus 2 hours time increment, and it’s intended to last no more than 3 months (preferably more like 6 weeks, but they always fall behind schedule). Turnout for the two trials has been around 20 to 40 players. If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll add you to the list of people I’ll spam invites to when the time comes to run another tournament
On generally making tournaments faster, maybe it’s possible to handle correspondence tournaments like how lichess handles their live ones: Pairing is done asynchronously, as soon as games finish, instead of waiting in rounds. Then, the tournament can finish after either a certain number of games, or at a prespecified time (better score for fast players). Lichess also allows extra tournament points if you halve your own time and still win. Vacation mode and pause-on-weekend could be set as allowed or not allowed per tournament (depending if it’s fast or not. Tournaments might also have their own vacation time, though this is starting to sound overcomplicated )
With the lichess style of tournaments, I could even be possible to run multi-day tournaments with live time settings, though they’ll be less accurate (since people in different timezones are unlikely to be paired). If we start to allow different time settings… that starts to sound like an automatch feature.
Actually no, it does not. I do not experience more time-outs with this setting than with the usual ones. And obviously, if you can play at most one move a day this is not for you, but two moves a day with the occasional conditional move is already fine. For myself, I am much likelier to timeout because of the three days.
Good point. Correspondence for the most part takes ages!!! Making it monthly means they will probably have a backlog of 1-2 years worth of monthly ongoing tournaments at any point in time.
I didnt realise how ridiculous it was till I joined my first correspondent tourney in Nov 2015 (for the 2016 tourney) and after a year I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw registration for the 2017 one when the 2016 has not even completed yet. Wanting to end the obvious endless crazy loop, I didn’t bother registering for it seems a norm in correspondence go to play endlessly till either the server or you die.
I find it interesting to note that 3 rounds weekly 19x19 single game McMahon seems to take as long as my tourney (3 rounds 13x13 simul games McMahon) though mine has 7 days whereas 19x19 has 3.
Any one knows how long do 19x19 Weekly Simultaneius McMahon usually take? As I said earlier due to some bug it’s impossible to search for those in active tournaments so I cannot check it.
I think this maybe the better option, as there are fewer players, those tournaments should end sooner and also you get fewer new games when round starts. I think it may be more reasonable to play 2 weeklies a month as 1 monthly.
You’ve already guessed it right in your first post, it should be 1.5 years.
This one started in Nov 2015 and looks to end in the next few months, most likely in the earlier half of the year. https://online-go.com/tournament/13436
I’m not entirely sure if I would actually want it to be handled this way myself, but it may also help to actually throw disqualified players out of the tournament once they are disqualified.
One of the McMahons I’m playing in is stuck in first round, with one open game, that is paused and between two players already disqualified for timeout…
Generally I don’t see why disqualified players shouldn’t be able to continue their other games, I’m here to play go for fun and to learn afterall, not for the speediest possible tournaments, but the extreme case I just mentioned is pretty frustrating. Especially so, because while those tournaments are still going on I am hesitant about joining in a lot of other games, because I do not want to end up as that person that has dozens upon dozens of games happening at the same time…
Sounds like OGS missed an edge case for simultaneous McMahons. They certainly get kicked out once the round ends… but the round can’t end until the game ends, which, in the case of a paused and dead game, is never. Alert the developers! For your specific tournament, if you ask in the help chat, a mod could probably end the game for you.
Were there any thoughts of making it faster somehow?
I also think the settings are pretty fast, but some players just lag behind and make the whole tournament wait. It’s hard to think of any better solution though.
