Escaping by Timeout

I’m not personally too offended by the rudeness of the timeouts. Neither am I too concerned about it having a large impact on my own ranking (since I mostly play ladder challenges where timing out seems to be less common since players get kicked off the ladder for timing out). I don’t personally feel cheated, since it really has not happened much to me.

However, I am concerned since several have expressed their frustration with this issue, and since the current situation makes it possible to abuse the timeout system to manipulate the ranking system. Since this vulnerability exists, griefers are actually incentivized to timeout in more games. The system rewards those abusing it at the expense of others.

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I’ve been playing almost exclusively correspondence games since starting on this server a couple years ago. Although I don’t feel strongly about this issue to the point of frothing at the mouth over it, I do agree with the argument that having such a rule in place does incentivize people to deliberately abuse the way the rule works, so I’m positive that there are at least some users who do so. I recognize that in many cases it’s difficult to prove any malicious intent, but ultimately I would very much like to see this rule removed altogether. My personal opinion is that having a longer time control should not exempt someone from taking a loss or series of losses on their record by timing out. If you are playing a live/blitz game, you inherently accept the fact that there are consequences to timing out, and I don’t think that correspondence games should be any different in that regard.

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Firstly, I don’t think the “inflating ranks” argument is valid, especially along side the “sandbag” argument.
Any ranking points he lost during the time outs (ie, “underserved wins” he opponents got), he got them back on his way back up sandbagging weaker opponents. So all the players‘ rank when counted as a whole, is not inflated.

Second, in the previous posts I have done a simulation. If I remembered correctly if someone times out many games of course his own ranking drops. But the wave dies out quickly. His immediate opponent’s rank would not rise by more than a kyu, and secondary impact (affect on opponent’s other opponent’s rank) is virtually nil.

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What about those getting sandbagged who he/she plays who are stronger than the timeout deflated rank?

I’d like to see “concerns” and “possibilities” and “frustrations” replaced by facts.
Sometimes we are concerned by something that could be real but simply doesn’t happen or happens in a negligible way.

We are talking here about keeping or removing an existing rule that addresses a specific problem (some players simply stop playing for a long period and lose all of their games by timeout) but creates an even more specific vulnerability (cheaters could exploit it to automatically annul games that they are losing).

I’d like to know how many players stop playing and how many games are therefore lost by timeout in bunches.
I’d like to know also how many escapers are exploiting the rule and how many games are involved.
Is that possible?

If doing it on a full server scale is an unbearable waste of time for devs, could we do a portion of it on ourselves?

@flovo, please, how could we know for sure which games in our history were annuled because of that rule?
How did you compile the above list of Wulfenia’s games?
If I recall well, the termination-api skips those games, is it right?
So, should we compare two lists of games (profile history and termination-api history) or is there a better way?
Could it be done automatically for many players?

I would really know how big this issue is.

And talking about rating distortion: how much a bunch of losses could actually “destroy” one’s rating? And how much cheating the rule could inflate one’s rating?
And I would add this one: when honest and polite users know that they have to stop playing for a long period, they resign their games instead of letting them rudely run out of time. So, all of those games are regularly ranked as losses, whatever was the situation in game (ahead or behind). Would that destroy rating too? Would that have consequences on opponent’s rating?
Ironically, would it be better for rating system (with the present rule about timeout’s strikes) that they abandon their games instead of politely resign? :innocent:

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I would add that I’m not trolling or blaming anyone: I actually was a concerned player and my concerns were actually soothed by facts.
If you’re interested you can read it here:

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The mere fact that this question re-emerges every few months should be conclusive evidence that the rule is very unpopular amongst players.

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The rule is definitely a bother for some players.

I wouldn’t tell that it’s “unpopular amongst players” because OGS has a lot of players (fact) and a very small portion of them participates in the forum (fact). And, as you can read above, there is at least an equal number of forum users that don’t complain at all against the rule or even approve it (fact).

I would rather say that’s an unresolved matter and the more we drag it on, the more the discussion will get harsh. (opinion)

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I think the reason why so few of them complain is simply because THEY DON’T KNOW THE RULE IS THERE. The last time I asked a few months ago it’s not written out anywhere, and the admin purposely kept it that way. I think why he did that is not hard to guess: because he knew people would abuse it.

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I agree that it is possible that many people might not be aware of the rule. In fact, as I mention above, there is a known bug (reported on GitHub by @GreenAsJade, see the link I shared above) where the timeout annulments are not indicated in any obvious way (except for the lack of change in the rating graph).

However, I would not go so far as to allege a conspiracy by the site admins to keep it hidden. I think it is merely an oversight.

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I actually like the T rule a lot.

I’m a slow correspondence player, and i daily find myself short of time in a couple of my games. Its not that uncommon for me to have my weekend trips to drag on for a bit longer than i’ve expected, or simply sleep late and not have the time to open my laptop on the morning.
Simple accidents like that has and will caused me some timeouts occasionally, i think the longest timeout-streak i’ve had has been 7 or 8 games. It’s not because i’ve wanted to “escape” but simply because accidents happen.

You may argue that it’s my own fault (like it is) and i would “deserve” to have my rating drop with each of those timeouts, you may even argue thats it’s not that big of a deal to just beat couple of weaker players to get my rank back where it belongs, but i personally feel it’s already a harsh punishment to get my ass kicked out of ladders and DQ’d from tournaments.

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It is NOT a punishment if you agree to a match with certain rules and then lose according to the rules both players agreed to. If your clock runs out during a real-life tournament, losing the game is also not a punishment, it is what you agreed to.

I also note that your whole post completely ignores the perspective of your opponent. In your language, your opponent gets “punished” for your weekend trip.

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I would argue precisely that since you agreed to the time controls, you deserve the consequences that come with not fulfilling the agreement - a loss.

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Yes, because i can’t influence other people, so there is no reason for me to take it into my perspective. I wouldn’t mind if they would get the rating points for the timeout wins, since that makes no difference to me at all.

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But the rule that you are defending IS affecting other people, and it is affecting those other people solely because of your behaviour, they can do nothing about it. So do you agree that it is “a harsh punishment” to have a game in a won position annulled because the opponent took a weekend trip or not?

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It’s as harsh punishment than having a game annulled on move 5. It’s always a sad thing to not being able to finish a game that have started.

How is that not a punishement? :smiley:
punishement = a penalty inflicted as retribution for an offence ← that’s a textbook definition :smiley:

Now to try and be constructive:
- everyone please stop taking this thread to personal levels and try not to take things personally, stay strictly constructive. It is massive thread enough already, I will start mercilessly editing/muting for these remarks. It’s not helping anyone, you just clutter the thread and annoy people.

Yes, I think I remember that. I loved it. It was finally something at least approaching factual data. Unfortunately unless I am very much mistaken it was only a simulation about a couple of same rank players timing out, which in my personal (and far from any expert) opinion is expected not to mess up much, since nothing unexpected is happening when same rank player losing to same rank players… Having a stronger player timeout to several weaker ones would be much more interesting also to know how many games will it take to get back to rank thus how many people will be affacted by the unfair “sandbaggy” games. Also the possible distortion is not the only problem.

I would have no illusions about the rule being poppular by the masses. It is an unlikable rule. But that in my own personal book is not a reason enough to cancel it. Nobody likes taxes for example, but they are needed.

Me too. In my personal opinion I still very much doubt the rule is widely misused to cheat. I am sure there is a few cases, there always are, but anything substantial? I do not think so. It would require planning ahead, possibly stopping to play for several days, actually knowing about the rule first :smiley: and for slow and uncertain results, as you still won’t win higher ranked games, you have to slowly rank up on lower ranks. Any real evidence is lacking. Simply put, there are much faster and easier ways to cheat if one wants

Not true technically, her opponent simply does not get rewarded for the win (provided it was a certain victory). Unfair, yes. But so would be all the games opponents of _KoBa will be playing while she ranks back up. Still unfair, in my opinion possibly even more.

Matter of opinion I guess, but again, this is NOT what we are going for. The ranking is designed to reflect strength as best as possible, not punish players.

And please stop comparing correspondece games to real life tournaments :smiley: I don’t think the analogy works at all. Live timeouts count here as well, it is exactly the very different proprety of correspondence that causes all this. I bet if one could timeout 20 live AGA tournaments at once by one accident they would cut them some slack in the official ratings too :smiley:

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There are a few very angry, very vocal people who want the rule gone and many people who seem to be quite content. :slight_smile: Well, I’ve seen what can happen if someone resigns from a tournament and a losing streak like that (which serial timeout would mirror) results in a serious rank hit which, in the case of slow-af correspondence would take ages to repair.

And no, 2-3 posts a year don’t constitute conclusive evidence of anything.

The most important point is still that a rating system exists to (predict the winner) match people in a way to maximize the probability of an even game.

If people cheated their way out of losing, they would rank up and encounter opponents they would lose to about 70% of the time (1 rank). If they serially timed out all those losses, their timeout ratio would skyrocket. So if you can’t find anyone whose timeout ratio in their last 100 games or so is above 70%, as far as I’m concerned, you don’t have a case. Even the milder assumption (rank preservation) would require 50% timeouts and I can’t see any evidence of that, either.

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Please, quantify “serious” rank hit.

Please, define “slow-af”. (google didn’t help, sorry) :slight_smile:

Wasn’t Glicko chosen just for that? Usually we talk about “super responsive” rating system on OGS.

By the way, @flovo provided to me some factual data.
I can tell you all that in my whole history on OGS I have 33 games that could match the T-rule.
We aren’t 100% sure that they are, so I’m gonna check them one-by-one.
I’ll let you know.

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My post is directly above yours, you don’t have to block quote everything… :stuck_out_tongue:

The serious hit was around 5 ranks. Can’t find the thread now but he was talking about ethical concerns of resigning from a tournament or something. Edit: Thanks, @flovo. That’s the one. (See below)

Well, if the fastest correspondence games take approximately 7 days and the slowest take a year (still a modest assumption), then they take about 500x up to 26208x the duration of my average game. I think that qualifies as slow af.

Glicko does not speed up the games, it just speeds up adjustment. You’re still gonna be playing for (most likely) months to get back your rank. Most people I’ve talked to who play only correspondence do so because they only have a few minutes every day or so; corr is their only option.

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