Rather then extend the lengthy thread I started over the weekend (Still puzzled by annulments?), can someone please advise on how best to avoid an annulment when it looks like the other correspondence player is headed toward a timeout?
Should you call in a moderator to step in before time runs out?
Should you initiate a vacation break to freeze the game calendar while reaching out for someone on the OGS team to intervene?
Since there’s no clear way of telling whether your game is about to get annulled, how does one keep this from turning into another frustrating surprise?
Escaping in correspondence games is currently allowed.
Even if escaping was not allowed in correspondence games people are free to use the time on their clock as they wish. If their timer goes down to an hour or even just a few minutes and then they make a move, that’s not a problem. How would you know someone is about to timeout? For all you know they are just about to come back. You can’t tell they’ve escaped until it’s actually happened. So, even making escaping in correspondence games an offence it doesn’t solve your issue because you want some intervention to prevent it from happening in the first place.
Even if it made sense to punish someone for escaping a game that is ongoing that won’t prevent them from escaping. The mods can’t force them to make moves, and they can’t let someone else take over the game.
@PRHG Sorry, I’m not familiar with the practice of “escaping” from a game on OGS. Is there a different term for this action? Is it the same as simply not showing up to continue playing?
@_KoBa Pausing seems like a good approach. Thanks.
The best way to avoid an annulation is perhaps by “stalking” your opponents a bit before you accept/send a challenge and look if they are active and have some timeouts in their history.
I feel your frustration. I feel thats something more present on lower ranks.
Well, maybe I should have qualified what I said a bit more. Timing out is not necessarily escaping, escaping is the offence. Someone might genuinely run out of time whilst trying to think of what to do (this is more so true of live games than correspondence games). Escaping is when it appears to be deliberate, e.g. someone might have realised the game is lost, but instead of resigning or playing on they just let the timer run down, perhaps to annoy their opponent.
The issue is it’s easier to judge a live game. If someone is in a complicated position with not much time on the board you can imagine they just ran out of time thinking. If someone lost a big group and then doesn’t make a move for several minutes you can sort of tell it’s a rage quit. It’s more difficult trying to use duration to help you determine why a person timed out in a correspondence game, because whether or not someone rage quit it’s not unusual for a few days to go by before a move is made. If someone lost a big group did they rage quit, or are they contemplating their next move?
It’s also more reasonable for someone’s timer to deplete. If you are playing live/blitz the timer is constantly in front of your face for the whole game, so you can see how much time is left. In correspondence you’re doing other things like work and sleeping, so you can understand why someone might forget about a game (unless the timer appears in your dreams).
There’s nothing inherently wrong with timing out, making good use of your time is part of the game.
Also when someone has a lot of ongoing corr games:
There are some games where they are winning by a lot
→ its easy to find moves that solidify the lead, easy to keep the clock close to the fischer maximum
There are some games where they are losing
→ its really hard to find any moves which are helpful in any way
There are games that are close, or have some complicated position
→ needs more focusing and positional judgment, because even a small mistake can be costly
And also games with shorter timelimits they are accustomed to / ladder games without weekend pauses
→ less time on the clock than the player expects
And when something happens in real life and they miss a day or few, it tends to be the games with worst board positions and the shortest timesettings which run out of time first :<
Once there is just one day on the clock, you could send a message to the opponent, asking if they are planning to continue the game. If they never even reply, then, you practically have your answer. The game will timeout, but at least there will be no surprise.
I’ve been playing correspondence games lately, so that’s been my primary concern. Trying to anticipate when timeouts turn into more surprise annulments - or when they won’t - remains impossible for me to anticipate.
From that other thread, I now appreciate there’s a range of views on how the annulment policy should work, and that perhaps refinements are under consideration.
Meanwhile, is there a definitive description somewhere of how the current annulment policy actually does work - so I can brace myself for the next surprise annulment?
(Escaping sounds like they’ve been held captive.)
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