How does Rengo work at OGS?

If you know anything about Rengo, please edit this post to improve our documentation.
The content here will get transferred to the actual documentation pages at some point.

  1. Rengo

    1.1. Definition

OGS Rengo is a Go variant for playing in teams. These teams can consist of a (gender balanced) pair of a male and a female player, but that is not obligatory. The teams can also be larger than two players. (At the moment it seems that there is no limit to the maximum number of participants.)

In this sense OGS Rengo can be viewed as an extended variant of Rengo (Pair Go) as is described in the following links.

All OGS Rengo games are by definition unranked.

1.2. Rengo at OGS

On OGS, Rengo is a game between 2 teams of players. At least one of the teams has to have 2 or more players.

1.3. Categories of Rengo Games

Rengo games can be categorised in two ways: game speed (correspondence, live, blitz) and time control (strict or casual). This results in 6 categories: strict correspondence, strict live, strict blitz, casual correspondence, casual live and casual blitz.

1.3.1 Correspondence, Live, or Blitz

Whether a game is blitz, live, or correspondence depends on the time that is allowed per move. If the time per move averages less than 10 seconds, a game is considered a blitz game. If the time per move is more than 1 hour (up to 4 weeks), it is a correspondence game. Anything in between is a live game.

1.3.2 Strict or Casual

In a strict Rengo, the timer is shared. If one player resigns, loses by disconnection, times out, or deletes their account, the game ends and that player’s team loses.

In casual Rengo, every player has an individual timer. If one player resigns, deletes their account, loses by disconnection, or times out, the game continues without them. If the last player of a team resigns, times out, loses by disconnection. or deletes their account, the game ends and that team loses.

Collective resignation for the team cannot be done. Casual Rengo uses only simple time: each player only has a set time for each move.

1.4 Creating, Joining, and Starting a Game

1.4.1 Creating a Game

You create a Rengo game like any other game on the Play page: Click on the Custom Game Create button, uncheck the Ranked checkbox and enable the one for Rengo. A Casual checkbox will appear. Check it for a casual game or leave it unchecked for a strict game.

(Note that to create a Rengo challenge the Ranked field has to be unchecked.)

All the settings that are possible in normal games (including Pause on weekends) can be applied in Rengo games. The Rengo setting can also be added to the Preferred settings.

Vacation mode doesn’t apply to casual Rengo correspondence games.

1.4.2 Joining a Game

You can find open Rengo games in the Custom Games section on the Play page.

To join a game, click on the green button near the organiser’s name that can be found on the Play page as shown below.

immagine

To decide if you want to join a game, you can view the settings of a challenge. When you click on View, you will see the challenge specifications (as shown in the two screenshots below): the game start (manually by the organiser or auto-start by the system), which players have joined and to what team they are assigned, and which players have not yet been assigned. Players who have joined or have been assigned to a team can also withdraw from the challenge, before the game begins, by clicking the Withdraw button (see screenshots below).

Once the game has begun, players cannot leave the game except by resigning, timing out, disconnection or account deletion, as already described.

1.4.3 Assigning Players to Teams

After starting a challenge, you will arrive on the Waiting for Rengo players page.

When a player joins, the system will automatically assign the player to Black or White. Players can be unassigned by the Rengo organiser.

Clicking the Unassign players button will unassign all the assigned players. If you want to unassign only one or a specific few players, you can click the X beside their name(s).

Clicking the red black arrow box or the red white arrow box will assign a player to the black or white team respectively.

Schermafbeelding 2022-03-31 om 10.49.30

Teams can also be balanced by clicking on Balance teams. The system decides which teams the players are assigned to based on their rankings.

After a game has started, the teams can’t be changed anymore.

1.4.4 Starting a Game

After having assigned 3 or more players, click on the green Start button.

1.4.4.1 Auto-start

When the number of players that joined reaches the auto-start number, the Rengo game starts immediately. The auto-start option is available in casual mode only.

The number of participants needed to start the actual game can be set by clicking the arrow up (more) or arrow down (fewer).

Schermafbeelding 2022-03-31 om 12.57.03

1.5 Ethical Requirements

In addition to OGS’s site rules about ethics (e.g., no score cheating, no stalling, no outside help by bots or people), special restrictions apply to Rengo. Players should not discuss the game with one another, directly or indirectly, while it is in progress. This means not suggesting moves or strategies, or commenting on moves made by either side. Players may not participate with two different accounts in the same game.

For more info on how to behave on the site and in the Forums:

1.6 Discussion

The OGS Rengo variant was created at the end of 2021/beginning of 2022. There is still discussion going on about some aspects of the OGS Rengo variant. A selection of topics dealing with OGS Rengo are:

10 Likes

I don’t know where you got this from, but it is completely wrong :slight_smile:
Admittedly, i have only played 3 rengo games so far, but it’s definitely not lame. And there was not a single player involved that had any confident issues :laughing:

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See @Conrad_Melville ? This is what I’m talking about.

No-one is interested in even correcting wrong documentation, nor even following the link to find out what the joke was.

Is it any wonder we don’t have documentation…

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From: Cunningham's Law - Meta

“The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.”
— Ward Cunningham

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Yeah, I sure proved that wrong didn’t I… what’s the world coming to when you can’t even rely on Cunningham’s Law?!

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Well, it’s only been a few minutes. I was going to edit, but I saw that someone else already was. I remember from before that Discourse does not handle edit collisions in Wikis very well, so I think I should wait rather than attempting a parallel edit.

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Okay, I have done some editing, but significant issues remain:

Assigning people to teams and to an order needs to be described. Mention that people play in a fixed order. I have put a note in the Wiki about a very problematic partial paragraph that touches on this but gives no specifics.

Is the 100-player maximum per team or overall? Specify for clarity.

Auto-start need clarification.

Who determines a team resignation in strict rengo? Are team captains assigned for this, and if so, how is the designation accomplished?

Should anything more be added to the Ethics section?

Capitalization is inconsistent on rengo, go, strict, casual, and in headlines (all initial caps, or sentence case, or initial caps on non-sentences, and sentence case on sentences). Capitalizing button names is okay, I think.

I will do more edits if desired when these questions are answered. Also, a final proof for consistency and typos is always desirable.

@GreenAsJade Thanks for setting this up as a wiki, rather than in Giuthub, where I have no account and don’t want to get one (as I have far too many accounts and passwords already).

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I think this is already covered:

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I think that limit just doesn’t exist. Where did you find it, @Atorrante ?

At the beta variant there are some 100 participants rengo challenges. I assumed that is the max, but if not Cunninghams’ law (“The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.”— Ward Cunningham) will correct me :innocent:

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Corrected!
138 here, and there are some with more than 100 players that could start in this moment.

I’m glad to see that most of what I wrote has survived for now :slight_smile:

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how much are theoretically possible?
999?

You’re right. Sorry, I meant in casual rengo, where team resignation doesn’t seem to be addressed. If a series of resignations of the teams members is the envisioned method, it will be more clear if that is stated explicitly. Explicit explanation is really important in all technical writing.

I think 1137243. Plus all the accounts that will register on the future :slight_smile:

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Are you serious?

Yes. I don’t think that, in this moment, there is a limit. The one I wrote is, I think, the number of registered accounts (including deleted ones, so surely a bit less) now

I think this is also covered but would maybe be clearer if the word “eliminated” were replaced with “resigns or times out”. This avoids confusion as to what eliminated might mean and how it is determined and is consistent with the description for strict.

I’d do it but on a phone I fear I’d do more harm than good.

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On my phone it’s too bothersome to do, but I would add a screenshot after this

Because we are used to the interface and maybe it’s not that obvious to everyone.

Also, I would add somewhere the distinction that OGS Rengo isn’t necessarily male-female pairs, I think we had that addressed somewhere, that people expected it to be so because that’s what they were used to.

ETA: All rengo games are unranked.

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My point was that it would be more clear if it were explicitly stated that no team resignation per se exists and that resignation consists of all the players individually resigning.

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I was curious, so i copied what we have already to the github wiki.
I figured it is already better than nothing :slight_smile:
The conversion is simple: I just exchanged the headings.
One problem are the images though. I don’t know how to reference them correctly.
Any ideas how to fix those?

2 Likes