Can I register to get an email whenever I am challenged to a game? I don’t want to miss challenges.
tra0008 is not david265
I think there is an option in the global settings yes
Honestly that indicator (with the quantity of games you have to play) is quite difficult to miss. Should be enough.
You can have email notifications.
You can find it under “settings”
then “email notifications”
My experience is to check the site from time to time and look at the round indicator that shows if you have any move to play. As a correspondence player I’m very used to it, but a live player could give it less attention, since he’s already on the game page while playing.
And yes: ladders are all made of just correspondence games.
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Are you saying that when someone challenges me in a leader, I can cancel the game without dropping out of the ladder?
That’s complete news to me. How confident are you about that?
That is how it should work. If you cancel, resign or lose at scoring the outcome should be the same - the challenger hops above you and you are pushed down one.
You only get kicked from the ladder if you timeout.
If there is a bug then apologies in advance!
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If you are ever wrongly dropped out, we can also manually adjust your position back to your old spot after you rejoin.
But it’s way more fun to climb the ladder from the bottom 
Having played in the 9x9 Ladder for several days, I’d like to recommend it to others. It is true that it is limited to Correspondence games, which I had never played before, but they’re nice in that they can fit into a busy schedule, automatically coordinating the play of many people with different schedules.
The really nice thing, as compared to tournaments, is that you can stay in the Ladder as long as you like–you are not kicked out after losing a few games in a streak. And you can choose the rank of the people you challenge.
The only bad thing is that many of the people you will challenge won’t respond to your first move as black. My guess is that they join the Ladder not understanding how it works and then abandon it. So you usually have to wait up to three days until you can challenge someone more available (the starting time is 3 days per move). Unfortunately, you are also limited to challenging at most three other players in the Ladder concurrently (at first).
You can view all your Ladder games on the Home page and on your Profile page, and a circular indicator shows game status near your profile image and lets you choose which of your current games to play. You can adjust your Settings to send yourself an email when your opponent has made a move in a game, and the notice contains a link you can click to get to the game.
For someone very busy, this is a great way to fit games of go into your schedule. For dan players, it gives you another chance to be competitive with others and see your position relative to others at a glance. For beginners (roughly 25k), it gives you a low-impact and reliable way to begin getting practice playing (although you do have to accept mostly losing, since handicaps are not supported).
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Yep. That is an issue.
You could choose your opponents looking at their current activity (if they’re playing other games in the ladder) or their history (to understand if they’re quick or slow players in general).
But I would also point out that challenging a “dead” player is a service for the community in a way: each time they lose on timeout they’re kicked off, so you’re basically cleaning the ladder and doing a favour to other players like you.
I actually did it on purpose sometimes, but it takes a lot of time: waiting three days is a drag.
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On the other hand, you can always cancel a game before the opponent times out, if you don’t want to wait three days and would rather start another challenge sooner, but then you don’t get the free climb and don’t help clean up the ladder.
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Not only that, but we are limited to challenging only three players at a time. The combination of three players and three days is extremely frustrating to me, as I am used to playing live games. Is there any way I could get a special exception and be allowed to challenge 7 players at once? I think this would give me a better chance of having a real game.
Also, I will follow the advice to cancel a challenge after 6 or 12 hours. But why doesn’t OGS simply remove players who don’t respond to challenges from the Ladder? Or only allow players onto the Ladder if they promise to respond to challenges?
They do. When a player is challenged but doesn’t play a move, they are automatically removed from the ladder.
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Just to clarify that now that I’ve been in the 9x9 Ladder for awhile, I am allowed 5 games, and my opponents frequently move within a few minutes, so my initial problems are gone. I think the only big problem with ladders happens when you first join, at the very end of the ladder. Then you have to play against less interested players for some reason, so you have to wait for three days often.
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How do you propose we sort the newly joined players based on which ones will like ladders and keep participating and which ones won’t like them and drop off? You all start at the bottom, it’s natural that as you climb higher you will find more players that are more dedicated.
Good question. My proposal is to extend the current differences for new joiners to a ladder (and the current most recent joiners). Instead of giving them the standard luxury of 3 days per move, make it one hour per move for the first two games. If they don’t make one move per hour for the first two games, kick them out of the ladder and let them rejoin if they wish. That’s just one solution. I’m sure there could be others. Even if one move per hour was required for the first three moves, irresponsible joiners would be weeded out quickly.
Not sure if I misunderstand, but wouldn’t that mean someone joining in the evening would have a fair chance of being kicked out when waking up next morning?
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I see your point, i also find it pretty “meh” when game just times out on move 1 :<
But thats basically the main idea of the ladder in the first place. You’ll become the very newest and last person when joining, and then you climb your way up as high as you can ^^
My general tip with starting ladder games is that you scroll all the way to the highest users you can challenge, and choose the people who already have already 3 ongoing games for even higher positions. That way you will most likely encounter players who are very active, and also there are good chances that by the time that your games finish, they have achieved a lot higher positions so you can also climb up way more effectively
I call this “the slingshot strategy” xD
edit: ah yeah like lys and arsenlapin said, the players who wont respond challenges or timeout on any of their ongoing games in that ladder will be kicked out. In a way it helps keeping the ladder bit cleaner from unused accounts.
Players might be more motivated to play if the enter the ladder at their current rank (instead of at the bottom).
But to be honest, I have not much experience with ladders and don’t know what the consequences are.