I am telling everyone before I start playing, I have a disability. I don’t play to win or lose, I play for other reasons. So, if it looks like I am sandbagging. It is what it is. I am also going to start a group for players with disabilities. In said group, I want to be able to ask a few questions before you omit to weed out the fakes and scams. We with disabilities are in a protected class. We deserve no special treatment.
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Since you’re playing for “other reasons”, I wonder if you mind playing “unranked”?
This is by far the most straightforward way to avoid accusations of sandbagging.
If you’re forming a group of like-minded people, then you have other means than the OGS rating system to find your matches, so you don’t need a rank for that. You can all play each other unranked and not worry about it.
Unfortunately, if you appear to be losing ranked games on purpose, or abandoning them when you’re winning, you won’t get special treatment: your account will likely be suspended (after appropriate notice/warnings, looking for ways to avoid this outcome etc). This is what you said you wanted - it would just be unfortunate.
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I did, but I still got banned before. So, now I posted so I can point to the fact that I told everyone my intentions.
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That seems unfortunate, and possibly a misunderstanding.
I guess it’s true that abandoning unranked games is still not OK - that’s escaping.
But there’s no such thing as “sandbagging” in an unranked game.
Unfortunately “I told you I’m going to break the rules” doesn’t mean you’re allowed to break the rules.
Let’s see if we can sort out what happened last time (one-one) and find a useful way forward.
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Was “I did”, playing unranked, or something else?
I’d like to avoid digging into one person’s history, in public, if we can.
If we want a thread about “how can you play in a way that suits folk with certain constraints” let’s have that - maybe start that with the right question.
I’ve reached out to the OP to see about their specific situation.
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Welcome in the forum JH 1995
Could you explain us how the system is misbehaving considering your disability and the sandbagging criterias? That is to better understand the problem and see how it could get better.
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I am not saying I’m going to break the rules. I am saying that it may look like it. Just a little about my personal disability, I have cognitive function impairment, which is a side effect. I can’t remember past 2 or 3 moves ahead and rearrange my thinking in a fast enough matter. Even if I were to use the move analyzer or the pending move. I won’t always remember the plan or why this is important. Also, why is it not allowed to abandon a game? Every player must have the right to abandon a game if they feel like it. If the site needs a reason why a game is abandoned, then have an abandon game button and ask the question why are you abandoning the game?
The reason why abandoning a game is not allowed is because if you abandon - by either stopping playing, or actually leaving - your opponent has not choice except to wait until the clock times out, in case you come back.
This is not an acceptable experience.
We do in fact have some dialogs that ask you if you intend to abandon the game if we notice you leaving, but browsers limit how much we can do with that.
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Yeah, you are talking about not continuing the game. I am talking about ending the game short. Like playing the first 50 moves and then resigning.
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If you resign a ranked game that you are winning, then you mess up your rank and your opponent’s rank.
We work hard to make the ranking system give reasonable indication of player strength, so messing it up in this way is not OK.
That’s why playing unranked seems like the idea solution.
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So the next problem is resigning when you have a winning position. This is a common fact by sandbaggers so this is why it is not allowed.
I’m not saying that you do it (because of your disability) on a similar purpose as a sandbagger (to lower his rank so what he can crush future opponents) but it’s going to be difficult to make a difference.
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Yes, I understand that. You are not understanding my point. How do I put this in a way you could understand? Let me try this, if I were to play 20 ranked games in a day. Spilt evenly between higher and lower rank players +/_ 2. With my inability to remember and to think fast enough I could beat 5 higher players and lose all 10 to lower players. This is a hypothetical.
I don’t care about my disability. I will tell anyone about it. I will not tell anyone anything about my medical past. My disability can’t affect my whole body, it is an autoimmune central nervous system disease.
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If I understand correctly, you are pointing out that your situation is unlikely to even out in a way that affects the rank pool.
I agree with that.
The problem is that each individual person you play does not experience it this way.
People really hate sandbaggers. They hate that people try to trick them with their rank.
So when someone resigns a won game, or when someone seems to have a very wrong rank, they report it.
If you proceed as you described, we would have up to 20 sandbagging reports per day. (OK an exaggeration, but you see what I mean?)
- Your opponent’s personal experience is messed up
- It creates moderation load.
What I’m not understanding is that given you don’t expect to have a correct rank, why not play unranked?
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I understand well I think.
The problem remains, how to make the difference.
OGS has quite limited resources, especially concerning moderation (a bunch of benevolent). There are things we can’t provide like a detailed statistical analysis of each individual cases.
If you don’t use the ranking system then you can resign a won game. Play unranked seems the way to go.
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I never said was not going to play unranked games. But, like I said before I got banned before when my ranked-to-unranked games ratio was like 6:1. I would play a rank game once or twice a week while playing 5 to 7 unranking a week.
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If you always finished your ranked games properly, you would not have a problem.
If you are unable to finish ranked games properly, it’s definitely the exact problem we have been discussing.
You still haven’t clarified why you need to play ranked games.
Afterthought.
This conversation is based on the premise that you don’t want special treatment (because that’s what you said).
We have been explaining why the rules are what they are - the same rules for everyone.
At OGS we strive to be a place where you can rely on your game finishing properly, and on your opponent’s rank being reasonable.
It would be “special treatment” to treat the ranked games you play any different to those of anyone else.
Ranked games are expected to be ended properly - that’s the standard.
I offered a 1-1 discussion to see if there’s something about your situation that we can work with - you haven’t taken that up, but the offer is still there.
However, there isn’t much left to be said about “what the rules are”.
It’s clear: if it looks like sandbagging, it will be treated like sandbagging - especially if no special arrangement has been made.
Consider explaining your situation at the beginning of games? This will give players a chance to decline the game at the beginning rather than play a game out only to be abandoned. OGS players have a better view of cancelation (which happens in the first few moves) than abandonment.
I am also having a bit of trouble understanding the situation. There seem to be two things here: not remembering moves, and abandoning games, and I’m not sure which you were banned for (maybe a combination?)
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