After my opponent and I each played 4 moves, (s)he never returned. 3 days later, my opponent timed out.
NOTE: I see this same opponent actively played 2 other games during these past 3 days (won 1, resigned the other) - but apparently during these same 3 days couldn’t be bothered making a move in our game.
Initially, it was announced as a “win” for white (me). But a moment later the game was annulled.
QUESTION: Is this consistent with how such situations are currently intended to work?
There is a cooling-off period. Before a certain amount of moves a ranked game could be canceled without affecting the ranks of the player. The reason of premature game termination doesn’t matter. It can be cancelation by one of the player, timeout or disconnection.
P. S. Try to use ‘they’ in such cases. In English ‘they’ can be used as a singular pronoun to refer to a person. It wasn’t easy for me to get used to this. But I managed. My first language is binary too. I’m sure you can handle it too
Thanks for the crash grammar course. Actually, “they” remains plural in my use of English. While I aim to be respectful in direct conversations with individuals who have expressed a pronoun preference, I am not required to change my use of pronouns when speaking in general.
The reason it is not easy to get used to speaking the way other people want us to speak is because it is not easy to speak the way other people want us to speak.
Courtesy and personal respect are always in order. Policing other people’s speech, rarely so. 
The rules were cancellation was accepted before 10 moves on 19x19. I dunno on 13x13 but here seems the same.
There were already debates (use search), I am not personally ok with it (I would suggest 2 moves no more)
Yeah, something far less than 10 “feels” appropriate. Of course, this view is coming from a guy whose 8-move correspondent game took 3 long days to then time out. 
And with 8 moves on a 13x13 you feel more invested as on 19x19
Now 3 days in the correspondence society, that’s not the end of the world either.
When did this rule become 10 moves? The last I knew the limit was 6 moves; games under six moves were automatically annulled. Was there an announcement about this change?
Maybe you’re right. I always thought it was 10 but that could be easily checked with the switch cancel/resign. Bit lazy sorry.
Edit: I checked with a bot and yes, looks to be 6 on 19x19 (handicap stones are not included). Maybe it was 10 and has been lowered? I remember some discussions on this long ago.
Thanks for clearing that up. After some puzzlement, I think I have the answer. This game, Ladder Challenge: SomeGoGuy(#1018) vs QQtang(#1008) , was annulled because the system thinks it is a serial timeout in a correspondence game. But it actually is not, because the seriality was interrupted by a resignation. In the opponent’s history, one can see that the two preceding correspondence games were also timeouts. However, these timeouts were not consecutive (i.e., serial), therefore the game should NOT have been annulled. This is a known bug, although I myself had forgotten about it. Years ago the system worked correctly; a series of timeouts in correspondence was broken by any interruption in the seriality. The reason is that the rule was intended only for emergencies where someone was unable to play. If an intervening live game was completed it meant the person was no longer incapacitated.
I pointed out this bug years ago in the old thread that discusses this subject, shortly before the rule was modified. I had forgotten about it until just now. Obviously, the bug was not fixed, which pretty much makes hash out of the whole rule.
Something to add to your list @GreenAsJade @anoek
I’m assuming that this erroneously annulled game can’t be retrieved from the giant smelly dumpster kept out back, eh?
No, annulled games cannot be unannulled.
Understood. Annulled is hard enough for me to spell correctly without adding a prefix.
Don’t feel bad, I had to double-check it myself, and words are my business.
One twist here is that we no longer annull games that the person was definitely losing.
This was an attempt to lessen the frustration of people abusing this by saving up their losing games then serial timing them out (yes, people did that).
“definitely losing” has a definition, something like X moves played and AI says winrate < Y", I can’t recall exatly now.
