Ladder speed climbing

Every time I try to climb a ladder whenever I finally get a decent position I get bored and drop out. Quite a few times I climbed it already and developed techniques for climbing it fast. And in my mind this is like a sport at this point. Picking out opponents for fastest climb.

For example, 9x9 ladder is the easiest. I reached my 30th place in around 7 days ~14 hours maybe.

6 Likes

The key is to find opponents who will play fast, are far ahead and weaker than yourself :slight_smile:

4 Likes

It is an honour to be a fast weak rung on your climb!

11 Likes

I noticed that you can move up by winning even if you didn’t initiate the game. So if you find yourself winning against such a speed climber, you could slow down your moves until he climbs higher, delaying the end to maximize the value of your win :wink:

4 Likes

I suppose when you’re not at the top it’s supposed to be inherently interesting to get to the top and maintain that position, that or go as high as you can and stay there for as long as possible.

I also find myself a bit bored with the ladders from time to time. Either I just don’t want any more challenges at some point and drop out, or in this case (at the moment), I just have no interest in moving up fast. I jumped up like half the ladder when people I challenged timed out and it just killed the fun for me. I’m now just challenging people like one or two places above me. With the timeout bug fixed it’s probably ejecting a good few inactive people from the ladder (19x19).

Actually the above is the exact opposite of climbing fast, apart from that you can challenge people who are likely to timeout and then move to their spot in like ~3 days. I guess that’s fast for correspondence unless you both happen to be online together.

2 Likes

Why should you want to climb a ladder fast?

Why would you not?!

1 Like

I mean you could be the person that holds the bottom of the ladder, so that other people can climb up it. Or you could be a rung on the ladder that other people step on on their way up.

I don’t think you have to go with the crowd, but I think the trend is to try and move up, and once people are interesting in doing something, others are interested in doing it quickly and as quickly as possible.

For the sport of it.

I’ve had exactly the same experience.

I actually join the ladder from time to time purely as the best way of finding the kind of opponent that I want. Because in a ladder you can select someone and challenge them and they have to play you :slight_smile:

This means if I want someone who (for example) plays fast, doesn’t abandon, doesn’t play the dame and is of a specific rank, I can find them in the ladder and play them :slight_smile:

I do that, and I also for the sport of it try to climb as fast as I can, then drop out and repeat when the “good opponents” are all below me :smiley:

4 Likes

@Sadaharu knows how it’s done! Climbing just a few steps at a time is for beginners; jumping over 85% of the remaining places is the way to go:

image

4 Likes

Wait, do people actually climb one at a time? I usually scroll to the highest ranked opponent I am allowed to challenge…

7 Likes

Yeah, surely that’s what we all do?

I’ve been wanting a “scroll to highest available opponent” feature for ages :slight_smile:

7 Likes

Highest available that I have a chance of beating, at least. But the point is, 48 is a lot higher than that when you’re way down at #327.

4 Likes

There are many ways to be kicked out too, real life is watching you.

1 Like

So it seems the key to a fast ladder climb is preparation. set yourself up as follows:

  1. join ladder
  2. climb however you like
  3. when you get to wherever you want to in the ladder, challenge 3 people.
  4. time out of one of those games

now you are ready for your speed climb! All you need to do is win one of the other two games and you will climb from the bottom of the ladder to that person’s place in one jump - speedy!

5 Likes

These are advanced strats, use at your own risk.

5 Likes

the “bungee bounce” combines this:

with this:

5 Likes

Jumped more than 1000 places on the 13x13 ladder after winning this challenge, and I wasn’t even the challenger!

image

6 Likes

Ladder lurking: the practice of waiting at the bottom of a ladder for someone close to the top of the ladder to time out and rejoin.

The ladder lurker’s plan is to challenge such an opponent, get into a winning position, then string out the game until their opponent wins one of their earlier ongoing games and jumps back to their original position. When this happens the ladder lurker can cash in their win and jump thousands of places up the ladder.

Tricky but possible. Extra points for accidentally pulling it off.

6 Likes

Is this how you pulled it off :stuck_out_tongue: