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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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
So it seems the key to a fast ladder climb is preparation. set yourself up as follows:
join ladder
climb however you like
when you get to wherever you want to in the ladder, challenge 3 people.
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!
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.