Logic behind Timeouts in RoundRobin Tournaments counting as wins

Hi,

I’m playing in this site wide correspondence RoundRobin 19x19 tournament. https://online-go.com/tournament/40559

It strikes me as a little odd that timeouts counts as wins in this setting. The main reason is this: When one player loses a single game in a timeout, they get disqualified, and the winner of the game gets a point.

This would make sense if now all of their other games finished or unfinished counted as losses, then it would just be like a tournament with fewer players. However what can happen is that a disqualified player has won games, and so even being disqualified for timing out one game they still have impact on the tournament I believe.

For instance some games from disqualified players are ongoing with non-disqualified players. I don’t know if this auto-corrects at the end?

It just seems strange to me, I’ve won 2 games and have 5 points due to timeouts, and one win by timeout is probably against a player it’s reasonable to assume I’d have lost against, and they have wins against other players.

TLDR : It seems from the point of view of a tournament in progress that disqualified players with wins could skew the outcome of tournaments. Any clarification on this would be appreciated :slight_smile:

Edit: I think the fact it’s a RoundRobin tournament is important, and I forgot that. Timeouts would make sense in elimination format.

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Yeah. Getting DQ means that a player won’t continue into following rounds, but on round robin this doesn’t really matter. Players with timeouts are however left on the bottom of ‘prize pool’.

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This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.

You say “[opponent’s] timeout counting as win” is a problem (?!), but your contention seems to be that timeout losses (resulting in disqualifications) don’t automatically rule all disqualified players’ ongoing games as losses.

I haven’t got a clue what the former is supposed to mean, but I agree with the latter. If someone is DQ’d, rule (if possible) ALL of their games as losses for them. This should be easy for 1-round RR tournaments, easy if the DQ happens only in the first of a multi-round RR and very very difficult for every other configuration or format.

The less fair but more pragmatic solution would be to only rule remaining games as losses.

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@smurph
Is it my first sentence that doesn’t make sense? I actually don’t know what happens after this round in the tournament, I haven’t played one of these tournaments before, so lets presume this applies to the first/current round of a round robin tournament.

In short, I think either of the following seems to make more sense to me for the Round Robin format:

  1. A player times out of a single game, they lose that game but don’t get disqualified from the tournament
  2. A player times out of a single game and gets disqualified (which is what happens now) but other ongoing games and/or finished games also count as losses for them (in this round if there are multiple rounds).
    3)A player times out of a single game and gets disqualified (which is what happens now) but other ongoing games and/or finished games don’t count for any points for anyone - as if they weren’t in the tournament (in this round if there are multiple rounds)

Basically if you look at the situation in the tournament I linked, I find it strange to have a win because of a timeout and that player is now disqualified but other players have lost to that person.

So I’ve gained a point against someone who is no longer in the running, and yet that, in principle, could put me ahead of someone else who is still in the tournament. Essentially I have a point from winning against someone who isn’t in the tournament.

@_KoBa I know they’re moved to the bottom so they don’t count even if their points are higher than other player who aren’t disqualified tournament. My point is that you can gain points against a disqualified player while others might not have.

I see, the confusion arises from conflating two separate issues:

  1. Should timeouts result in disqualifications?
  2. How should disqualifications be handled?

But you never actually question whether a timeout should count as a loss (as this thread title suggests).

Of course the answer in both cases is “fries”. :smiley:

It depends on what the most desirable solution is.
IF timeouts don’t lead to DQ AND the timed-out players, say, stopped playing any games in that tournament, they would be carried over to the following rounds, silently timing out of every match.
IF timeouts don’t lead to DQ AND the timed-out players continue playing, one might argue someone got an undeserved win. Possible, but not necessarily true.

IF DQs allow the DQ’d to continue their remaining games, one might wonder if that satisfies the notion of disqualification.

Again I’ll argue that disqualification should mean “the disqualified forfeit all games, regardless of previous outcomes”. That’s probably impossible since pairings/groupings for the current round might depend on results of the previous rounds. In that case, it would be pragmatic to a) rule all current-round games as losses and b) bar the DQ’d from entering the next round.

Considering all EGF events I’ve seen so far don’t really care about someone not playing in any given round, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to have timeouts just count as losses. If someone is DQ’d for some other reason, see above.

Timeout seems like a valid loss condition, although it’s more likely that in live time settings it plays the role of forcing you to make a move (or lose). In correspondence you just forget about playing Go for a few days and you’ve timed out.

Again I actually don’t know what happens with once all games are played. If there’s more rounds I agree it does seem like a good idea to stop someone who times out of a lot of games from progressing.

I just got the feeling that when someone is disqualified because of a single timeout, the main people who benefit from the disqualification of that player are players of a higher rank and of course the person who just got a win by timeout.

Imagine this scenario, among other players in a Round Robin as above, are players A (5kyu) B (6kyu) C (7kyu). B has just timed out against another player and the standings at present are a tie for first place in points between A and C, A has beaten B previous to the timeout. The only game left to finish is (regarding players A and C) is the game B vs C. So if C can win , they win the tournament/round, if they can’t they lose. B - the disqualified player can now dictate the result of round. Is there really a point in disqualifying B if they still hold the power to dictate who wins and loses?

Although tbh if there’s more than one round, maybe this doesn’t matter so much.

PS: players who are timed out are still playing! Notice one of the players is disqualified and still has games going. Four out of six players got a win by timeout and two are currently playing that person.

I can see why you’d view that situation as “unfair” and how you could consider “the disqualified player to be in control”, but you’re basing that assessment on two false assumptions:

  1. A and C are evenly matched
  2. B controls the outcome of B vs C

The corrections are as follows:

  1. If players A and C are tied and C still has 1 game to go, C already has the advantage.
  2. B can only control whether C wins. B cannot control whether C loses.

For that matter, the same logic applies to every other game, but you don’t even consider those, merely because they happened prior to that final game. The last game of a series/round is equally as decisive as the first.

To illustrate - if player A and C are tied, despite A having played 5 games and C only having played 4 games, that means A lost at least 1 game more than C did.

Now situations like these are part of the reason why I proposed head-to-head as top priority tiebreaker. Suppose A won his game vs C. If C beats B, C still takes the tourney. If C loses, A wins. Suppose A lost his game vs C, then the “DQ game” doesn’t affect at all who wins the tourney. Finally, if the # of matches A and C played is even and their score is even after all matches have been played, there should be a tiebreaker game. It’s simple, really.

Finally, I don’t see how this would be advantageous for higher rated players.

Well in the original setup I make A B and C unevenly matched.

B does have some element of control via the following:

In that example, B could just resign, B is disqualified, so it would seem reasonable if B didn’t want to finish any more games in the tournament, then C wins the round. However maybe B wants to just play some go, regardless of whether the they’re in to win or not. In that case IF B is higher rated than C, and assuming B wants to play C, they could have a reasonable chance of winning (if rating means something accurately), B is in a position to tie the round.

On the other hand if none of B’s games count anymore, C is a point ahead (since one of A’s points is a game against B), and so C is just ahead (assuming no other timeouts) on sheer number of games won.

I’m not saying my logic isn’t flawed, I’m just trying to explain why I find it unintuitive.

I do agree with you lots of factors determine who wins, and no one game should in principle be more decisive than another, but I’m just point out a situation which could arise that I think is silly, given the current state of timeouts and disqualifications.

As I said, B only controls whether C wins.

If A > B > C in terms of strength and A and C are even on points, A has no grounds to feel bad about how the B-C game affects the final result, regardless of the conditions under which C might get the win, UNLESS A and C haven’t actually played each other.

If A and C are even on points and DQ games don’t count, neither AB nor BC would affect the outcome because they’d cancel out (highlighting the fact that the score then entirely depends on A_vs{-B} and C_vs{-B}).

@smurph Again not that it particularly mattered for that tournament, but it has ended and it was only one round long. As a side question instead of posting a new question, do you know what the Opponent Scores/Defeated Scores mean or how they’re calculated. Is it to do with points differences in the games player or?

Edit: Just also to say cheers for the discussion up to this point!

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