OGS Automatch proposal

@crodgers I think he means that we want to see game challenges in chat, but only the ones he is actually able to participate in.

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@dracflam Ah, okay. That makes sense.

Having to close my own chalenge to accept another one sounds like a design flaw to me. :stuck_out_tongue:

Maybe accepting a challenge automatically closes any of your own that are still open?

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That sounds better. Though I still think a loop matching open challenges is healthier. You still have to put a challenge to be matched up, so that wonā€™t hurt the current system, and the process of finding a game will be quicker. No need to keep looking in the graph for similar challenges.

I thought about this over the weekend. I think the general strategy should be to refine the filters and display of the seek graph. That being said, what do you think about a filter that would show games similar to the conditions of your open challenge, @mlopezviedma?

It would still require that the user manually accept the challenge, but I think thatā€™s okay given our use case.

I like that approach. :wink:

This will go against people that like to play simuls. In fact, it would be cool to implement something regarding simuls in the distant future.


So, following this method. Letā€™s suppose, for the sake of analysis, that I come to OGS wanting to play a game. Then the system proposes me two things (leaving out arranging in chat and challenging personally, of course):

  1. Create an open challenge; or
  • Filter the seek graph to see if someone has a game that suits my preferences.

Both work fine giving that, in each respective case:

  1. Someone following method 2. has similar preferences and hence he/she accepts my game shortly; or
  • Someone following method 1. did put a challenge with similar preferences and hence I find a game shortly.

So there are two bad scenarios that need to be taken into account:

  1. I create an open challenge and thereā€™s noone to accept it; and
  • I canā€™t find any open challenge that suits my preferences.

If I am in the second situation, that leads me to create a challenge myself, so we are always stuck in the first case, being:

I create an open challenge that has preferences that nobody likes.

And this is not something that an automatch system would solve. :smile: The clear advantage in implementing an automatch system (simply a program that matches exact open challenges and similar open challenges proposing a negotiation) is user comfort: everyone can create an open challenge and then they will know that the server will do the work, so nobody would need to use the second method (they can if they want, though).


Regarding negotiation, my previous post proposed a really complicated system. :blush: The more practical way I thought about is adding the negotiable option to a challenge, and that allows a player who wants to accept the challenge to change some preferences, so the original challenger can accept the modifications or not. If we were to implement an automatch system, then it would also propose fixed challenges to a similar negotiable challenge and the latter must be accepted manually.

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Seems like this topic has been sitting idle for a very very long time. Any word on ā€“ if not automatch ā€“ just better filtering of the game list?

I actually wrote myself a userscript, which Iā€™d be happy to share though itā€™s very hacky, which colorizes the game list according to my preferences ā€“ e.g. a ranked game has a green background in the ā€˜Rankedā€™ column, whereas a non-ranked game has a red background. I do this for the time column (estimating roughly the main-time-per-move and coloring green-yellow-red by my preferences) and the handicap column (coloring green if itā€™s set to ā€œAutoā€, or if itā€™s set to ā€œNoā€ and the user is very close to my rank; and red otherwise.)

It seems like the site could have similar but less-hacky filters to help people find games they like (and you could implement something similar to what Iā€™ve been doing by hand, which is to create a new game, but cancel it if someone else puts up a game matching my parameters ā€“ this more or less simulates automatch.)

I like automatch, but i would definitely want to keep the games list for making correspondence game challenges. its handy to be able to put up 10 of those at once and forget about them.

FYI automatch is coming, itā€™s one of the first things weā€™ll be working on after we complete our current infrastructure changes and architecture updates

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If you donā€™t mind, please share your scripts :slight_smile:

Here you go! Cleaned it up a little but itā€™s still pretty wonky. I can explain it a little if you like, or just install it in GreaseMonkey/TamperMonkey/etc., and take a look at the config section at the top.

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Curious, have there been any progress updates on this?

As for the script, you can get your rating from window.profile.rating, so you donā€™t have to hard code rank.

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Thank you @KurtCobain, I updated the gist!

Now that @anoek is full time on OGS, we expect this to come up soon.

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I think the seek graph and list of open challenges makes OGS more similar to traditional Chess servers than Go servers. Considering how difficult it is to find a game on many Go servers, I donā€™t think OGS should be trying to emulate them.

The seek graph is a perfect format for anyone looking for fine tuning time controls. If you want to negotiate at all, why bother? Just create an open challenge at the time controls of your choosing.

An auto match feature should be as simple as possible, with maybe four or five time controls to choose from. Click, then play. Simple.

If you want something more complicated, create an open challenge. Click, click, click, then play. Simple.

The proposed solution involving negotiation will in most cases delay the start of a game. Click, negotiate, negotiate, then play. Complicated.

Letā€™s not get complicated!

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Yeah, totally! I suggested just 3 time controls (10m+5x30s for live, 1m+3x10s for blitz and 3d+1d max 3d for correspondence), so you only choose between live, blitz and corr. when setting yourself for automatch.

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Ceterum censeo 3d max is too small to be a good default for correspondence games, as discussed to death numerous times in these forums. Although of course correspondence players are not the primary users of the automatch feature. Tournaments for the win (as well as for the loss)!

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Yeah, that may be true. :blush: In fact I donā€™t remember if I suggested 3d or 5d now. :sweat_smile: