Option to play against software gone

The option to play a game against software seems to have disappeared (within the last 24 hours). Does anyone know anything about this?

thanks

Hello, @dv14. Yes, unfortunately we had to disable playing against bots. They were timing out most of their games, so we decided that it’s better to encourage our users to play against other human users until we solve this issue. This way you folks won’t suffer bots timeouts anymore. :wink:

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Only Fuego would time out for me. Had no problems with Billy/The Kid (GNU).

Thanks for the information. I’ve definitely had timeouts. Out of curiosity, is this a new problem with Fuego? I had assumed that it was timing out because it was testing too many alternatives - the timeouts occur when the game has reached a certain level of complexity. But perhaps that’s not the problem.

I’ve had timeouts too, but under ranked issues that would validate exactly what I was playing was worthy, and just how can lower ranks, improve their ranking now? Most higher ranked player WILL NOT PLAY A RANKED GAME against a lower ranked person. That has been my experience since joining OGS also KGS as well.

This issues is a necessary pain until the greater issues of human players is resolved in my humble opinion.

@Kugosaki_Weichigo: You can still challenge Billy/The Kid directly if you want (or any other bot for that matter).

@dv14: No, this issue doesn’t have to do with the bots at all, but with a serverside issue that devs are going to resolve in the (hopefully near) future.

@kissmecomix: How about playing against users near your rank? You can see from ongoing games that it’s not hard to find games with ±3 ranks difference.

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true, sir, but playing those close to you rank doesn’t equate to learning or growth always, thus i prefer to play those higher than myself.

Then you can join the ladders (both sitewide and group-specific ones). Those are correspondence games, but you will get to play whoever you want, even dans.

EDIT: Just saw you already are in some ladders :grinning:

Anyway, if you want to play against people higher than +3 ranks difference, then the correct thing is to ask for teaching games. The best way to find them is this very forum. That’s why we have the Teaching category, together with their subcategories Reviews Requests and Teaching Games.

As pointed out earlier, you can also challenge bots directly.

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kissmecomix, I looked through your last 200 games and I found exactly one game that was against a weaker player and only very few against a player of equal strength. You complaint sounds a lot like projection.

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it is not fair to play weaker players, in my opinion, and it had been my experience that I don’t get a lot of challenges from those of equal strength

[quote=“kissmecomix, post:11, topic:6384, full:true”]
it is not fair to play weaker players, in my opinion,[/quote]Uhm, pardon me? Are you aware of the Handicap system in Go? And how would weaker players ever improve?

And the BIG question:

So, in consequence, you must think that all your many stronger opponents are unfair for playing you? Must be a terrible world to live in, surrounded by so many unfair players :wink:

I suggest that you raise yourself above such a lowly view of the world, i.e. realize that you can give something in return by playing weaker players, too, AND realize that you can learn new skills by playing against Handicap stones.
And you will realize that you win in more than two ways by doing so, as you will, for example, gain the (perhaps new) experience that you are a valuable, contributing member of the community :wink:

Don’t give yourself up so quickly.

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Wait, you prefer to play stronger players, but you think it’s unfair for you to play weak players? Unfair to who? I’m a bit confused.

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