You can always find a way around any rule if you really want to, but that’s not the point. Most people are acting in good faith.
I agree it may a good idea to show a “[4k?]” to show this person’s rank may no longer be up-to-date.
Neither am I. I am talking about people being forced to meet a quota of ranked games. They could meet the quota by self-playing some games using an alt VPN account. It would certainly take less time. And I expect many would do as an act of defiance—spit in the eye of the man—if nothing else. I stand very much against the use of force to solve a non-problem. As already explained (third time noted), you can always cancel a game if you don’t like the opponent’s history.
Well I don’t know. Losing on purpose against myself using a VPN wouldn’t cross my mind. If I had to play a game every month to keep a solid rank and didn’t mind losing I could just play a 9x9 blitz, that would take a few minutes and would be more interesting than playing a fake game. You are guessing that people would use a VPN, I am guessing that they would not.
1 Like
Dispensing with the levy by 9x9 blitz games is just a similar dodge, also not very effective for the declared purpose.
More seriously, most correspondence games take more than a month.
If you are saying that the rank using 9x9 blitz doesn’t reflect your level in other types of games (like 19x19 correspondence), this would support the idea that partial ranks should be used for pairing. But each time someone brings this up, the answer is invariably that the overall rank is the most reliable predictor of winrate.
I have a feeling players who play exclusively unranked do not have this attachment 
(or if they do, do they even have a right to be attached to a stale rank?)
1 Like
O sure, i was considering the global consequences by the popularity.
1 Like
This conversation is going nowhere because you continue to ignore the “solution” already offered to this non-problem, which is (fourth time now) simply cancel the game if you don’t like the opponent’s history. And again (second time), most correspondence games take more than a month,
I was already aware of the solution before it was mentioned. The thing is that people are too lazy to check a player’s history before starting the game (I, for one, never do that) so they only realize their opponent was a sandbagger after being crushed.
And if you really want to keep a solid rank only with correspondence games, you can just start a correspondence game every month. If that’s still too much and don’t want to play live games then you should accept that your rank gets a “?”.
2 Likes
The opponent is not a sandbagger, as the game is unranked, and more important, the rank is not concealed, as already discussed in my first post in this sequence.
Should. Why should I? I am not used to complying with such fascistic demands. Maybe you should accept that there is no significant problem in this whole thread.
If that’s what the majority prefers (I don’t know if that’s true, this would have to be checked, but the same applies to your statements) that’s democracy, not fascism.
I agree with @jlt that checking game history is too cumbersome to be practical. I certainly don’t want to go look through every opponent’s history to figure out if they are a “sandbagger”.
Of course, I have a different fix for this - hide games where sandbagging is legal!
2 Likes
Perhaps @Conrad_Melville doesn’t realize that people who play live games on OGS have to wait minutes before finding an opponent. So they would have to
- Wait 5 minutes before seeing a challenge
- Click on it
- Look at their opponent’s history
- Cancel the game of necessary
- goto 1.
Or
- Wait 5 minutes before seeing a challenge
- Check the challenger’s playing history
- If the challenger’s rank looks reliable and if the challenge didn’t disappear, click on it. Else goto 1.
1 Like
Like most people here, you have no idea of the extent of real sandbagging. If you did, you would not care about the trivialities discussed in this thread.
To deescalate a bit (or a bit more) in fact for me the question is, why do you insist playing an unranked game if you hav so many concerns about “sandbaggers”? Like if one plays an unranked game they may be drunk, let somebody else using their account or want to experiment with something crazy. Of course this is not ideal for a fun game, but if an unranked game wouldn’t be the place for Such things, then what is the R
real difference between ranked and unranked?
1 Like
To clarify, I personally don’t encounter many “sandbaggers” so this is not a real problem for me, but I understand it may be a problem for lower ranked people. If I see an open challenge, I generally just click on it. I want to play, I don’t care if the game is ranked or not. But I don’t want to play a 4d who has a “4k” sticker on his forehead.
2 Likes
What are you guys arguing about? lol
I really don’t see a sandbagging issue here, unless the player did something offensive, like verbally abuse his/her opponents. I am actually actively seeking stronger players to play and would appreciate this opportunity.
2 Likes
Understandable, but even the OP didn’t encounter such drastic cases. I think it isn’t real feasible to change the system for such drastic corner cases, is it?
1 Like
I have no idea if drastic cases like a player 5 stones stronger than his rank are common or not, since I don’t see many players 5 ranks stronger than me on OGS. I don’t know the situation at lower ranks. If such cases are very rare then this is indeed a non-issue.
1 Like