People who cannot accept losing

I understand sometimes I got emotional when losing. But I tried to keep composure and show courtesy.

Recently I have met people on OGS that when they lose, they simply did not resign or did not accept the score. They could be clicking on their own dead stone, resulting in an unfair score, then the play continues; they could be simply not accepting the scoring phase and the play continues as well.

I think if you have played a lot of games on OGS, you would have met those people. How do you deal with them? What’s the solution in OGS system to prevent or deal with trolling or cheating?

Many thanks.

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don’t argue with them
I would tell them “thanks for the game”, call a moderator and leave the game.

The mod will fix it, the player won’t get any attention (the reason why they often do so in the first place), and you won’t get upset over some brat.
Sometimes they try to pm you after and still try to argue - if that happens, just ignore & block.

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If you call a mod and leave, you risk loss on time. If you wait for a mod, they can give you a win by mod decision. Once the game has ended, mods can only annul the game, not change the outcome.

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i didn’t know mods can’t change the outcome. Thanks for clarification.

How long is the usual reaction time from mods?
If it’s too long i would still prefer annulled games than wasting too much time on a played game.

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Unfortunately that is true.

That is very hard to say and quite random. If you are in a similar timezone as us, it can often be within minutes, but if you are not, if we are busy witih life or other things, or if the issue requires some research or discussion with othres it may be hours or even days sometimes… :frowning:

That said in those cases I strongly recommend doing what @Strawberrycake said. If the opponent is clearly trying to cheat, just call a mod, wait a minute or two and if noone comes soon just leave the game. Yeah you might lose on time, which we will only annull (meaning you won’t get points for victory), but I find it better than wasting time on someone like that. Usually their rank is inflated anyway because of the undeserved wins before somebody reports…

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Yes indeed. OGS is an online environment and unfortunately there will always be a minority of people who abuse the system (whatever the system is). Firstly; let me compliment you on one of the more composed posts in response to bad behavior.

All the advice given be previous respondents has been good and I think the key is to focus on the good experiences (of which there are many) and reluctantly accept the bad experiences (which are few) as a small price to pay for the pleasure of sharing Go with a world-wide community of mostly good natured fellow enthusiasts.

Dealing with cheaters after the event has been well covered by the above posts. It’s not ideal but it probably is optimal. However there is some room to minimise the chance of encountering them. I can offer the following suggestions:

  1. Use Chinese rules. If the score is disputed, extra moves can usually be played without changing the score (unlike Japanese rules). I actually prefer Japanese rules if I’m playing in real life with a friend but against unknown opponents on-line, Chinese rules reduce cheating and unintentional misunderstandings. I sometimes play an unnecessary move or two before passing just to help the auto-score do it’s job.
  2. Don’t use absolute time settings. Use fischer or byo-yomi with a low initial time. The low initial time helps to reduce the effect of escapers. The increments added to the clock with these systems prevent the sort of abuse where uselss moves are used to win by time-out. I personally prefer fischer over byo-yomi because it provides a little more flexibility that makes it easier to appreciate and do justice to an interesting position.
  3. Cancel games if you are suspicious of your opponent, especially if you have already had one bad experience for the day. Take a quick look at your opponents profile page before playing a move. If their rank graph shows wild fluctuations, if their rank uncertainty is high despite a large number of ranked games having been played or if they have a huge string of time-out wins or something else suspicious in their game history, then it’s better to cancel before investing in the game. Actually I prefer to give people a chance but sometimes just being mentally prepared for disappointment and knowing that it has been my choice helps significantly.
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I’d rather lose :joy::joy::joy:

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If it’s a correspondence game, they could be “stringing you along” so that they can multiple timeout and then your win will not count…it will not improve your rating, and it will not lower their rating. Essentially, they could be “batching” you with their timeouts since only the first timeout in a multiple timeout series “counts”, so to speak. I’ve had this done to me on several occasions.

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