Players who make random moves

I’ve run into several players on OGS who just made random moves vs me and yet dragged on the game for more than 100 moves. Some of them even forced me to capture every single stone and literally own the entire board, like https://online-go.com/game/11290191. Usually they end the game by timeout. The players are: saushi, esmaelflores, alicture95, and Trikomitis. Look at their game history. They all have very few games, and most if not all of them are games like the one I linked.

I don’t know what’s going on here. Is someone making a bunch of different accounts and doing this to troll? Is a bot behind this?

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“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by ignorance.”

If the players have few games they are probably beginners. Perhaps you could introduce them to the rules and the joy of Go and not think of them trolls unless there is more evidence.

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Seems to me like these are beginners who quit (or in trikomitis’s case, planning to quit) after losing a few games horribly.

We’ve been having a few discussions about what the 13k starting point might be doing to players, and this just might be the example of the harm it’s doing…

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Haha :smiley: describes me perfectly. I am always like "hmm why not here :smiley: "

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Hello,

What makes a move random ?

A move one cannot explain ?

A move that looks totally inefficient ?

A move that has never been played in any other game?

Besides these existential questions, it’s obvious that when one starts playing go, he might do so with no concept about the rules (so did Alphazero :wink: )
Some who first check plays the rules then gives a try, others just try to learn from playing first games and see what happens. And we all know it’s a good way to learn.
Of course, they are not necessarily aware they are bothering you making you lose your time. Maybe, they are human and maybe they have no idea whether you are human or not.

So, if you are bothered, the best think you could do is PM one, and makes him or her speak and why not 1) offer your time to explain the rules 2) give some links of interest.

Without any evidence, this can just be ignorance.

Arnaud

I suspect this was just ignorance on the part of a complete beginner and in fairness to the OP they did ask in the chat if this person had ever played before and got no response.

I must say, I got an odd sense of enjoyment out of playing through that game really fast :slight_smile:

I agree with @mekriff that most of these players seem like clueless beginners, rather than trolls. The game you cited is the main exception, since that behavior seems troll-like, but maybe he just got mad and decided to draw it out. We sympathize with your bad luck in encountering so many players of this sort.

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Think they were trying to help you set the world record for most moves in a game.

When that happened on crib’s stream the other day, I suggested writing in chat something along the lines of “Hi, you seem to be new to Go, have a look at playgo.to/iwtg/en” or whatever the link to the website actually is. Don’t expect an answer, because that requires email confirmation which they simply might not have completed. Of course I’d prefer new accounts got a popup-tutorial with helpful information and links. In the absence of that, we as a community have to make do.

“WTF you suck, noob. 0 MMR scrub” is probably not de wey.

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I agree with mekriff, this is a case of both Yujiri and his opponent being abused by the 13k starting rank.

It can also happen with some of the bots (Fuego) that they keep playing useless moves.
After I have removed all possibilities of taking any of my stones, I start passing every move, but the bot keeps playing. Also, I have to confirm every time that I am sure that I want to pass.

Would it be possible to add a button to “pass to the end of the game”?

I don’t know if Fuego is the same as Leela in this regard, but with Leela, you need to actually capture her dead stones for her to know that they’re dead. So instead of passing, maybe try to capture Fuego’s dead stones?

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Maybe a “force scoring” option. That would require an accurate auto score though. Dropping beginners straight in the deep end isn’t all that great either, but that’s just how Gliko works unfortunately. It might be helpful to assist beginners, pairing with weaker players.