Every few opponents i keep getting ones who play my correspondence challenges like its a live game, ones i stop responding immediately they abandon the match 3 out of 5 times.
How should i handle this?
Start more games?
Change name for your games.
Something like “CORRESPONDENCE!!!”
Playing tournaments may help. People joining there usually know what they are doing.
1 Like
What do you mean when you say “abandon”? Do they resign or just “leave without concluding the game”? Because the latter sounds like “escaping” to me, which can be reported to moderators.
1 Like
Leave in this case, resulting in a timeout.
I agree with you. Unfortunately, timing out of a correspondence game is no longer a reportable offense.
So accepting and leaving lots of correspondence challenges would not be punished?
Complicated question. If someone were trolling by accepting and abandoning games with little of no play, then I expect they would be treated as a troll. However, merely escaping from correspondence games for arguably legitimate reasons (e.g., if losing), even if done often, is not reportable. I know this because I was so told by a moderator some months ago near the beginning of rengo play, when I reported someone. Escaping is commonplace in casual rengo. Aside from being a nasty afront that many players resent, it causes huge delays in casual rengo, where multiple people may timeout. Moreover, without escape reports in correspondence play, it is virtually impossible to detect cases of people abusing the correspondence timeout rule, which I therefore think should be abolished.
1 Like
Even weirder is when they escape when ahead in score. Even more weird is when they do resign when technically ahead.
It’s something difficult to regulate without afffecting other players who, at times, like to play a bunch of moves in a short time in a correspondence game and will go to finish it.
And correspondence games are not live games, where you are supposed to stay around the table and put aside most of the annoyance life can bring in.
I don’t agree with this way to play too but it seems hard to limit it. At least interesting to report it here on the forum.
Wait, you said 3 out of 5? That seems a lot, is it something that other OGS users are experimenting too?
The cases where i indeed suspect escaping happen a lot the last few months, including cases of games annulled in the first few moves or before i even have a chance to do my move. At first they where like 1 or 2 in 15 but lately it’s getting near to 3 out of 5.
I took a look at your most recent, four, auto-annulled timeouts. Two were tournament games, so it is possible that the players had simply dropped out of the tournament (i.e., not related to you personally). The other two are individual games. In these, it is possible that your opponents took a look at your game history and didn’t like all of your timeouts. If you don’t want people to timeout, or cancel, or fail to show up, then you can start by setting a good example by resigning lost games rather than timing out.
Most beginners and many experienced players do not know about OGS’s serial timeout policy in correspondence games, so this looks like an opportune time to explain it again. In correspondence games only, when an unbroken string of timeouts occurs, only the first in the string is counted as a loss; the others are not counted for rating points (i.e., they are effectively annulled, although they are not displayed as annulments). The rationale for this is only to accommodate people who have emergencies that prevent them from playing (e.g., their computer/phone is stolen or dies, they are hospitalized for some reason, etc.) and thereby protect the integrity of the ranking system. The abuse of this policy, by players who were trying to avoid losses, led to a very acrimonious Forums thread about 4 years ago. As a moderator at that time, I supported the policy. However, now that correspondence timeouts can’t be reported, there is no practical way to discover abusers, and therefore I think the policy should be abolished.
- the timing out in tournaments was indeed my bad for the most part, i forgot they had 3 day timers
- the problem is mostly players timing out in individual corr games
2.1 several times i refused to play at live speeds in a corr game so when i stopped responding imedialty they stopped playing and lost by timeout - same as above with the sole difference they resigned ( while ahead in points )
- they cancelled the game right after acepting it getting it annuled
- they canceled it within the first few moves getting it annuled.
at least point 4 and 5 have happend over the whole year, point 1, 2.1 and 3 are the last few months.
most of my losses are either by scoring or resignation only a handfull ( over all my games ) are me losing by timeout, most of my wins are wins by timeout.
well the last few tournaments i forgot the 3 day timer so i was the one to timeout and as a ddk i keep getting paired wth sdk. so i lose anyway.
This you could potentially report though, as it might be setting up for later sandbagging.
Even if not, rank manipulation is not allowed, so I’d think such a case warrants at least being revised.
1 Like
In some of these games it could be that your opponent just got bored because they are far ahead and you keep on playing instead of resigning. I guess you have not enough experience to realize this.
Instead of pointing this out in the chat, which sometimes is considered rude, they just leave.
Which is always considered rude of course.
1 Like
I think you mis-interpreted what I wanted to say and mybe have not expressed well: I think just leaving is always rude.