Preventing Cheating in Ladder

[Saint]

Initially yeah, but now some people forget about this and are ready to kill for thier spot

[yebellz]

@Saint

For example, let’s say I’m in 5th place, playing against the 3rd-place player, and I’m confident I will win. Meanwhile, the player in 6th place could potentially overtake me. To exploit the system, a player might leave the ladder, re-enter at the bottom, resign the match against the 6th-place player, and then climb back up by winning against the 3rd-place player later.

In this specific example, it really makes no difference. If you first leave and rejoin the ladder, the player in 6th temporarily moves to the 5th place spot anyways, only to get bumped back to down to 6th, when you beat the 3rd place player later. If you simply resign the losing game against the 6th place player, before eventually winning against the 3rd place player, the resulting positions are the same.

I understand that this example was meant to illustrate an issue that could arise if the player in 6th position was initially at least a few more positions further down. Then, the difference that it makes is of no direct impact on you (i.e., you still end up in third place, either way), but whether or not the lower player gets to climb to your previous spot or not. In this case, the abuse is a form of spiting that particular opponent.

The other sort of issue that you mention is certainly debatable

@Saint

Another topic worth discussing is punishment for players who consistently resign games they are likely to lose, particularly if doing so helps them maintain or improve their rank through victories in other matches. I’m talking about cases where a player defeats the 1st-place player, but before that, they resign all of their current losing or difficult games just to protect their future top position from being overtaken. This issue becomes even more critical at higher ladder positions. I’ve spoken to several top players who openly admitted to using this tactic, which undermines fair competition. Imagine winning a difficult match, only to lose the full benefit of that victory because your opponent manipulated the system to safeguard their future standing.

However, I don’t think the proposed change would have any impact towards preventing this sort of behavior. To some degree, it’s hard to suggest that a player should not resign a game as soon as they realize that they are most likely in losing position. Doing so still gives their opponents the benefit of climbing to their current position, even if the opponent misses out on the potential opportunity of a “double-climb”, and abusing this too much is discouraged from perspective of losing rating (kyu-dan) points.

[yebellz]

Ultimately, I think that the proposed change is flawed and could lead to abuses/problems in other forms.

If the system annuls all of one’s ongoing ladder games, then “escapers” could exploit that to abandon losing games without impacting their kyu-dan rating.

If all of one’s ongoing ladder games are automatically resigned, then it makes it difficult for one to cleanly exit a ladder, as one may have to resign several ongoing games where the outcome is not quite clearly losing, and this would have an impact on the kyu-dan rating. One sort of work-around is to wait for an opportune moment when one has no ongoing games, or only ongoing games which appear to be losing positions, but that could be tricky to wait for, as more challenges may keep coming. A player could start cancelling all new challenges that they receive, while waiting for other games to finish, but that also has a perverse affect on the ladder (giving free climbs to anyone that just happens to challenge you, which is unfair to others below).

By the way, many years ago, leaving a ladder did cause one to resign all of their ongoing games. In that context, I had even previously proposed another sort of system for allowing more graceful ladder exits: [suggestion] "Limbo" State for Ladder Exits

On the other hand, some people are concerned about how harsh timeouts are punished (being removed from the ladder), so some view the current system as a way to soften that blow. One can potentially regain position by rejoining the ladder and finishing another ongoing ladder game.

Note: an even earlier implementation of the ladder simply did not remove players for timing out at all, but that eventually led to the site-wide ladders being clogged up with many inactive players that essentially gave free climbs to anyone that challenged them.

[Saint]

@yebellz

cleanly exit a ladder

How about person who wants to withdraw from a ladder enters a state where he can choose to

1. Finish all of his ladder games normally(or part of them), they are still visible in the ladder list but system autokicks them from ladder when all this games finished, and system should give them “Imortality”, so no one can challenge that player becase he is marked with “E” (exiting) status
   This will allow fair competition to those ones who challenged him before the decision, rating wise also. And this isnt “stalling” your place, because after this few games you out of your position inevetably
2. Player can additionally after that choose to resign all their games automatically
   So I think this solution provides solution to toxic ladder exploit, it gives opporunity to withdraw from ladder safely as they want, and I dont see any exploits around it at all

P.S I almost rewrote your idea but I hadn`t read it before, lol. I’m fully supporting this “limbo” status then, but for pepole who want to exit their ladder, not for timeouts

[Saint]

@yebellz

In this case, the abuse is a form of spiting that particular opponent.

Exactly, this is one of the most toxic ways to do some in current day, just imagine playing for monthes and hardly winning the game just do gain 0 place because he decided to abuse it
P.S sorry for example, you are clearly right, and thank you that you understood what I tried to say initially

[Saint]

@yebellz

However, I don’t think the proposed change would have any impact towards preventing this sort of behavior. To so degree, it’s hard to suggest that a player should not resign a game as soon as they realize that they are most likely in losing position. Doing so still gives their opponents the benefit of climbing to their current position, even the opponent misses out on the potential opportunity of a “double-climb”, and abusing this too much is discouraged from perspective of losing rating (kyu-dan) points.

I will partially disagree with you. I was talking about not losing, but resigning in a neutral(really even positions), ecpecially at the early stages. And this is critical in the top of the ladder especially, and pepole there dont mind losing 20(at max) points just to secure their position. As I said, I saw top 1 player in the site ladder clearly(even not trying to hide) do it, and that was the last bit.
And its not only about position, but in the top it’s about ability to actually play with opponent, you not only perventing double-climb, but regular one for this particular person if he wants to take your place
Yes, of course there are ways to offer games to another opponents, but this logic does not work when its top 1 using this strat (if you want you can DM me for proof)

I will say again, I don’t talk about pepole who casually losing and deciding to resign, I’m talking about pepole who aren’t losing, but they know this is a tough opponent and hard (not losing, just hard) game

[benjito]

@Saint

Let me be clear, punishment for people who intentionally losing not lost games(even), because they don’t want their opponents to climb higher.

While I doubt this is common, I think you could probably just report this as sandbagging.

[Saint]

Tried and did, 0 response nor punishment
Please believe me this thing is more common than it should be

[shinuito]

@Saint

they can resign all previous games in order not to give them even more higher spot.

Yep. That’s the issue with playing games simultaneously over the course of months, they can end randomly, or not randomly.

I don’t think there’s any prescription on when games should end normally and in which order that would make it fair.

@Saint

that he knows there is a certain possibility that he loses. (0,5 dif in mid game)

That’s very hard to judge I would say, whether a player is resigning for one reason or another.

@Animiral

When a player drops from the ladder, decouple their ongoing games from the ladder.

The use case it’s intended for is when you timeout of a game you get kicked out, and you have a chance to come back.

I suppose if you manually leave the ladder, you could disable it, but then if someone is committed they just wait like 3 days to timeout and then they do it anyway?

[benjito]

@Saint

0 response nor punishment

This is more a function of the mod team being small (and volunteer-based!) You may need to give it time.

(But we also have mods in this thread, perhaps they can give some visibility into your report)

[shinuito]

@Saint

Tried and did, 0 response nor punishment
Please believe me this thing is more common than it should be

@benjito

(But we also have mods in this thread, perhaps they can give some visibility into your report)

Yep, if you let us know exactly what’s going on, we can help deal with it.

It can be a pm on the main site, or if it’s more convenient you can dm the mods here on the forums.

That has the advantage of being able to link things, screenshots etc, and similar to the reporting system more than one mod should be able to see it.

[Saint]

Oh, okay, thanks!

[calebjdastrup]

There are many other questionable strategies for obtaining a high ladder placement. Let’s say you have a very active group of SDKs who want to take over the top ladder spots from the dans. They can do this without even fixing the outcomes of any games - play very quickly against each other and any players above you, and slowly against any players with a lower ladder placement who are not part of your group. Further, make sure you never resign when you are the first player in the group - wait until you lose one of your fast games against your confederates. Soon this group will rise to the top places. As soon as one of them manages to beat the #1 once (they are all maxing out their challenges and playing very quickly, so it will happen eventually), one of them will have the top spot and quickly pull all the others there too. None of them will lose while in 1st, so the top spot will never be reclaimed. They will constantly finish games against each other to push down any other players who manage to get one of the top spots.

[Uberdude]

@calebjdastrup

As soon as one of them manages to beat the #1 once (they are all maxing out their challenges and playing very quickly, so it will happen eventually)

No SDK ever beat me and I held top of the 19 ladder for years.

[gennan]

In 2022 I was playing in the Sitewide 19x19 ladder. At that time there were rarely kyu players in the top 10. A screenshot from January 2022:

The highest I got around that time was #5 in June 2022. A bit later I lost the game to take the #3 spot by 0.5 points (Ladder Challenge: gennan(#5) vs gs2020(#3)). Later in 2022 I dropped out of the ladder.

Currently the top 25 of the ladder seems to be less strong than 3 years ago:

Perhaps that has to do with the fact that the pandemic is over now.

---

I feel that “playing the system” is an integral part of playing in these ladders and it’s even part of the fun, though the possibility of a team of ladder players colluding to monopolise top spots hadn’t occurred to me.
Still I don’t feel that’s unethical. In the end I consider these ladders to be rather informal competitions anyway.

[Saint]

@gennan

Still I don’t feel that’s unethical. In the end I consider these ladders to be rather informal competitions anyway.

Of course its “informal” but there should be some ethics to it, and as to any thing in this comunity
Toxically spiting on opponents, monopolysing spots in ladder etc could be fun, but only for pepole who are doing it, and majority of pepole who are tryharding for the ladder will agree with me

[calebjdastrup]

I have seen a kyu player at the top of the 9x9 ladder, and I reached top five in 9x9 at around 3kyu. Probably there are more upsets on the smaller board.

[Uberdude]

Yes, on small boards an SDK can beat a mid- to high-dan player in an even game, particularly if a kyu who plays a lot of 9s vs a dan who doesn’t (such as myself). But for 19s the chance is miniscule, more so in correspondence than live games.