Sorry if this ground has been stomped muddy with history. But the more I search threads on this topic the more confusing it gets. So I’ll be brief…
Is there a penalty for cancelling games with Ladder opponents who, after a day or two, never made even a single move?
If yes, there’s a penalty for cancelling games with those who don’t seem interested in playing, I won’t.
Otherwise, I see no other way to try to make the Ladder a more useful avenue for enjoying Go with others.
Background: Frankly, I’ve had more timed-out games in the Site 13x13 Ladder than successful game completions. It’s getting old, waiting for my three game max allotment to turn over (with so many no-shows) in order to try again to find a replacement player to challenge.
Not counting the time-out annulments thus far, here’s my current “active” game inventory… (spoiler: like a number of games before them, 3 out of 5 games are going nowhere s-l-o-w-l-y)
Interesting. Every one of my 3 current ladder games has a “Cancel Game” button showing. So I’m assuming it’s an available option. I’m just trying to understand the consequences.
For the ladder, cancellation counts as a win. So if you cancel a game against someone who is lower than you, they jump to 1 place above you.
For rating it doesnt matter, cancelled games are annulled automatically.
But if you challenge someone, and your opponent isnt active anymore, you can also wait for 3 days for them to lose by timeout,. You then take their place in the standins, and you’re also doing the site a favor for kicking inactive players out from the ladder ^^
Fascinating. So if I cancel, it’s as if I lost a game (only in the ladder, not in the site-wide ranking) since it’s auto-annulled.
But if I let 3 days go by and wait for (yet another) player to time out, the game is annulled anyhow.
Since I can only engage with three opponents at a time when (at least in my experience thus far) the majority of ladder participants don’t seem terribly interested in actually playing when challenged, I’m beginning to wonder if the Site Ladders are too much squeeze for too little juice?
Don’t get me wrong… As a newbie, I love the OGS site and am amazed at what it offers. But as I try to navigate the various options, I’m discovering that the excitement of playing in a ladder is fading fast.
It does get better as you climb higher. I recommend picking the highest opponents you can.
(But also think it would be nice if we could purge the bottom dwellers somehow - maybe a rule that kicks you if you dont create a challenge for a while)
Good suggestion. I considered this approach but concluded that higher ranked opponents are more likely to win (the Site Ladder provides no handicaps to level the field) … and so repeatedly losing to stronger players doesn’t seem like a wise way to climb any higher
I’ve been looking for players with similar lowly ratings to my own (nearby in the ladder) in hopes of having an even-level enjoyable game for us both.
Well more and less. There are opponents of various levels so you can find shoes for your feet. Some like to play similar levels, bit stronger or bit weaker, or very weak for fast climbing or very strong for the opportunity to play with. Some climb slowly to enjoy the show, some run and elaborate strategies to reach the top fast.
Anyway I remember very interesting games and friendly opponents there.
The thing is, the less active users are more likely to sink to the bottom of the ladder. Consider an inactive player on the ladder. If they are challenged and don’t play, they are removed from the ladder. But what happens if this inactive user is not challenged? We’ll, they’re inactive so they don’t move up due to their own actions. If a player above the inactive account we are considering is challenged and loses a game to someone ranked lower than the inactive player, then the challenged player and the inactive player move down one space on the ladder. So you see, the only pressure on inactive accounts is downwards.
You can see on the ladder how many games a user is playing is due to being challenged vs how many games are due to them challenging someone else. If they are challenging someone else then you can tell they’re somewhat active. If they are not, but are being challenged, check out the games and see if they’ve played any moves. If you challenge someone who is not playing any ladder games it’s a bit of a gamble.
I was in a tournament that was taking forever, turns out most of the unfinished games were because of one user taking a while to move. I looked at their profile an they were playing over 600 correspondence games!
Jesus. When I started my first simultaneous mcmahon tournament I had trouble remembering what I was doing in all of the games. I fell like if I played a few hundred games, let alone a thousand, each time I’d come back to a game it would be like I’m looking at it for the first time.
At some point, that number of games must feel like spending one’s time rolling through a nice collection of tsumego. Just a series of problems for which to make the next move.
