Rengo games with more than 100 people

I see correspondence Rengo games with more than 100 people signed up. In some cases more.

Each player will get so few moves to make. If a team has 50 players then each player will get a chance only after 49 moves of the same color!!

Is my understanding correct?

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It is normal that a substantial percentage of all the players drops out (by time out) sooner or later.
In the only correspondence rengo game I participate in, after a few months only one third of the players is still there. I heard that this is normal in rengo.

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I found the concept of a very large rengo game to be interesting, so I’ve already played in a few of these.

With enough players, it’s even possible that each player makes only one or zero moves. I think it would be kind of neat to see what sort of game would emerge in such a case. It’s maybe like a painting by a crowd, where each person can only make a single brushstroke.

However, in practice, there tend to be a lot of people that drop out, and maybe the end game is played out by a dozen or so players that wind up cycling through a few times.

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A large percentage of players do drop out of casual rengo games, even when a reasonable number start. It is common for a casual game of 6 or 8 players to end up with just 2 players. The bigger problem with these ridiculously large games is that almost all drop-outs time out rather than resign. This means that, using the most common casual rengo time control (2 days per move) and a timeout percentage of 66%, a game with 1,000 will expend 3.6 years waiting for people to time out, and a game with 100 people will wait 4.4 months. This is in addition to the time expended on the moves themselves.

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My personal feeling is that those super-huge rengos are kinda pointless, they stay open for months waiting for players, and when they do finally start, large percentage of those users have stopped playing on ogs (or they were not very regular users at the first place)

Guess its a matter of taste, but i rather play correspondence rengos with smaller teams of active users, than in those huge rengos where majority will drop out before the first round of moves have been cycled thru.

Though it might be great to have huge teams of active users who visit the site daily, i havent yet been able to experience that so idk xD

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Possibly we could sort the list by size first and then speed.

This would move the large ones down “out of the way” :slight_smile:

Full disclosure: there’s also a bug in starting enormous rengos: they are reluctant to start at the moment.

It’s on the list to fix that, though it doesn’t seem to be doing any damage at the moment since no-one has complained, and those huge ones are a ways from being due to start anyhow :sweat_smile:

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First, when talking about dropouts in casual rengo, I think it’s important to make a distinction between small casual rengo and large casual rengo. Let’s say a small rengo is a game with at most 20 people total at start, and a large rengo is a game with at least 100 people total at start (and I won’t try to classify games with between 20 and 100 players at start).

In a small rengo game I expect a lot more team cohesion and I would be disappointed by dropouts.

In a large rengo game on the other hand, dropouts are expected, and I would not be annoyed by them at all.

Actually, dropouts in large casual rengo are a circular problem.

This is one of several reasons why we expect a lot of dropouts in large casual rengo.

All large casual rengo games that I’ve been a a part of used a time-setting of 12h per move. The reason for using 12h per move instead of 2 days per move is exactly the calculation you’ve done: we don’t want to wait too much because of dropouts. So I think that 12h per move is much better than 2 days per move for a large casual rengo.

However, 12h per move is also somewhat unreasonable. In a large casual rengo, you cannot predict when it will be your next move. It might be next week, or it might be three months from now. And in a large casual rengo, you cannot ask the players for a level of commitment as high as “I will always be ready to play my move in at most 12h, no matter when I’m next on turn”. When my next turn arrives, I might be sleeping, or working, or in the middle of a real-life go tournament, or at my friend’s birthday party, and being away from the internet and from OGS for a period of 12h is certainly not unreasonable when it’s impossible to say when that period will be.

So obviously, more players will drop out, because of the harsh 12h per move time-setting, even serious players who otherwise never time out in their correspondence games.

I think it is not reasonable to ask players for more commitment unless there was a way to plan the schedule in advance. If you could tell players in advance: “your next move will be at <date XX/XX>” then it would be reasonable to ask for more commitment, but if you can only tell them “your next move will be maybe next week, or maybe three months from now, and you’ll have only a 12h-window to play it” then you cannot be upset when they timeout.

So, the 12h per move time-setting in large casual rengo is a compromise: it avoids waiting too much for dropouts, but it also means we have no right to expect players not to drop out. (If someone can rewrite this sentence without the double negation, I’m open to suggestions.)

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“… to continue playing,” or “to keep playing,” or “to stay in the game.”

I am going to disappoint you. Sorry.

In this rengo tournament we started with 20 players on March 5. Two and a half months later only 6 players are left.
I didn’t experience any cohesion at all. In the beginning I asked (via a pm I think or in another rengo game) if it was allowed to discuss the game with my team mates. The answer was no. So how could my team have grown cohesive at all?

Wouldn’t it be more fun to allow the possibility to discuss the game in the game chat (open to everyone) and / or personal messages (close to everyone but your team mates)?

This might create the social cohesion @ArsenLapin1 hoped to encounter in a small rengo tournament.

So … poll time!

Communicating during rengo games: yes or no?

  • i am against all forms of communication in a rengo game.
  • i am against communicating amongst teammates in personal messages, but don’t mind communicating in game chat.
  • i am against communicating in game chat, but don’t mind communicating in personal messages.
  • i am for communicating amongst teammates in whatever form that takes place.
  • i don’t care
  • i don’t know

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Deja vu.

I’m sure we’ve had this before, and it was declared that the world would end if we allowed this sort of nonsense.

That being said, the outcome was that it’s OK to allow conversation in rengo under the following conditions:

  • It’s clear in the game name
  • It’s stated in the chat in the challenge
  • It’s stated in the chat when the game starts

IE “doing something different” is generally OK. as long as everyone has a chance to agree beforehand.

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Wow. It is quite a feat from being condescending in the first paragraph, to it is okay under certain conditions, to “look at me how tolerant I am” in the last paragraph.

Maybe you don’t recall that last thread where I was smoked for suggesting that maybe chat should be allowed in casual, because … you know, it’s casual :slight_smile:

Or maybe I’m remembering wrong. Anyhow I certainly wasn’t taking a shot at you or your question :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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Well, it looked like that you were, but I am happy that you didn’t.
Just a silly misunderstanding.

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I think communication is ok as long as all players are aware that its taking place. Actually in most rengo games ive played on real board, we’ve openly discussed (trashtalked) about the status of game and previous moves, but without hinting the other players where to play next of course.

Rengo should be fun, and if friendly drunken trashtalk makes it even more funnier, then its just a good thing when that happens. But yeah, discussion about ongoing game should always be agreeded and wanted by all players, regardless whether its rengo or normal 1vs1 game

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I think an important factor here is that any change to the rule needs to be agreed in advance.

You can’t into a fight about whether you’re supposed to be discussing the game or not after it starts.

The rules are that you are not supposed to discuss it - that’s the normally understood definition of Rengo, and our own documentation says so too.

So if you want something different, make sure it’s agreed in advance. IMO.

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Chatting about the game as proposed is not rengo as I understand it, but something else. Not to say it is bad, but it is something else. We already have done that in consultation team games. I even played in an unofficial tournament of three teams in which extensive private consultation and agreement about the moves was done. It was interesting, but it wasn’t rengo. As I see it, the main distinguishing characteristic of rengo is to try to figure out what your teammates want to do. It is a tremendous learning experience if they are stronger.

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What I thoroughly dislike in rengo games is that you start with a certain number of players, that as time goes by dwindles in numbers until one of the teams’ final player times out or resigns.
Is there a way of motivating players to stay in the rengo game and finish it (with the teams more or less fully intact)?
Anyone got a brilliant idea of how to do this?
Less than brilliant ideas are of course also welcome.

(Maybe a daily AST rengo tourney?)

Strict Rengo

Not sure which category this falls under :sweat_smile:

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