“I like to play 15-minute sudden death on KGS. I have only had one bad experience and the problem was fixed by wms, who responds very well to requests. I complained about an opponent who tried to run me out of time by playing every sente move, then every dame point, and finally all over his own territory. Each reply or pass took me a minimum of one second. wms fixed this by making a pass reset your clock back up to 15 seconds, if you had that much time before passing. This gives you enough time to decide that a move does not threaten anything and you can safely pass. Only further moves cause time to be deducted.”
It will have minimal impact on games that are played as is supposed, but you don’t get penalised for being behind on time by trolls that keep playing nonsense after the game ended.
and currently it will look like:
click - pass, click - (10… 9) pass, click - (9…8) pass, … click - (2…1) pass, click - (1…) beep beep, troll won by timeout.
[a little later the mod annuls the game and you’re left without any reward for winning the game]
Yea, you’re going from a finite troll game to an infinite troll game, that’s whhy bugcat’s right, calling a mod at the first sight of troll behavior is still necessary.
So, if people generally feel this is an improvement, perhaps someone capable of implementing it could take a look (@GreenAsJade? or do we need @anoek -level clearance?)
As far as my understanding goes (which admitadely is not that far ) this would require backend access.
But to be honest I am not at all convinced. While interesting, what this would do is basically put a Byo Yomi period to the Absolute time settings, which in my opinion kind of defeats the purpose.
Yes if one is an ass (donkey) one can misuse the absolute timer. But so can one misuse Byo Yomi. And those special people who do it do not do it for rank or anything. They just enjoy being a nuisance. And I hate to restrict the system just to try and eliminate the chance for people to be annoying (which is close to impossible). We would eventually just end up with no options at all.
Not exactly, it only puts a byo-yomi on passing. In a normal game, you generally only have two passes at the end of the game, which does not matter, or there is some resume of play, in which case you get reset to your original time or 15 seconds, whichever is the greatest. If the resumption leads to a big unexpected fight, the person with 15 seconds will likely lose on time anyway.
The only way you could “abuse” this backdoor in a game with absolute timing is if you decide it’s worth the pass to gain 15 seconds. I don’t think there are many positions where 15 seconds is worth more than your opponent getting a double move.
And trolls can still hold up the game, but they can’t make you lose because of absolute timing. They can’t time you out by playing stupid moves, basically.
Other than passing, absolute timing will stay the same, if you run out of time before the game is ending, you just lose, and time is not reset if you play a stone.
Right now, playing nonsense until the opponent loses is a legitimate (but rude) way to win a game with absolute timing. There’s not really a rule that says you can’t use the time settings to your advantage. This fix will make absolute timing more legitimate: losing on time is just as viable in normal games, but you have to play well for that to happen.
) this would require backend access.