More than once now I’ve put up game offers that have handicap turned on, had folks join and then immediately, wordlessly cancel, leaving me to have to put a new game up.
The fact that a listed game has handicap turned on is right there in the listing. Please read it, and if you can’t tolerate the notion of giving a weaker player handicap stones to make the game more even and challenging for both of you, please don’t join.
I’ve had this experience too, and it’s frustrating. Not sure the solution but maybe auto handicap should get a visual badge like “custom komi” and “custom handicap” does in the game listing, or in the “accept” modal pop up there should be a stronger visual highlight of the handicap status somewhere?
Game offers? As in "custom game"s created by you? You could name them “HANDICAP GAME” to avoid the issue to some extent. People who don’t often play on OGS are not likely to think of this nuissance when searching for/accepting games.
I’m curious why you describe it as a nuissance…?
Because of bad engrish. I meant “nuance” - though maybe “nuissance” sorta fits it too, because as you can imagine, people on the other side of it get frustrated too when they happen to join a game they didn’t want to play but it’s not easy to think of it when searching for a game unless it has happened to you a few times before. It can be considered a small annoyance to people on both ends of it (even if one side is more responsible for it).
Not much we can do in these kind of things. I do the same practice when I setup the restricted rank games in the game names like 3k-2d games to bring extra awareness. Then, I had experience to accept a game with DDK and was questioned why I chose to play with someone about 10 ranks lower. I offered to quit the game instead of pointing out the option to restrict the ranks. Anyway, this happens, no need to be frustrated.
People don’t read no matter what you do.
Hey if I could read, I might actually be shodan!
As far as OP goes, I notice there’s no Handicap filter on the games list. Maybe a feature that would help with this?
A filter to enable/disable handicap would be useful. While we’re talking about filters, I’d love to be able to set a filter to ensure minimum times for moves, as folks can set up correspondence games where a move a day isn’t fast enough and that’s a bit too frantic for me.
I take the time to read games now before I accept, to make sure the time is reasonable. (And this is partly why I’m baffled by folks who don’t read the game parameters. Site supporters even.)