Suggestion : Re-increase the ''disconnection timer" from 1-minute minimum to 5-minutes when one disconnects in winning or even positions.

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Hi !

For some time, after thé disconnection timer was changed to include an option to ‘‘Claim Victory’’ after 1 minute of disconnection (to avoid a longer wait of 5 minutes if thé opponent escapes whilst losing), there have been discussions of re-augmenting thé timer to allow time to reconnect and prevent abuse

(for example claiming victory when thé opponent is winning solidly but has an internet issue).

In brief, 1 minute is a very short time in which to attempt to reconnect when one is having technical difficulties or internet issues, or even when one’s battery has run out and one must recharge and restart the device from which one is playing from.

Some suggestions were made to re-augment thé minimum duration to 2-3 minutes, or perhaps 5 minutes.

Mostly thé requests to re-augment thé minimum duration of the ‘‘claim victory’’ timer have been considered to have thé potential to reintroduce potentially annoying situations, when an opponent ‘‘escapes’’ and leaves in a losing position.

However, there have also been cases of opponents claiming victory via thé ‘‘disconnection timer’’ when losing solidly, which I’ve encountered in my own games and whilst watching others.

In such situations, especially if thé ranks are very imbalanced, it doesn’t seem to make much sense or benefit thé players or OGS to allow claiming of victory after 1 minute of disconnection,

And when there is a large rank différence — (as has often been thé case in my games, e.g. 4-6d vs DDK or SDK) — it only serves to incorrectly rank both players, sometimes causing thé stronger player’s rank to drop significantly and artifically augmenting thé weaker player’s rank – and it can imbalance future matches and handicaps as a result.

In my case, it has dropped me by one or two ranks after playing with internet/technical issues+games in which I got disconnected, at times in which I reconnected after less than 2-3 minutes of connection problem, only to find that my opponent had claimed victory in a solidly losing position, and when I don’t play often, it requires many more games to regain a correct ranking)

What about disabling the ‘‘Claim Victory after 1+ minute of disconnection’’ option for games in which thé AI considers the score close, or in favour of the person who has disconnected ?

(similar to the anti-stalling feature’s function, which only activates when games are in the favour of the player who has tried to pass to end thé game)

That would allow the ‘‘anti-escaping’’ aspect of the disconnect timer to function when a player leaves thé game whilst losing solidly instead of resigning, whilst hopefully also preventing to a large degree using the ‘‘claim victory’’ button to end games in which one is losing solidly, or in which thé score is as of yet undecided, and an opponent has an internet problem.

Thanks !

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I don’t agree. I experienced far more cases of people letting their entire main time run out after making a blunder, then next most of their byo-yomi, then finally the 5 minute disconnection time, than I did someone authentically being disconnected for more than a minute before re-connecting and resuming the game normally.

Losing 2 stones due to disconnection issues must be very painful for such a strong player, but wouldn’t that mean you were previously disconnecting for 2-5 minutes in ~2/3 of your timed games? This seems like an unusual issue that will inevitably be frustrating for either you or for your opponents no matter how OGS resolves it.

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I can understand the idea that 1 minute could be too short for some reasonable issues like you mentioned.

It’s definitely one option. Though if someone ends up disconnected multiple times in one game, that wait time can add up quite fast, multiples of 3-5 minutes.

If you look at the automatch settings for example, 5 minutes is greater than or equal to the main time for 2/3 of the options, and half the main time for another option.

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Maybe a minute or two is long enough in what might otherwise be short time control games.

I think this might be a bit much. It would certainly be frustrating if your opponent genuinely escaped, and you were subject to a longer timer because the AI said you were 9 points ahead, but the threshold was 10 points for “close”.

I think such a “claim victory” is also about being able to end the game without losing yourself. If someone has left the game, even if it’s a genuine technical issue, I think it’s not unreasonable to want to move on and do something else, play another game etc if they’re not back in a short enough amount of time, especially if it’s an unexplained disconnection.

So it’s important I would say to be able to end a game without being punished, if the opponent leaves.

Now one could imagine having the game autoannulled if the player disconnects and is winning by a large margin, to stop them losing rating for a potential genuine connection issue etc.

Though any sort of thing like that can open up other issues, like an impatient person who is winning but the opponent is playing on, they can essentially leave the game without penalty. So it could encourage that sort of escaping instead, and trying to force opponents to resign.

Just some thoughts, not sure what the best option is between increasing a timer, vs making sure players don’t have to experience long waits for players that have left the game, or introducing other potential issues.

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In theory, the suggestion proposes keeping the 1-minute timer in situations in which thé opponent is losing or blunders.

(Ther is already another feature which prevents ‘‘stalling’’ or playing useless moves after the opponent has passed, but only triggers when the person who has passed is ahead by a certain margin and % certainty according to AI’s assessment.

In theory, some similar criteria could be used to déterminé when the ‘‘Claim victory’’ option is offered )

Not at all in 2/3 of games, as most of the opponents I play with in tournaments have a significantly lower rating.

(There are not many dan players on OGS, and few mid-high dan players )

So, it has happened in tournaments in which I play with e.g. DDK players at 17k and either disconnect or ran out of battery, or simply when playing from a tablette or phone (sometimes the site doesn’t recognise that I am still connected)

At times I find, after a little more than 1 minute of some sort of technical issue, that the other player has ended thé game by disconnection — in 1-3 games in the tournaments.

For tournaments/wins, unless I play against a dan level player, my rating doesn’t increase much at all (by less than 0,03 rank), but one loss against a 4-25k player can drop the rating by 0,4 rank or more.

Because there are not many players at my rank on OGS, and often not many games available with players around my strength, it’s inevitably very difficult to rank back up to a correct ranking.

Often, I play in 9x9 or 13x13 live tournaments, whilst playing most of my other games by correspondance, and participating in correspondance tournaments, some of which are handicapped.

This has sometimes led to a couple of months of incorrect rating, and my opponents receiving less handicap than would be even, which is probably not fun for some players expecting a more even game.

(And as players also often prefer no handicap games outside of the handicap tournaments, it can require 40/50+ games to correct the rank)

It is not that it is painful but seems a bit silly and not to benefit anyone, and to create things like incorrect handicapping in matchmaking, which leads to less even games when pairing for handicap games.

Hopefully there is a way to keep the option to claim victory after 1-minute if an opponent has blundered and leaves, but to prevent the option from being offered if the disconnection doesn’t happen after a blunder or in a solidly losing position.

From my observations, I think some players ‘‘claim victory’’ as soon as possible when the option appears, regardless of the position and whether they are significantly behind, and it seems a bit counter to the purpose of offering the option to offer this in situations which are very unlikely to be ‘‘escaping after blundering’’. :sweat_smile:

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I think that usually thé main timer+byo yomi continues running whilst the disconnection timer runs (they aren’t separate), so when the main time is less than the disconnection timer, one loses by time after thé main clock+byo-yomi runs out.

Yes, I was a bit worried about this also, but perhaps the threshold could be set to something liké ‘‘more than 4-5 points’’ with a large degree of certainty, for 9x9, and a similarly smaller margin adapted for thé other board sizes ?

I can understand this, although from another perspective, especially in a tournament or serious game, when one begins a game, one has also committed to a potential maximum amount of time which thé game may last.

(the main time+byo yomi or overtime system)

In the situations in which an opponent disconnects for some other technical issue, perhaps waiting 2-3 minutes, or 5 minutes for longer games, (less if the game clock runs out sooner) seems all right from that perspective ?

Or perhaps as you said, there are better solutions, like perhaps auto-annulling ‘‘claim Victory by disconnect’’ games in which one is winning solidly or in which it’s unsettled, or annulling them on request.

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I do find it annoying that the disconnection timer can be so much more aggressive than the game clock: you might have 20 minutes left on your clock so if you did some deep reading / went to the loo / changed a nappy/ had a cigarette break / answered the phone/ slept for 5 minutes you could keep playing, but if you disconnect for just over a minute boom game over. Particularly on mobile browsers where switching tabs counts as a disconnection. So some leniency in “you didn’t rage quit because you are winning” situations gets my vote.

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True, but you also don’t want to have to wait for the opponents full main time either to be sure they’re not coming back.

And your opponent has the ability to pause the game also. But if you haven’t told them you’ll brb, and you just disconnect, it’s not really fair to make them stick around and see if you’ll come back.

We’re talking about ordinary ranked games, not a league or tournament game with an hour on the clock.

Unless your browser kills other tabs when you changed tab, I think you’ll still be connected. But if you navigate away from the game or close the tab it’ll be a disconnection.

On mobile Safari on beta, I can play against myself in a private and non private tab, and there’s no disconnection timer, even if I change the active tab (and reply on the forum).

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They can. It’s a battery/memory saving feature of mobile browsers. It may depend on your battery remaining, free memory, phone temperature.

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I have on mobile Chrome switched tabs to the forums when my opponent is taking a long time to move, and returned to find I’ve lost by disconnection.

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Ah, maybe this is what is happening at times.

I just answered a somewhat urgent and important message when playing by phone with at least a couple of minutes left on the clock in an unsettled situation, and around 1 minute later, I found I had lost by disconnection.

This has also happened to me when switching windows when I played on phone or tablette and the software froze or lagged (I saw a loss by disconnection when it unfroze)

It seems rather inopportune – what if one is playing by téléphone and has many minutes left on a clock but answers an important message ? :sweat_smile:

In any case, I think it is very common that a player claims victory after 1-minute, even if they are losing or the position is unsettled, when their opponent has much more time than that remaining.

It has happened to me also when reading deeply multiple times, to lose by disconnection suddenly.

I agréé that it’s a little harsh :sweat_smile:

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For comparison, I just played a game on Tygem and this is the message I got after my opponent disconnected:

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I didn’t know that this difference was existing in the OGS game settings.

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It would be nice to have a solid solution for that kind of issues, if thats possible. Maybe its even a small chance for OGS. Because you can’t play on any other server (at least non that I am aware of) with internet issues. Like in the picture Jlt posted, you need 3 lags and you lose a game on tygem. Its similar on all other servers.

If you really want to time stall in long games, you can just let the timer run out to be honest.