Urgent Improvements Needed for Bot System: Visibility, Handicap Abuse, and Rating Flaws

[PRHG]

@zzz34567

Exploitation of Ranked Handicap Games
Conversely, if a bot enables “Ranked” for handicap games to stay visible, it becomes a target for malicious users. Some players intentionally lower their accounts to a two-digit kyu level (sandbagging) and challenge the bot with a 9-stone handicap. This causes the bot’s rating to plummet instantly (e.g., the bot ‘12bturbosai’ dropped all the way to 9k due to this issue).

I don’t think this is the cause. There was an update to how ratings for bots are calculated, however this resulted in a rating spike for some bots:

Games with bots are annulled

What’s going on? [image] [image] [image]

Anoek said he’d update the system to try and fix it:

Games with bots are annulled

That would do it, I’ll update the system so that if the bot resigns it counts that too (assuming the other criteria are met as well.)

If you look at the rating graph for 12bTurboSai you’ll see that there was a sudden spike in its rating followed by a sudden drop. The date of Anoek’s post appears to line up reasonably well with the apex of the spike.

Edit:
There was an announcement of bot ratings a little while ago: Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS