When I challenge an opponent on the ladder whose ranking is lower than mine, I should get an extra challenge spot

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[edited]
This proposal can also be said:
Low-ranked opponents do not occupy my challenge quota
Changed the challenge limit from three any opponents to three opponents ranked higher than me.

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When you have a challenge quota, you can challenge a total of 3 opponents ranked higher than you.
However, rankings may change during the course of the challenge.
When the ranking changes, your opponent’s ranking may be lower than yours, or he may even have dropped out of the ladder.

I know that if your opponent beats you, he’ll take your place and you’ll be one behind, but that’s about it.
But every time you defeat an opponent, you may be able to advance dozens or hundreds of places.
In other words, the benefits of winning far outweigh the costs of losing.
Then, an opponent ranked lower than me, especially an opponent who has dropped out of the ladder, is not worthy of occupying my challenge spot.
The best strategy will be to encourage you to lose low-ranked games quickly so that you can free up spots to challenge higher-ranked opponents.

Therefore, I propose:
If your ranking changes during the challenge, your opponent’s ranking is lower than yours, or your opponent drops out of the ladder, then you can get one more challenge spot.
Of course, if something changes again: your opponent ranks higher than you, or the game ends with a lower-ranked opponent, the extra challenge spots will be reclaimed.

So, assuming you are ranked 2,000, you challenge 1,700, 1,500, and 1,300.
If you defeat the 1300th place, the 1700th and 1500th place will be ranked lower than you, so you will get 2 additional challenge places to challenge higher opponents, a total of 5.
When the 1,700th place defeats the 1,200th place, the original 1,700th place is now ranked higher than you, so you have to take back one of the challenge places, and now there are 4 left.
Of course, because you have challenged 5 opponents before, even if the number of challenge places is only 4, you just cannot challenge new opponents, and it will not affect the game you are challenging.
When the game ends between you and the 1500th-ranked opponent, one additional challenge slot will be reclaimed, so the challenge slot returns to 3.

I think this proposal really should be considered.
Ladder is a correspondence game, and a game often takes several months.
Taking up challenge slots is a big problem.
It’s ridiculous when you’re ranked 500 but still challenging opponents ranked 2,000, or opponents who dropped out of the ladder.
You will only think: No matter what happens, I want it to be over. I want to challenge higher opponents to climb up. Give me back the challenge spot! !
Having an extra challenge quota, or in other words, low-ranked opponents do not occupy my challenge quota, and I can always challenge 3 opponents ranked higher than me, which will be a humane mechanism.

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I don’t think I understand the problem.

Then you’ll have a spot to challenge someone, why do you need two extra ones?

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But they’re also ranked games, so why not just win them?

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But you still have two challenge slots taken up by lower ranked ones.
Why can’t all three challenge slots be used to challenge high-ranking people?

What if your goal is to climb the ladder?
Maybe you don’t care about account ranking, but want ladder ranking.

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I think you’re still going to want to win games to do that. So you could practice winning quickly if you really need to win those games quickly :slight_smile:

I mean if you just want to move quickly up the ladder then

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You have to consider this is a correspondence game.
How quickly you complete the game depends not only on how fast you play, but also on your opponent.
You can’t win quickly when your opponent only moves once a day.
It will take you several months.

On the contrary, just press resign for a few seconds.
Of course, OGS stipulates that intentionally losing the game is sandbagging.
But if a player makes a few bad moves that create a disadvantage and then resigns, how do you determine that he did it on purpose?
It only takes a few days or a week or two to lose the game, but it takes months to win the game. How do you choose?
My focus isn’t on climbing quickly at all, but the existing ladder mechanics encourage people to lose games quickly to free up challenge slots.

When you challenge an opponent with a higher ranking than you, it makes sense to spend time. You can work hard to fight with the opponent and defeat him to gain ranking.
But if an opponent ranked lower than you takes up the challenge slot, time is just wasted.
Unless you are one of the players at the top of the ladder, losing a rank is a big loss. Otherwise, what is the reason to spend time?

Of course I’m not saying there’s no point in playing with lower ranked players.
When you’re challenged, you obviously have to defend your position, and that’s no problem.
But when you challenge, what reason is there to challenge an opponent ranked lower than you? This is a very strange thing.

The purpose of the ladder is to challenge those with higher rankings and be challenged by those with lower rankings, isn’t it?

To be honest, I don’t understand why you would object to this suggestion.
It is not unreasonable to have extra challenge places to challenge high-ranking players, which can increase the vitality of the ladder.

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If you lose to a player lower than you (in ladder ranking), they take the spot right above you in the ladder, regardless of who had initiated the challenge. Thus, players are incentivized to not just throw games, in order to avoid giving other players a quick opportunity to jump right ahead. It’s effectively like you are defending your position from the player that you challenged.

I guess the point that you are making is that some would not mind throwing such a game, in order to gain the opportunity to send a new challenge to another player much further up the ladder. However, this is discouraged for several reasons:

  1. It is still a meaningful game from the perspective of establishing ladder ranking, i.e., whether that other player deserves to climb up ahead of you. If you are throwing those games, you are just giving away free ladder climbs to however happened to be lucky enough to play slower than the other people that you challenged.
  2. It is still a ranked game, and throwing such games distorts the ranking system.
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I think I’ve made that clear.

Yes, but you also get your challenge spot back.

I just want to say that you have three challenge places, and you will want to challenge players with higher rankings than you.
You win, you move up the rankings, that’s what the challenge is about.

In fact, what my proposal wants to say is: “Players ranked lower than you should not take up your challenge slot.”
It’s still a valid game and you need to win to defend your position, no problem.
What I find unreasonable is that I would use my challenge slot to do this, which is weird.
I’m using my challenge slot to do what would happen if I were challenged.

And I made this suggestion: “When I challenge an opponent on the ladder whose ranking is lower than mine, I should get an extra challenge spot.”
It is equivalent to: “Players ranked lower than you should not take up your challenge slot.”
Just want to solve this problem. (Prevent players from wanting to throw the game away.)

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On the other hand, being challenged also takes up a spot (one can only be challenged up to three times). Sometimes, it happens that one has to wait for a potential opponent to have fewer than three ongoing challenges.

With your proposal, I think it could create an imbalance in the number of challenges that players are able to send versus how many they are able to receive. Such players taking advantage of this feature (being able to have >3 ongoing challenges) may wind up making it harder for other players to find players that can be challenged.

Having challenges available to use also comes down to the player using them wisely. One does not have to send out all three challenges at once.

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Yes, I actually thought about this issue too.
But based on my current observation of the ladder, there is rarely a situation where you cannot challenge anyone.
Yes, if you only want to challenge a specific person, his chances of being challenged may be taken up.
But it is unlikely that you will have no one to challenge.
There may be a few fewer places for you to challenge, but you will always have someone to challenge, so it’s not a big problem.

No matter what, when your ranking increases, you can no longer challenge opponents ranked lower than you.
You can only 3 challenge those ranked higher than you.
You cannot launch unlimited challenges and occupy everyone’s opportunity to be challenged.

All right…
This is indeed part of the strategy.
However, I really don’t want it to be part of the strategy as to when to issue a challenge.
I just think that it is a matter of course to challenge bravely and work hard to win every game.
Rather than thinking about when to issue a challenge, or whether I should lose quickly to free up my challenge slot, it is part of the strategy.

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Except if during the game the player ends up below you in the ladder at some point :slight_smile:

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An alternative strategy to throwing games, which I have used, is to play more slowly. If you slow down enough you might give those lower-ranked players time to win their games and rise above you.

Especially when you know you are winning, paying attention to when you take that win can be very important. (Hopefully this doesn’t lead to the opposite problem of illegal stalling.)

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The problem is more about the strategy choices made to climb quicker.
Player has to assume his choices of challenges according to his interests.

You have an opportunity to play stronger players, and these games will be difficult to win. You have opportunity to play fair games, and I guess with fun. You have opportunity to play lower ranked players with chances to speed up your climbing. Some even try to find players who don’t play, surely the quickest way.

There is a variety of choices and whatever are yours, you still have to take each game seriously to its proper end. I don’t think it’s necessary to privilege someone who wants to climb quicker anyway.

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I don’t think it’s the prerogative of people who want to climb fast.
You can always challenge three players ranked higher than you, and it should be fair to everyone.
In fact, I am a slow player and I always challenge players who are only three places higher than me.
I enjoy the process of defeating every player ranked higher than me on the ladder.
I don’t care about climbing slowly, but I do care about the fact that the challenge spot is occupied by opponents who are already lower than me.
When I ranked 1,000, I wanted to challenge 997, 998, and 999, but I couldn’t do it.
Because the challenge quota is still occupied by 1001 and 1002 people, it cannot be carried out.
It feels bad.
I’d still like to finish the game I’m playing, but I want to move forward and not be stuck here.

The suggestion I make should be fair to everyone, not just players who want to climb quickly.
In fact, the only players who won’t benefit are the players who don’t want to play the game.
If you want to discuss this type of player, there is no need to bring up any features because they don’t play at all.

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As @Feijoa pointed out, it is also possible that those challenged players positioned lower than you in the ladder wind up suddenly jumping ahead of you.

So, the idea of a challenge being stuck on someone behind you is somewhat tenuous. Consider how the following might happen with your proposal:

  1. Challenge three people above you on the ladder.
  2. Win one challenge and wind up jumping above the other two challenged players as well.
  3. Send three more challenges to players above you, for a total of five ongoing challenge games (against three players above and two below).
  4. Those two players positioned below win some other games and win up jumping ahead of you.

Now, you’d five ongoing challenges with players positioned above you.

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Yes, there will be such situations.
But I would like to cite an existing situation in the current ladder system:
If the top 5 players on the ladder receive 5 challenges and then fall out of the top 5, the excess challenges will still be valid. (You can do the same for the top 10.)
In other words, the number of times a player has been challenged may exceed the limit due to ranking changes.

I don’t think excessive challenge is a bad thing.
No matter what, when your challenge quota is used up, you will not be able to initiate new challenges.

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Well maybe the proposal could be simplified to let’s have more challenge spots (let say 5 instead of 3).

I have no idea if this is a wish shared by OGS users. All I can say it’s first time it’s suggested.

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I’ve thought this as well, and like your proposal. The current system creates a perverse incentive to resign games where there is no (ladder) benefit to winning

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I like the limit of 3 out-going challenges. Far too many people start a bunch of games (via tournament or ladder) and proceed to forget OGS exists

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There are perverse sides in a ladder even more as I describe before for some of them. If players resign more easely then the solution shouldn’t be to offer more games but to modify the system like putting the remaining games out of the ladder, and yes this could be problematic and need some deeper thought, as much as being inclined to resign.