It happens quite often that automatch takes a long time to find an opponent, and people forget or go AFK.
Then you go to a game and your opponent is not there, and you have to wait 25 minutes, or escape. Some people
even use this strategy on purpose, to increase their rank, but even as a mistake it is annoying.

Please make an option to void an automatch game before the first move (or after 1 minute without a first move or similar).

Different idea: Cancel automatch search after 5 minutes, or after a user selected amount of time. If you're at your computer you'll see the popup so you can re-search.

Too many people were aborting automatch games when they didn't like the matchup, so they made it this way. So that's why I'm suggesting this different way around the problem.

ETA: While on the subject, I think the ctrl-N shortcut should have a confirmation dialog. I've hit ctrl-N on accident before and got a game instantly before I could cancel it.

Having a timeout on the automatch request is a good idea. I may do that.

For a confirm...that defeats the purpose of ctrl-n. I can hit the menu item easier than I can ctrl-n then confirm, so why have the shortcut at all? And I like that shortcut, I use it a lot.

I don't understand. Why is it a good idea to force people to play someone they don't want to? And even if there
is some reason i don't see: When there are no first moves from the other side after a minute this issue does not
apply. Aborting search after a timeout has some chance of reducing the frequency, but is hit and miss.

Regarding a confirmation dialog, it could be a menu preference in automatch prefs.

The entire idea of automatch is that you do it when you're not picky about who you play. If a player is sufficiently odious, you censor/block them, and then you don't get them again.

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Occupy Babel!

This doesn't happen often in my experience. Occasionally an opponent escapes directly after the game start, but players that wait until their time runs out are very rare.

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Sanity is for the weak.