Escapers, escapers!!!...

[Splatted]

It would seem absolutely ridculous for the club to respond by banning people from leaving the board during a game.

Let's not get caught up on details: nobody would want to play that person again afterwards, which is effectively a ban, even if not a formal one.

you know that if they keep acting like that they will lose the right to adjourn games and you will be awarded the win for the game you played against them.

Even if the system was to award an immediate loss to anyone who left for any reason (a very harsh system for those who leave for good reasons), it would be a) too lenient on those who escape deliberately for bad reasons, and b) missing the point. I don't want the win - I want to play the game! Thing is, because the punishment is gaining a bad reputation, nobody dares to do it at a club - so why not just mimic that policy online? KGS users who play stronger players very often have their names marked, and then find it difficult to get games with stronger players; why not do this for those who have escaped a few times recently, and let others decide whether to play them or not?

I guess I misunderstood your position; I thought you meant you wished KGS had a strict policy like tygem's, where leaving the game results in a forfeit. Your stance on the subject seems reasonable enough, and I like the idea of branding escapers, but my impression is that your's isn't the commonly held opinion amongst those who disparage the KGS escaper policy.

Perhaps I should be a little more specific in my question: Are those of you that dislike the KGS system angry because it doesn't punish every single escape? And if so, what's so different about a system that awards a loss the first time someone leaves a game, and one that starts adjudicating losses after a person has left a certain number?

[moyoaji]

I like this solution a lot. I don't see why more servers don't do it this way. I believe KGS does (I've only had one game where my opponent DC'd and the clock just kept running, so I would assume this is how KGS would have handled it).

And even without a disconnect, an "Add Time" feature would be great in a lot of games. I had a game where I won on time, but honestly, if I could have given both of us 5 more minutes, I would have. The game was very close and I wanted to know who would win!

The vast majority of 'rated' games I ever played were with a clock. This includes tournaments and other rated games.

Actually, in the only AGA tournament I ever attended, there were no clocks. If you wanted your game timed, you could request a clock, but no one did. It was basically just a mutual understanding of "I won't take forever on my moves" and the tournament went very smoothly.

In fact, in real life, I've never played go with a clock. Chess, yes, but not go...

[Boidhre]

The vast majority of 'rated' games I ever played were with a clock. This includes tournaments and other rated games.

Actually, in the only AGA tournament I ever attended, there were no clocks. If you wanted your game timed, you could request a clock, but no one did. It was basically just a mutual understanding of "I won't take forever on my moves" and the tournament went very smoothly.

In fact, in real life, I've never played go with a clock. Chess, yes, but not go...

The main reason you see clocks at tournaments isn't because of people abusing time but because you've only got the venue for a certain amount of time each day and need to get X amount of rounds finished by a certain time. If you need this round to be finished in 5 minutes you can't really go around to people only entering the yose and say "finish up!"

[moyoaji]

The main reason you see clocks at tournaments isn't because of people abusing time but because you've only got the venue for a certain amount of time each day and need to get X amount of rounds finished by a certain time. If you need this round to be finished in 5 minutes you can't really go around to people only entering the yose and say "finish up!"

The venue was the upstairs seating area of the cafe in a D&W grocery store. Starting at 11am, we had until the store closed, I guess. But I'm pretty sure it's open 24/7...

The tournament was actually not run with a bracket. It was sort of round-robin. You played those closest to you in rank and the winner was whoever won the most games. The end result was a tie for first place - two players with 3 wins each.

It was an AGA rated tournament, though, co-hosted by two AGA recognized clubs (West Michigan and Kalamazoo). However, yeah, I would guess most tournaments would want clocks. This was likely an exception to the general rule.

[Boidhre]

The main reason you see clocks at tournaments isn't because of people abusing time but because you've only got the venue for a certain amount of time each day and need to get X amount of rounds finished by a certain time. If you need this round to be finished in 5 minutes you can't really go around to people only entering the yose and say "finish up!"

The venue was the upstairs seating area of the cafe in a D&W grocery store. Starting at 11am, we had until the store closed, I guess. But I'm pretty sure it's open 24/7...

The tournament was actually not run with a bracket. It was sort of round-robin. You played those closest to you in rank and the winner was whoever won the most games. The end result was a tie for first place - two players with 3 wins each.

It was an AGA rated tournament, though, co-hosted by two AGA recognized clubs (West Michigan and Kalamazoo). However, yeah, I would guess most tournaments would want clocks. This was likely an exception to the general rule.

Well, there's a secondary factor in Europe. To be an EGF rated tournament it has to be timed. 1 hour main time for Class A, 45 minutes for Class B, 25 minutes for Class C with some kind of overtime. Each having a different impact on your rating changes with A rated tournament games having the greatest effect.

[cdybeijing]

The main reason you see clocks at tournaments isn't because of people abusing time but because you've only got the venue for a certain amount of time each day and need to get X amount of rounds finished by a certain time. If you need this round to be finished in 5 minutes you can't really go around to people only entering the yose and say "finish up!"

The venue was the upstairs seating area of the cafe in a D&W grocery store. Starting at 11am, we had until the store closed, I guess. But I'm pretty sure it's open 24/7...

The tournament was actually not run with a bracket. It was sort of round-robin. You played those closest to you in rank and the winner was whoever won the most games. The end result was a tie for first place - two players with 3 wins each.

It was an AGA rated tournament, though, co-hosted by two AGA recognized clubs (West Michigan and Kalamazoo). However, yeah, I would guess most tournaments would want clocks. This was likely an exception to the general rule.

Well, there's a secondary factor in Europe. To be an EGF rated tournament it has to be timed. 1 hour main time for Class A, 45 minutes for Class B, 25 minutes for Class C with some kind of overtime. Each having a different impact on your rating changes with A rated tournament games having the greatest effect.

This class system is interesting. So to make sure I understand, there is one rating for all classes, not one rating for each class. The class A games are most heavily weighted and he Class C games least heavily weighted.

[Boidhre]

This class system is interesting. So to make sure I understand, there is one rating for all classes, not one rating for each class. The class A games are most heavily weighted and he Class C games least heavily weighted.

Yes, you are correct. Exact details here including what kind of time settings are acceptable: http://www.europeangodatabase.eu/EGD/EG ... .php#CLASS

[SpongeBob]

Perhaps I should be a little more specific in my question: Are those of you that dislike the KGS system angry because it doesn't punish every single escape? And if so, what's so different about a system that awards a loss the first time someone leaves a game, and one that starts adjudicating losses after a person has left a certain number?

There are a number of quite obvious differences:
- The escaper can start another game right after his escape. You have to have good nerves to not get angry in this situation. Caution: do not insult the escaper in this case - he can let you get banned! (happenened to me once)
- You will have an unfinished game in your list, which lets you look like an escaper yourself
- I claim that it is very rarely used for its purpose (adjournment), but more often it is abused by escapers
- The system constantly leads to moderator involvement through complaints

[xed_over]

- The escaper can start another game right after his escape.

I don't see this as a problem, so much as an annoyance.
I also think that there are many with English as a second language, who may just think this is how to end the game -- just close the window. And indeed, it seems to work.

To me, my opponent just said, indirectly, "I quit/resign". Only they hit the close window button, instead of the resign button.

I get annoyed watching my wife work on her Mac. She just closes windows, leaving the applications running (but she thinks she has "quit" the applications). No matter how many times I try to explain to her, she still just closes the windows -- eventually her machine just slows to a crawl with so many applications still running. (and there's no English as a second language issue here -- unless you count Texan)

And believe it or not, getting up from the table to start a new game does in fact happen in real-life, face-to-face games. And the results are not as drastic as you might imagine.

- You will have an unfinished game in your list, which lets you look like an escaper yourself

Yeah, this is annoying.

But its only as annoying as the black mark tilde for only playing stronger players online.

I think its annoying that snooty players use those "identifying marks" to prejudge you and refuse to play against you.

- I claim that it is very rarely used for its purpose (adjournment),

That's probably true. But I like that its available if needed.

I think the better reason for not immediately assigning a loss is for disconnects -- but those are indeed distinctly different from window closers.



Overall, I don't see the big deal. Just get a thicker skin and move on.

[xed_over]

When you disconnect, your timer simply keeps running. That's it.

If you do not come back until your time runs out, you lose on time.

...

This is how it is handled in real life. You leave the table on your move, nobody is stopping the clock. You don't come back before time expires - you lose. End of story, and I never heard anybody saying that was unfair.

this is probably the best suggestion I've heard.

[SmoothOper]

When you disconnect, your timer simply keeps running. That's it.

If you do not come back until your time runs out, you lose on time.

...

This is how it is handled in real life. You leave the table on your move, nobody is stopping the clock. You don't come back before time expires - you lose. End of story, and I never heard anybody saying that was unfair.

this is probably the best suggestion I've heard.

I think the KGS policy is a hold over from when connections weren't very stable.

[dfunkt]

Maybe the next flavor-of-the-month Go server can offer an in-house therapy department: talk therapy, meditation training, breathing exercises, and other packaged services to promote mental and and emotional well-being.

More and more this seems a somewhat KGS exclusive problem, for whatever reason.

I'm going to hypothesize for everyone's consideration that the real problem is that KGS is too good at what it does. Because it doesn't have terrible missing features like no community, broken gamefile export, poor time selection support, or lack of available games, people have to latch onto small nitpicky issues to complain about. Because it has everything except for some small nitpicky things, there will never be enough user motivation to move to a new server. Instead, we will have to endure countless discussions about fischer timing and escaper policy and are doomed to rehash them for all eternity.

It's pretty obvious that KGS is your server of choice. No one really cares about your sarcastic and mocking comments. If you haven't got something constructive to say, why do you participate in the conversation?

[xed_over]

I think the KGS policy is a hold over from when connections weren't very stable.

connections still aren't very stable

[quantumf]

Adjournments are more real and more convenient than you may think. Quite often I'll be interrupted in a game, by the doorbell, the phone, a family member, whatever. Being able to take a 10-30 minute break to sort out the issue (with my opponent's agreement of course), is pretty handy. I don't do this daily, it probably happens 1/50 games, but occasionally I'm happy with the KGS system (although I admit to fuming briefly when an escaper starts another game right after escaping our game).

[Li Kao]

An unfinished game is like a sour taste in your mouth.

But making it impossible to finish a game after 5 minutes of absence causes more unfinished games, not fewer.