Timeout again

I would like a new rule, that prevents People with a high quota of Time-out losses to enter (a lot of ) tournaments.
They evidently have no incentive to Play their games and just block tournament places and the advancement of tournaments.
I could Name names, but not in public.

My Suggestion would be: Anybody with a Time-out loss quota of more than 10 % can only enter one (or two) active tournaments.

@ponderable said
I would like a new rule, that prevents People with a high quota of Time-out losses to enter (a lot of ) tournaments.
They evidently have no incentive to Play their games and just block tournament places and the advancement of tournaments.
I could Name names, but not in public.

My Suggestion would be: Anybody with a Time-out loss quota of more than 10 % can only enter one (or two) active tournaments.

I disagree as sickness could often be a reason for timeouts! One would have to know the reason for the timeouts, maybe it wasn't because of the amount of games. Keep in mind these are all paying subscribers, unless it is a tournament made just for non-subs.

-VR

@ponderable said
I would like a new rule, that prevents People with a high quota of Time-out losses to enter (a lot of ) tournaments.
They evidently have no incentive to Play their games and just block tournament places and the advancement of tournaments.
I could Name names, but not in public.

My Suggestion would be: Anybody with a Time-out loss quota of more than 10 % can only enter one (or two) active tournaments.

I appreciate your sentiments but I must agree with VR above.
Also entering lots of tournaments and losing those games is a well known sandbagging trick so that may be the "incentive"
Being timed out can be just a less obvious way than resigning to reduce your rating.

@ponderable said
I would like a new rule, that prevents People with a high quota of Time-out losses to enter (a lot of ) tournaments.
They evidently have no incentive to Play their games and just block tournament places and the advancement of tournaments.
I could Name names, but not in public.

My Suggestion would be: Anybody with a Time-out loss quota of more than 10 % can only enter one (or two) active tournaments.

This proposal, while well intentioned, does not address the larger issue of people entering tournaments and then resigning all their games en-masse.

I have previously pointed this out as an abuse of a good feature provided by the site.
I did name names back then but won't do it now.

A couple of points.
- it undermines the time and effort that site administration puts in setting up these tournaments.
- it undercuts paying subscribers who would like to play in tournaments but can't because the spots have been filled.
Only to have some toss their games. This can't help subscription revenue.
- some have said that players do this for sandbagging. But I don't see it that way as games <3 moves are flagged as unrated.
Leaves me the question. Why ??
This only hurts the site.

It will take a lot coding time/effort/money to come up with an automated solution.

Best suggestion is to flag the player to site authorities for their handling.
I would say flagging a player and tournament to site administration similar to flagging a forum post.

I agree with VR that timeouts could be because of something beyond one's control.
But if timeouts persist, the flag can be applied.

Mind you this feature would be used responsibility, i.e. not for any vendetta, etc.

For discussion.

@all above

Thank you first of all for all the thoughts which have flown into the issue.

A few more Points:

* The matter can really be reduced to a few names (less than 1% of subscribers)
* We see People having more than 1000 active games, raising the vacation flag and still going into tournaments. mghrn55 suggested a flagging System, which is okay for me, but will require and Independent Body to issue any consequence.
* There are People not doing anything wrong an getting caught in real life and losing a heap of games in one avalanche.

The new Suggestion: Let the System flag naybody with an active number of games beyond one hundred (or two hundred) and a quota of more than 10% timout losses in the last half year and hinder them from enetring tournaments.
Establsh an ombudsperson who could mediate any cases where this is an undue hardship. (less than one case per month I am sure)

@ponderable said
@all above

Thank you first of all for all the thoughts which have flown into the issue.

A few more Points:

* The matter can really be reduced to a few names (less than 1% of subscribers)
* We see People having more than 1000 active games, raising the vacation flag and still going into tournaments. mghrn55 suggested a flagging System, which is okay for me, but wil ...[text shortened]... ho could mediate any cases where this is an undue hardship. (less than one case per month I am sure)

Thumb up from me.
If/when site administration reads all the suggestions, they will come up with something that represents a combination of ideas put forth.

They may be reluctant to introduce another layer of manual intervention which goes against the goal of automation.

But they already have a protocol of manual intervention with forum post management.
So they're not introducing a new process but rather enhancing an existing one.

And I'm sure no one, including site management, is happy with some individuals entering tournaments only to blow their games away without making a move.

@mghrn55 said
This proposal, while well intentioned, does not address the larger issue of people entering tournaments and then resigning all their games en-masse.

I have previously pointed this out as an abuse of a good feature provided by the site.
I did name names back then but won't do it now.

A couple of points.
- it undermines the time and effort that site administration puts ...[text shortened]... nd you this feature would be used responsibility, i.e. not for any vendetta, etc.

For discussion.

I didn't realise games <3 moves were flagged as unrated.
Perhaps this was introduced relatively recently and I missed it.

@venda said
I didn't realise games <3 moves were flagged as unrated.
Perhaps this was introduced relatively recently and I missed it.

I read it in the FAQ's somewhere. I think it's 3 moves.
I've had opponents in tournaments resign without making a move and my rating stayed the same.
That's how I know.

@mghrn55 said
I read it in the FAQ's somewhere. I think it's 3 moves.
I've had opponents in tournaments resign without making a move and my rating stayed the same.
That's how I know.

I think it's 3 half-moves

@forkedknight said
I think it's 3 half-moves

So you think it is a move and a half? 😵

-VR

@mghrn55 said
I read it in the FAQ's somewhere. I think it's 3 moves.
I've had opponents in tournaments resign without making a move and my rating stayed the same.
That's how I know.

In fact the mate with the fewest moves is the fools mate with two full moves. So you can delete a game when it had 3 or fewer half-moves or one full move and one white move. Or you can resign (in the case of tournament and clan games) without losing rating points. After black moved the second time it counts.