I started an automatch game this morning. Before a stone was even played, I get the message that my opponent resigned. And now in my games list I have the game listed as a win +forf.

Does this "game" count for me? It seems odd that I get the credit for a win when no stones were even placed. I seem to recall that a game is not really a game until a handful of stones are played. Or was that IGS?

Can someone elaborate?

Thanks

I think your opponent is a chronic escaper (http://www.gokgs.com/help/faq/escapers. ... cale=en_US), so leaving the game before its end counts as an automatic loss for him.
If all of that is true the game will be counted for you. Congrats, you were so much strong that you scared the opponent and won!

But I don't think he did leave, it said he resigned (at least I think it did, admittedly I was confused and didn't read the message carefully).

Is it possible to resign before the first move and get a forfeit result?

When one has escaped too many games, whenever he leaves a gameroom again the game gets forfeited for him, just as he resigned.

KGS has a bug in which it lies and says your opponent resigned when they actually escaped. Some would say escaping is a rude form of resigning, nevertheless, inaccurate messages like this cause confusion as this thread demonstrates.

He's actually not necessarily an escaper. In normal games if you resign at the beginning of a rated game (first five moves?) I don't think it does count against you, But in automatch, you can't let someone see what opponent they've been matched against and then decide whether or not they want to play him! That would defeat the purpose. So if you leave your automatch game during fuseki you forfeit it.



I don't think it's necessarily a bug... there's no need to wave around the fact that someone is a chronic escaper.

Thanks jts ... explains it all. And I'm glad my memory wasn't off on the first five moves thing .. good to know differences with Automatch.

Just to clarify, if a non automatch game has fewer than ten moves white has the option to have the game not be saved on the server.

Only white, not black? That's odd.

It's more or less arbitrary, but someone has to make a decision on it (if you asked both players, then you would need a system for handling if they disagreed, etc). In practice it's not really a problem, I don't think many players save games with fewer than 10 moves (if for no other reason than usually they like to avoid having an unfinished game on their list.)

I wasn't sure about this and checked the KGS-faq. It is not an automatic forfeit, leaving an automatch game just marks the game as escaped. So for the game to be automaticly forfeited, the person has to be already marked as a chronic escaper.

The difference between automatch and non-automatch game is, that leaving a non-automatch game in the first few moves doesn't marks the game as escaped, just as aborted.



Source

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Teamblog of my Bundesliga-Team (german)
Magics way up the hill (personal study journal)

My experience has been that if someone leaves an automatch game during the first 30 moves or so, they immediately forfeit it, whether or not they have any other unfinished games on their game list. (Even if they're playing on a brand new account, in fact.) Later in the game, they can disconnect and then log back in to KGS and rejoin the game normally.

If that would be the case, it would be surely mentioned on the KGS-pages.

Also, just now i started an automatch game, my opponent (who was black) left the game in the first minute after the countdown.
The message i got was "your opponent has left the game, you can wait for him to return if you want" (or whatever the messages says in english) - i did not get an automatic win via forfeit.

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Teamblog of my Bundesliga-Team (german)
Magics way up the hill (personal study journal)

Well then, I must be wrong about what's going on. But I have definitely gotten immediate forfeits in automatch from people who were not chronic escapers.

For a new account, it is possible under the escaper system to begin forfeiting games as early as your fourth game.

Some people do this because they do not like the handicap/color automatch assigned them. They might not like the opponent. They may have other reasons for disliking the automatch pairing.

If the game is ranked, please report this in private to an admin. You may also report it via email admin@gokgs.com . If a player has too many games lost this way, that player's calculated rank can become weaker than the actual ability. This is not fair to that player's opponents. Furthermore, the error in that player's rank can start propagating to other players.

http://www.gokgs.com/help/announce.html#automatchgames

And that's why KGS should update their ranking system to something that is more effective...

Also, some people on KGS are mean, so KGS should update its rating system. I had a nasty tasting coffee today so KGS should update its rating system. There's war in the Middle East, do you think that means wms will finally fix his rating system?

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When you think your opponent has made a mistake, that's when you should be the most cautious.

There's no ranking system capable of dealing with people intentionally misrepresenting their strength, e.g. resigning of forfeiting games for no reason.

Actually there is one... but you need to use time travelers or clairvoyants (an omniscient god can work too)