Life In 19x19

That's what just happened:

I was logged onto KGS and saw that I friend of mine is playing. So I went into his game and saw what I figured as a hopeless situation and essentially lost game for him. As this was not looking very interesting, I left the game.
Like ten minutes later, I was again checking what my friend was doing and saw that his game was still active, so I went in. However, only he and a third person were in, his opponent wasn't. My friend was now opening personal chat with me and told me that his opponent had left the game and wouldn't come back. Instead, he had started another game and was playing somebody else! I looked at the game position and saw that my friend had managed to get a ko and had just made the move that reversed the outcome of the game in his favor.

My friend told me that he already chatted to the opponent four times, asking him what this was all about. I was getting really angry at the guy and did what I had not done before in my almost 10 years career of playing on KGS: I went to personal chat with the guy, insulted him badly and told him to resign the game.

After another five minutes he really resigned the game. What a success. I now got his first reply in the chat: 'Watch your language. You have been reported.'

I told this to my friend and he told me he had gotten the very same reply from the guy, because after four times asking him politely what this was about, he had also insulted him.

After another few minutes, we were both kicked off the server.

Now when I insulted him, I was aware that this might lead to being kicked, so I have no problem with this. Why I am posting this is not because I want to state that the admin did something wrong. What he did is correct and the only way how to practically deal with such a situation.

What I want to state, however, is that it shows that the escaper policy on KGS really sucks and leads to frustration.

There are guys out there who not only escape a game at the very moment they loose it. They then go ahead and very openly just start another game on the same server. And if this was not enough, they will also report the player they just made so angry if he doesn't pull himself together and refrains from insulting him, leading to a ban for the, lets call him victim, instead of the bad guy.

It would really make sense to have an adjournment functionality and loss of a left game after five minutes.



I know that this has been discussed many times before, but how this happened made me think differently about the KGS escaper system.

Well, if it makes you feel any better, I feel almost exactly the same way as you do and wrote a bit on it in my blog/site. However, I can also see where they're coming from, and the only reason I don't care so much about it is that the implementation of an adjourning button and the 5-minute disconnect rule is practically in every other server but KGS; so I think it's not bad at all to have a server with a different escaper system that may satisfy a different group of people, even if I disagree with it.

Well, there are two issues here. One is that of escapers, and the other is that of disconnections. I had a game the other day that took two days to finish, because my opponent kept losing his connection. I don't expect him to be credited with a loss because he disconnected five times. Life is full of unexpected problems; just because it makes you feel bad is no reason to penalize people who may live in areas where Internet connection is not as good as yours.

The second one of escapers is actually easy to deal with. The vast majority of escapers are serial escapers. Before I play any game, I look at the records of the people I'm going to play. If I see more than two escapes (or unfinished games; they show in italics), I'll scan the list and see if there are more. If so, I simply won't play them. I haven't had anyone escape on me in a year or so.

kirkmc wrote:The second one of escapers is actually easy to deal with. The vast majority of escapers are serial escapers. Before I play any game, I look at the records of the people I'm going to play. If I see more than two escapes (or unfinished games; they show in italics), I'll scan the list and see if there are more. If so, I simply won't play them. I haven't had anyone escape on me in a year or so.

But can you determine who of the two players escaped? I also have two games written in italic, but I did not escape from them.

You can't that's why I look for a trend. If there's only a couple, then it's clear it's the other players. But I've seen players who have lots, or who have forfeits in the game list, which show that they lost by forfeit because of escaping.

How many games will you play in your career? Which game will be the most important?

Araban wrote:Well, if it makes you feel any better, I feel almost exactly the same way as you do ...

It actually does make me feel better.

I used to deal with the system in the way kirkmc described: checked the game list of my opponents beforehand. However, since quite some time I play automatch games exclusively - it is so much more comfortable ...

kirkmc wrote:You can't that's why I look for a trend. If there's only a couple, then it's clear it's the other players. But I've seen players who have lots, or who have forfeits in the game list, which show that they lost by forfeit because of escaping.

I know players who have lots of unfinished games in their list, but none of them were escaped by that player -- so you still can't tell.

xed_over wrote:

kirkmc wrote:You can't that's why I look for a trend. If there's only a couple, then it's clear it's the other players. But I've seen players who have lots, or who have forfeits in the game list, which show that they lost by forfeit because of escaping.

I know players who have lots of unfinished games in their list, but none of them were escaped by that player -- so you still can't tell.

Probabilities agree with kirkmc. And I do, with them. Too bad for the players you know.

SpongeBob wrote:I went to personal chat with the guy, insulted him badly and told him to resign the game.

Well, on IGS there is generally less chat so maybe it is an opportunity to focus more and to learn a bit patience.

Regards Tapir

the escaper system is horrible but the admins are very stubborn about it, and refuse to see anything wrong with it. so there is really no point to try to argue about it.

Escapers are more likely to be children - they're obviously massively immature. Maybe you shouldn't swear at them in the first place.

I'd say this is a good example of why the escaper system on KGS is a workable one.

You told the guy to finish the game. He did. No additional threat of punishment from the server was needed. It worked!

Now if only you had told him without swearing or being abusive, maybe he would have resigned anyway. Maybe not. But you wouldn't have gotten booted.

I think it's a preference thing. I prefer the "5 minute rule", but I know that some people like the KGS escaper system. It would be cool if you could configure it at the game setup window, but this is not a big issue to me.

If you think of escaping as another form of resigning, maybe you can feel good about your wins. Of course, you might be curious about the actual outcome of the game in the end, but the same thing happens if your opponent resigns preemptively as well.

So I guess I prefer the "5 minutes and you lose" escaping system, but I don't think it's a big deal either way.

wms wrote:I'd say this is a good example of why the escaper system on KGS is a workable one.

On the contrary. As I described, my friend had already contacted the escaper four times in a polite manner and he did not react. Only when we started to insult him, he would take the chance and get some more satisfaction from first resigning the game and then reporting us.

With all due respect, it seems that you do not want to see the problems with the escaper system, I have to say.

There are basically two groups of people:

1) The escaper system is needed because you have to consider people with a bad internet connection. As a consequence, you have to check your opponent's game list before playing them. (What about automatch? Why would somebody with a connection loss not be able to come back within five minutes? And if he regularly isn't, should he play on the server in the first place?)

2) The escaper system sucks.

I am now definitely in the second group.

That said, I surely can live with it - KGS is by far the best server around.