Forfeits

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langelli
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Joined: Tue Sep 21, 2004 11:29 am

Forfeits

Post by langelli » Fri Feb 15, 2013 10:36 pm

I urge everyone to check an opponents forfeit percentage before joining a match. Everybody forfeits a game here or there for who knows what reason. My beef is with players who have a very high percentage of forfeits. There is someone looking to start a 20 game match right now. This person has played 81 games, and timed out of all 81. We should all avoid playing people who do this. I, personally, check a players profile before joining a match. If I join a match and then someone with a high percentage of forfeits joins after me I unjoin that match. I don't want to play anybody who is such a sore sport. Just my opinion, for what it's worth.

redketchuplover
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Re: Forfeits

Post by redketchuplover » Sat Feb 16, 2013 6:37 am

Hopefully no one joins.

edqwerty
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Re: Forfeits

Post by edqwerty » Sat Feb 16, 2013 1:53 pm

I feel the same way. While there may be a reason for a few forfeits, to have hundreds on one's record appears to be nothing be a tremendous lack of respect for the other players.

energy
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Re: Forfeits

Post by energy » Sat Feb 16, 2013 2:09 pm

Let's not forget that we usually don't know the real life situation of the person involved.

We have had people here with problems of many sorts, I can easily think of situations where I could forgive someone such statistics.

That said, I agree that this is no fun for us, and we have every right to avoid playing them, if we so choose.
Nils

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irrawang
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Re: Forfeits

Post by irrawang » Sat Feb 16, 2013 3:25 pm

Most of my larger tournaments have included a couple of players who forfeit all their games. All it means is that it is a 8 player tourney and not 10. There are members with a much larger number of timeouts than 81.

langelli
Posts: 148
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Re: Forfeits

Post by langelli » Sat Feb 16, 2013 10:55 pm

I agree that there are players with more forfeits than 81, but this particular player is 81 for 81. That's forfeiting 100% of his or her games. I see that as a total lack of respect for ones fellow players. I do understand that things happen, and forfeits are inevitable. It's just frustrating! This has been one of my ongoing complaints for years here at net-chess, and I don't see any way to stop it from happening except to try to avoid such players. In fact, this is my only complaint here at net-chess. Thanks for this great site, Greg.

gmiller
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Re: Forfeits

Post by gmiller » Mon Feb 18, 2013 12:21 pm

Timeouts are a pain, but you just have to learn to ignore them. If someone is refusing to move in a completely lost position, I'll reduce the time down so it's over quickly. But I think most of the timeouts are due to people signing up and deciding they don't really want to play.
Greg Miller

langelli
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Re: Forfeits

Post by langelli » Mon Feb 18, 2013 9:32 pm

I realize there are people who sign up, and then decide they don't want to play. Then there are the people who see a losing situation, and just let the game time out. Perhaps the solution, or I should say one solution, is a small yearly membership fee. Even a fee as small as $10 a year would deter a good amount of such people from signing up. Greg, you could even forgive the fee in certain situations. All someone would have to do is send you a private email saying they can't pay the fee at this time, and you could waive it. I really don't know if this is a good idea or not. I wouldn't want to deter good people from signing up on this great site because of a mandatory "dues". Just food for thought.

redketchuplover
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Joined: Thu Jan 01, 2004 7:41 pm

Re: Forfeits

Post by redketchuplover » Tue Feb 19, 2013 5:02 am

If a player goes a year (after paying the $10 fee) without timing out they could get a reward of a reduced fee on the next year. Say $0.25 off after 1 year,$0.50 off after 2 timeout free years etc... The fee would revert back to $10 after any year with more than zero timeouts-and the reductions would restart too.

Other incentives could be games played,games won and or others.

Thoughts?

energy
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Re: Forfeits

Post by energy » Tue Feb 19, 2013 8:45 am

Disclaimer: I only know Greg through this site, just like most of you.

First point you'll have to keep in mind, is that (I believe) Greg doesn't want to make this into a job, he just wants a place to play chess. I suspect that is why he doesn't want to take money, it would turn his hobby into an obligation. As it is right now, he is free to implement what he wants or not, and we are free to come and play or not. Any solution that doesn't take that into consideration, will very likely not be implemented.

Secondly, all automatic solutions can be worked around. A "bad loser" could just as well wait until almost losing on time, and then resign. While the low-life that starts tournaments, then never shows up, can just create new accounts. (It wouldn't be impossible for a hostile enough person, to automate the creation of accounts and let a computer engine play enough games for the account to be taken for legitimate.)

In my opinion Greg is wise enough to heed the saying of "Never wrestle with a pig. You'll both get dirty, but the pig will like it."
Nils

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imreallylousy
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Re: Forfeits

Post by imreallylousy » Sun Mar 03, 2013 10:14 am

Yes. Those who timeout in lost positions are irritating. I suspect they do it to avoid losing points. I have a current opponent with a lost position who blatantly told me he didn't want to move because "he was just 33 points short of 2500"!
He has now surpassed 2500 but still does not move. I think once such a player times out, the game could be brought to the attention of admin and if it is agreed the position of the offending party is, indeed, lost, the rating of both players should be adjusted accordingly. Personally, I do not overly concern myself with my rating since Imreallylousy, but I do admit it is nice to ascend rather descend...:):)

energy
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Re: Forfeits

Post by energy » Sun Mar 03, 2013 1:14 pm

imreallylousy wrote:I suspect they do it to avoid losing points. I have a current opponent with a lost position who blatantly told me he didn't want to move because "he was just 33 points short of 2500"!
He has now surpassed 2500 but still does not move.
Assuming Greg calculates rating similarly to most systems, if your opponent's rating is increasing before he loses on time, waiting will cost him more points, and give you more as well. Up to a cut-off point that for your 2225 is (at least) 2575. Above that difference, it doesn't change any more. IOW, you can sit back and enjoy the thought of the extra rating points you get by his efforts.

Another thing is that rating on this site is not very realistic. I'm almost 800 points higher than my real over-the-board rating, And though a tiny bit of that may be from me playing very few games and using way too much time per game, most of it is obviously just inflation.
Nils

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gmiller
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Re: Forfeits

Post by gmiller » Sun Mar 03, 2013 2:17 pm

What Energy says is mostly right, if your opponent's rating goes up, you'll get more points. Of course, this is assuming your own rating doesn't change, if yours goes down you'll get even more, but if it had gone up you might get less. But the actual number is usually not significant in practice, and will often fall within rounding errors.

You really can't compare your rating at any one organization to any other organization. Your rating can only assess your performance amongst the population it's scored within. I posted some graphs a while back comparing the actual winning probabilities here with the ideal winning probabilities given by the Elo system, and the ratings here actually fit better than the USCF or FIDE actuals. So the ratings aren't wrong, they're just different.
Greg Miller

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