actually 69%, 55 games total with 3 still in play so 36/52

Yes, he's my first. Thanks for asking. Very exciting stuff, and with some nice lulls in between while my wife recovers and my son is napping.

I've been playing five ladder games at a time, but a huge majority of them have been ranked in the top ten at the time we were playing, and the stall factor is such that I've only completed 34 games in about the same amount of time it took ruthless to complete 52. I'm 25-9 in those games, with a couple likely wins in the bank, but while my eighth loss didn't affect my ranking at all, my ninth put me in a tie for seventh.

happy parantage!!

I have been playing 3-2 games at a time, and think just recently went up to 4..

and only have a 21/39
so what.. 53% win rate?

so i am satisfied with a 1650*ish score, lol

Parentage*

I've played 19 and I'm 16-3 for a ranking of 1917, presently 4th on the ladder.

No idea how the 5 I have going now will work out.

C'mon Duke.. you can do better, i got faith in you.. I expect higher then an 84% out of you.. :)

if you win these 5 you'll be a pretty solid B+

Success! I got my match with Doushi! My prayers have been answered. Unfortunately, I think I used up all my praying power getting the match with Doushi, and will probably actually lose it (and others)

Four of my five current opponents are: Doushi (#1), Duke (#3), Impaller (#4), and Waya (#7). Does anyone have a tougher set of ladder opponents right now?

My rank is SO going down!

I hope you don't lose it! The Bag of Dough needs to be taken off his throne. (I demand the pairing gods give me a chance at revenge!)

I, on the other hand, have a really easy set of ladder opponents: Shogun, TeddyFSB, Bostonfred, Troll, and Nuckluck. Piece of cake. Easy. Easy. Tooo Easy.

What is all this throne business you keep talking about!? If I had a throne I think I'd know! So perhaps it was stolen...but if I'm on this throne.. that means... I've been stolen too! Oh my God!! Impaller has kidnapped me! Somebody please save me! I've been taken hostage by the evil Impaller all I can assume because he ran out of cookies and his cookie addiction led him to the Bag of Dough who he then nefariously plotted and schemed to take for his own! Will the Bag of Dough be rescued before he's baked good and done or will some hero arise and save the Bag of Dough and destroy the evil Impaller?

I want some cookies..

Are a lot of players implementing the strategy of slowing down games that they're losing so as to improve their ranking on the ladder? It could potentially ruin the ladder if lots of folks do it. A player that routinely waits for three days in between each move could drag out a game for months.

I'm not sure I have a good answer on how to fix it though.

I do notice that many people start to move considerably slower when they are losing.

That's pretty common. I'm not really sure that it's going to be a huge issue, though, since we can only play a maximum of 5 games at a time. Pretty soon they are going to run out of game slots to stall with, so they'll have to start taking the losses if they want to get new games.

Well, it seems like some people are more interested in keeping their high ranking than actually playing games. If you look at Doushibag's ladder games, he's gone two days without moving in four of them. But he's played two entire (winning) games during that two day stretch, so it's not like he hasn't been around. Seems to me that once he has a game going that he might lose, he just slows it down to a crawl. He can probably keep his #1 ranking for a long time doing it, because it will take forever to end the games at this pace if he chooses not to surrender.

I'm guilty of playing a lot slower when I'm slightly losing or the game is very very tight. I see 2 or 3 ways to play it and I don't want to mess up. I go back and forth and become frozen with indecision. Eventually the deadline looms and I force myself to choose. Usually that's when I realize I'm totally F-cked and surrender shortly thereafterwards. People who p[lay with me int eam games have seen me do this there too. I admit it's a terrible habit. A solution woudl be shorter autoboot times. If they were 48 or 25 hours I would go within that time frame.

In an easy game where I'm winning I make every move in a few minutes.

While I admit I have the same bad habit, I don't think it'd be a good solution to shorten the boot times. I generally don't play during the weekends since I'm out with my girlfriend and not near a computer generally...so occasionally the games go dangerously close to the three day limit.

How about something like this for a possible solution?

- If you currently have two or more ladder games that have been waiting for you for more than 1.5 days, you cannot submit orders in your other ladder games without first moving in these games. If you have one particularly tough game, this would still give you the ability to think things over carefully, and continue with your other games. But this would remove the ability to drag out all your losses by waiting 2+ days for every turn. Well, actually it wouldn't prevent it completely, but you would not be able to advance in your winning games, so there would be no real advantage to delaying.

there would still be an advantage.. a 19-1 record with no additional results is still a 19-1.. and now while the bayeselo system would still modify him based on past opponents, he wouldn'thave any drastic modifications due to new games.

|>"there would still be an advantage.. a 19-1 record with no additional results is still a 19-1.. and now while the bayeselo system would still modify him based on past opponents, he wouldn'thave any drastic modifications due to new games."

Yes, but with this system it would be much more difficult to make it to 19-1 in the first place. You would pretty much have to stay active in all of your games. Currently, an excellent player can probably run up a record like that without much trouble if he drags out all his losses. So I do think this would pretty much eliminate the advantage.

the point remains, once he gets a good rating.. either by 19-1, or by 10-10 vs the right players.. if he has say a 1950 rating.. he can drag out two games equally, and not have a noticably change due to the fact that there is no new direct news related to him.. and considering that he likely beat good players to get to his rank, he'll likely stay at that rank due to those players continueing to do well.