@nadjarostowa said in #6:
> I think most of these are actually no valid reasons at all!
>
I think that some of them are, but for each reason you may or may not agree and that's perfectly fine. I think at least there's a grey area and it's not always easy to determine if there was a good reason for an abort. The first two are the ones that I encounter the most, the other ones are rare.
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> If you ask for pairing you have to play whoever shows up.
>
I would agree, unless high lag affects the game substantially, which I think is the case with 1 0. (As far as I understand there is time compensation for lag, but a side effect is that it allows making long series of premoves with otherwise wouldn't be possible. This is something that is very hard to do perfectly right, I understand.). For longer time controls, this is not an issue, so I specifically mentioned 1 0. I have played a lot of 1 0 recently and it sometimes happens.
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> He might have left, he not have arrived, he might just reload the page.
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This case almost always happens when I complete a game, the opponent asks for a rematch, I accept within 2 seconds and then nothing happens (opponent's green dot also became grey). Then I have to wait for 30 seconds and most of the time, the opponent has indeed left. This case doesn't happen very often when seeking a new opponent of accepting from the lobby.
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> Rating deviation is taken into account when adjusting the rating, so it should be a non-issue. The higher risk of cheater I'd say is marginal.
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It's not about the rating, but the risk of cheaters, especially in rapid or classical time controls, when it is easier to cheat. Most of the times when I encountered cheaters, they were from relatively new accounts. So if it were an option, I would enable a filter of "having played at least X games".
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> Wrong time control or variant is valid if you misclicked. :-)
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This actually happened when I decided to accept a challenge from the lobby, but someone else accepted before me. Then the list of challenges in the lobby updates and another challenge is there where I wanted to click (may be a totally different time control or variant). This one is very rare though.
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> Pretty unlikely that this happens exactly at the moment between starting the game and the first move. And how would you notice and still be able to abort the game?
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Agreed that this one might be very rare.
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> This usually isn't possible (it might be possible in the mobile client).
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I once had a situation that my opponent offered a rematch, but I had to leave. When I returned half an hour later, I noticed that the rematch was still there, so I accepted. I'm not sure if it was a bug, but the opponent had left in any case. (Maybe I can try to reproduce it.)
> But I think the current automated system takes care of the issue reasonably well. It seems impossible to get it perfectly right. And aborting games should be highly discouraged.
Agreed. Aborting should be discouraged, so establishing warnings to habitual aborters and restricting them is totally fine with me.
I think my issue is more with the warning after every single abort, even one. When the system is threatening with a temporary ban after only one abort, then I wouldn't feel very welcome on this site.
So, most of the time I wait the 30 seconds, but it can be a bit annoying. Maybe an option is to allow an abort after 15 seconds (or something) without punishment?