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        Arimaa >> Site Discussion >> The autopostal
        
(Message started by: Eltripas on Mar 19th, 2010, 6:49pm)
Title: The autopostal
Post by Eltripas on Mar 19th, 2010, 6:49pm
the autopostal hasn't paired me against new opponents in like 2 weeks or more, when it used to give me new ones every few days,  I don't have the maximum number of opponents.
Title: Re: The autopostal
Post by Hippo on Mar 20th, 2010, 2:45pm
Oh nice ... I haven't find the settings for autopostal until reading this post ... thanks :)
Title: Re: The autopostal
Post by 722caasi on Mar 20th, 2010, 7:55pm
I'm getting new opponents all the time, by I have a high rating width and a very variable rating. Try increasing the acceptable rating difference.
Title: Re: The autopostal
Post by Eltripas on Mar 21st, 2010, 8:07am
It is at 300, i. e. the maximum range.
Title: Re: The autopostal
Post by Eltripas on Mar 21st, 2010, 9:36pm
Today I was paired against Sconibulus, now I think the problem just was the lack of opponents.
Title: Re: The autopostal
Post by Hippo on Mar 22nd, 2010, 11:57am
And I was paired with Tuks, Ron and you as well ... seems it works.
Title: Re: The autopostal
Post by robinz on Apr 26th, 2011, 2:08pm
Sorry to drag up an old thread, but just this evening I discovered the autopostal feature, and thought it would be a good idea to see if I could use it to get a few slow games in against human players (I've not yet played a human at arimaa  :-[) ranked close to me.

Imagine my surprise when, despite initially selecting the minimum allowed rating difference of 100 (reasoning that I could always increase it if it didn't find me any opponents within a week or two), I suddenly see in the gameroom an autopostal game set for me with bot_ArimaaScoreP1 waiting there! Firstly, I didn't think bots played autopostal at all, but I guess I was wrong about that - no problem there (although it would be nice if there was an option to choose whether you would prefer human or bot opponents). But why was I paired against a bot rated some 500 points lower than me? Especially when this weakest of all bots played no slower or with any more intelligence than it appears to in non-postal games, as I defeated it by elimination in 15 moves and about 15 minutes (despite reading other web pages at the same time and only checking back for a move every few minutes or so).

(One further surprise was that the only notification I had that an opponent was waiting for me was looking under "my games" in the gameroom - I would have expected an e-mail notification or something like that.)

As I can't seem to find any information on the site about precisely what autopostal is and how it works, perhaps someone here could kindly explain  :)

EDIT: ah, I was sent e-mails; one every move, but they all went to my junk folder. And I see that I now already have a human opponent to play  :) I'm still curious as to why I was paired with a bot with such a low rating though.
Title: Re: The autopostal
Post by Janzert on Apr 26th, 2011, 2:36pm
If I'm remembering correctly there was a problem with many people enabling the autopostal games and then abandoning the first one. Omar added the first autopostal game to always be against the bot to make sure people played through it before starting a game against a human opponent.

Janzert
Title: Re: The autopostal
Post by Nombril on Apr 26th, 2011, 2:36pm
Everyone's very first autopostal game is against ArimaaScore.  I guess it is to confirm that you understand the interface before pairing you against a human, but I don't know for sure.  (EDIT: Janzert beat me to the correct answer...)

Autopostal games are counted as 'event' games, since you aren't allowed to select your opponent.  Event games don't mean much now, but there is discussion on and off about how your rating in event games could be used for tournament selection and seeding.

It sounds like you have it figured out now, let us know if you have more questions.
Title: Re: The autopostal
Post by robinz on Apr 26th, 2011, 2:43pm
Ah, that makes some sense - thanks both  :)

I would recommend (although I'm sure there are always other more important things for Omar to do) that there should be a page about autopostal which is easily accessible from the game room, with some information and FAQ (like the one I just asked) - it seems like a great feature, but one which I didn't even know about until today, about 3 months after I discovered the site  8)
Title: Re: The autopostal
Post by omar on May 10th, 2011, 5:32pm

on 04/26/11 at 14:08:10, robinz wrote:
Sorry to drag up an old thread, but just this evening I discovered the autopostal feature, and thought it would be a good idea to see if I could use it to get a few slow games in against human players (I've not yet played a human at arimaa  :-[) ranked close to me.

Imagine my surprise when, despite initially selecting the minimum allowed rating difference of 100 (reasoning that I could always increase it if it didn't find me any opponents within a week or two), I suddenly see in the gameroom an autopostal game set for me with bot_ArimaaScoreP1 waiting there! Firstly, I didn't think bots played autopostal at all, but I guess I was wrong about that - no problem there (although it would be nice if there was an option to choose whether you would prefer human or bot opponents). But why was I paired against a bot rated some 500 points lower than me? Especially when this weakest of all bots played no slower or with any more intelligence than it appears to in non-postal games, as I defeated it by elimination in 15 moves and about 15 minutes (despite reading other web pages at the same time and only checking back for a move every few minutes or so).

(One further surprise was that the only notification I had that an opponent was waiting for me was looking under "my games" in the gameroom - I would have expected an e-mail notification or something like that.)

As I can't seem to find any information on the site about precisely what autopostal is and how it works, perhaps someone here could kindly explain  :)

EDIT: ah, I was sent e-mails; one every move, but they all went to my junk folder. And I see that I now already have a human opponent to play  :) I'm still curious as to why I was paired with a bot with such a low rating though.


Thanks for the feedback. I added the following to the Autopostal settings page:


Quote:
If you have never played a completed postal game before, your first game will be against a simple bot that moves quickly. This is so that you can get familar with how postal games work and also show that you really do want to play postal games.

Very IMPORTANT. You will receive an email when it is your turn to move. Be sure to check your Spam/Junk folder if you do not get the emails. You might need to setup a filter to make sure these emails go to your InBox.


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