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        Arimaa >> Site Discussion >> hanzack's sandbagged games
        
(Message started by: omar on Dec 17^th, 2011, 6:30pm)

Title: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by omar on Dec 17^th, 2011, 6:30pm

aaaa, brought to my attention that hanzack has been purposely losing rated games against humans now. This will have an impact on the WHR ratings which use HH games. They will be less accurate due to the sandbagged games.

First, this is a notice to hanzack to stop resigning rated games (against humans and bots). If you don't care about your rating just turn on unrated mode and play all your games that way. We count on the cooperation of community members to help maintain a the accuracy of the rating system. That is, we trust them to not purposely try to corrupt the ratings. So please cooperate.

Second, what to do about the existing sandbagged games in the games database. Even though the sandbagged games against the bots don't effect WHR and the damage to the gameroom ratings has already been done, these games also make it hard to analyse the historical games and mess up stats based on these games.

So I am thinking of unrating these games, but they require looking at each game to make sure that hanack purposely lost and did not actually lose. Some of these games are very clear, but others are not. Some help from the community in building a list of games to be unrated would be helpful.

Also aaaa, mentioned that we might be introducing a bias if we unrate only the games where he purposely lost. A player could play against hanzack knowing that if he loses, then hanzack will resign and the game will be unrated, thus not effecting the players WHR, but if the player wins it will stay rated and help boost the players WHR. So, perhaps we should just unrate all of hanzack's games.

Would like to hear your thoughts on this.

Title: Re: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by RonWeasley on Dec 17^th, 2011, 7:30pm

The simplest solution I can think of is to unrate all his games. That effectively erases his existence from the ratings system. Easy on everybody. As fair as any other solution. Maybe go so far as to allow his future games to be only unrated, unless he arranges to get permission from you.

What I'm suggesting, now that I read it back, is just short of a ban, since he will be out of the ratings and unable to participate in Events. This is harsh, but not inappropriate if this is the only fair way to repair the damage he has done to the ratings system. I am aware people have asked him to stop doing this for over a year, so he should not be completely surprised.

Title: Re: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by Fritzlein on Dec 17^th, 2011, 9:02pm

A possible sanction that might not be too hard to code up is to set hanzack's unrated flag permanently on.

Title: Re: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by omar on Dec 17^th, 2011, 9:12pm

on 12/17/11 at 21:02:01, Fritzlein wrote:

A possible sanction that might not be too hard to code up is to set hanzack's unrated flag permanently on.

I considered this, but then he might continue with a new account. It kind of gets to be a cat and mouse game. I'd rather keep it cats and rabbits :-) So that's why I am nicely asking hanzack to cooperate in the future and set the unrated flag himself.

But what about the past games. froody's suggestion of a community rating system triggered the idea of allowing the community to vote on allowing a game to stay rated or not. Maybe that might work.

Title: Re: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by Arimabuff on Dec 22^nd, 2011, 1:48am

IMO, the fairest and simplest way to deal with it is to unrate all of Hanzack's past games. After all the only people who can claim honestly not to know about Hanzack's idiosyncrasies are newcomers and their current rating doesn't matter much as it'll change greatly in the future, the others on the other hand went to this perfectly knowing and most likely at least passively complicit of this situation and therefore if their rating changes as a result then those are the breaks. As for Hanzack, making him play unrated until he promises to behave doesn't seem too harsh of a punishment as he has been playing fast and loose with the rating system for as long as I can remember which is a long time indeed.

Title: Re: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by megajester on Dec 22^nd, 2011, 1:57am

Maybe in general there could be some sort of authority (say, Omar plus a few knowledgeable others) who are authorized to agree on a player's "true rating" when necessary for tournament seeding purposes. This might be easier than going back and re-evaluating hundreds of individual games.

On the other hand, I can see that each game affects the entire WHR system, so this would definitely be a "quick-and-dirty" solution.

Title: Re: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by rabbits on Dec 22^nd, 2011, 7:53am

You should leave his past event games as rated. It would be a shame to unrate his games from last year's WC.

Title: Re: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by omar on Dec 28^th, 2011, 2:48pm

on 12/22/11 at 07:53:28, rabbits wrote:

You should leave his past event games as rated. It would be a shame to unrate his games from last year's WC.

I should have been more clear on that. What I had in mind was the rated non-event games. The event games would definitely stay rated.

Title: Re: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by Eltripas on Dec 28^th, 2011, 8:41pm

on 12/28/11 at 14:48:29, omar wrote:

I should have been more clear on that. What I had in mind was the rated non-event games. The event games would definitely stay rated.

I don't know if you can re-rate(?) the unrated games but I think the easiest solution if this is possible is to unrate all his games and re-rate the event games.

Title: Re: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by Hippo on Dec 29^th, 2011, 1:56pm

Another solution for the games in the past would be to run a bot with goal checking ability on final positions of his games and if there is goal in 1 and more than 15s on clock to finish the game for him ;). That would probably set his rating to appropriate level and the fun for him with lowering rating would be lost ...

Title: Re: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by omar on Jan 7^th, 2012, 3:19pm

Thanks for the input everyone. I will be unrating all of hanzack's non-event games. I will regenerate all the archived games files so if anyone else has downloaded them locally, you will need to download them again.

Title: Re: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by aaaa on Jan 8^th, 2012, 6:00am

What about bgt_hanzack?

Title: Re: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by omar on Jan 9^th, 2012, 10:23am

on 01/08/12 at 06:00:55, aaaa wrote:

What about bgt_hanzack?

Are you kidding!! I had not noticed this account. I'll unrate these games as well.

hanzack, I know you are a good guy; please don't create unnecessary work for me. I know you don't care about your rating, so just play the games with unrated mode on.

Title: Re: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by omar on Jan 9^th, 2012, 10:35am

I unrated the games for the bgt_hanzack account and regenerated the games archive from 2010.02 to present.

Title: Re: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 9^th, 2012, 11:11pm

on 01/09/12 at 10:23:23, omar wrote:

hanzack, I know you are a good guy; please don't create unnecessary work for me. I know you don't care about your rating, so just play the games with unrated mode on.

Omar, hanzack hasn't posted in the forum for half a year. I think the odds are good he won't read your appeals here.

Title: Re: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by omar on Jan 11^th, 2012, 12:39am

on 01/09/12 at 23:11:53, Fritzlein wrote:

Omar, hanzack hasn't posted in the forum for half a year. I think the odds are good he won't read your appeals here.

I also sent a message to him by email.

Title: Re: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by aaaa on Jan 13^th, 2012, 2:30pm

Here's another one (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/comments.cgi?gid=207699).

Title: Re: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by mistre on Feb 3^rd, 2012, 7:58am

Well, making the games unrated has not deterred Hanzack from resigning games with goals in 1 and he has even started resigning with goals in 2.

I don't claim to know his motivation for doing so, but the only thing I can think of is to make his record look weaker so that he will be underestimated in the event matches. Now that he has beaten Chessandgo and is ranked #4 in WHR, I think the cat is out of the bag (if it wasn't before). So what motivation he still has is a mystery.

To me, it is a bit of a disgrace to see a top player (maybe even the best) Arimaa player in the world purposely resign games in winnable positions. Maybe I shouldn't care about all this, but it just strikes me as a mockery to the system.

Maybe there is a way we can take away his resign button....

Title: Re: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by Belteshazzar on Feb 3^rd, 2012, 10:16am

Taking away his resign button wouldn't stop him. He could time out, suicide all of his rabbits, intentionally give the opponent a goal, etc. Nonetheless, I think that it might be a good idea to do what you suggest and disable his resign button if possible. I keep thinking that he might out of habit resign an event game. As far as skill goes, he would be an ideal Challenge defender, but would Omar dare tab him?

Maybe the resign button could be disabled for all event games?

Title: Re: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by rbarreira on Feb 3^rd, 2012, 10:45am

Just be careful what you wish for, it's much better to have a hanzack who resigns games than to alienate him by doing overly harsh things such as removing his resign button, which IMO starts crossing the line to "picking on him" territory.

Don't get me wrong, hanzack's resignations used to annoy me a bit as well. But right now I think just let him do what he wants... If he wants to have a low rating, that doesn't hurt anyone that much.

Title: Re: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 3^rd, 2012, 12:27pm

Sandbagging is anti-social. Requiring someone to stop sandbagging is not picking on him. At least, that is my opinion.

Unfortunately, any enforcement can be easily circumvented by creating duplicate accounts, which in turn can only be halted by blocking IP addresses. Furthermore, as I have said in other threads, I am very eager to have more strong players, so I don't want to alienate anyone by harsh measures. I can see why Omar prefers to rely on persuasion rather than enforcement.

Of course, if hanzack refuses to be persuaded, we have a dilemma. Some people will say continuing to sandbag after repeated warnings to stop is not an offense which should trigger any enforcement. I disagree. Yes, hanzack's low rating isn't very harmful to anyone who knows his true playing strength, but not everyone knows. I can decide to play only unrated games against him (except in events) or decide not to play him at all (except in events), but people without full information can't make those decisions.

The main social purpose of ratings is not to seed tournaments; it is to help people find evenly-matched games, and to give people a rough indication of their progress. Sandbagging is disruptive and makes arimaa.com a worse experience for other people, particularly for newcomers who play hanzack expecting to get an evenly-matched game. Many people have felt bad to be crushed by someone whose rating is in the 1300's. Anyone who hurts their own rating by playing a rated game against hanzack doesn't get a true indication of his own progress. It's not funny, it does hurt other people, and it needs to stop.

What would you say, Ricardo, if you knew there was someone who started to take up Arimaa but quit after getting blown off the board by hanzack, not understanding that hanzack's rating is a lie? Is it more important not to alienate hanzack than not to alienate that newcomer?

My suggestion is to have the next warning to hanzack not to sandbag be accompanied by resetting his rating to whatever performance rating he achieves during the World Championship. Then, if he throws games on purpose to get rid of those points, deactivate his account. But since it is Omar who would have to do any enforcement anyway, it is Omar's opinion on the matter that counts.

Title: Re: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by Boo on Feb 3^rd, 2012, 1:14pm

Quote:

The main social purpose of ratings is not to seed tournaments; it is to help people find evenly-matched games, and to give people a rough indication of their progress. Sandbagging is disruptive and makes arimaa.com a worse experience for other people, particularly for newcomers who play hanzack expecting to get an evenly-matched game. Many people have felt bad to be crushed by someone whose rating is in the 1300's. Anyone who hurts their own rating by playing a rated game against hanzack doesn't get a true indication of his own progress. It's not funny, it does hurt other people, and it needs to stop.

I would suggest making all ratings viewable in the game room table. Currently it has only 2 columns (Player, Rating). It should have BotR (only games against bots), WHR (only games against humans), Bots+humans (currently viewable in gameroom), WHRE. [Something like that. I am not sure how many diferent ratings are calculated in arimaa.com, so I might have missed a few.]

The people feeling bad when crushed by 13xx (i mean hanzack) is gameroom's problem in failing to provide the detailed info in one place. As hanzack is rate-banned, all his ratings should be "----", except of WHRE and BotR (maybe). So that newcomer would see who is who in a glance.

Title: Re: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by omar on Feb 3^rd, 2012, 5:40pm

Yes, it's not good that he is playing new players and they get thrashed by a player who appears to be weak from his ratings. In a immature way it is kind of funny :-) Hanzack is a pretty young guy; maybe he gets a kick out of doing these kind of things. Maybe I can persuade him to coach new players rather than deceiving them.

Title: Re: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by Eltripas on Feb 3^rd, 2012, 9:06pm

I agree with Boo but if that is difficult thing to do maybe setting his rating to a invariable number like 2300 could help to solve the problem.

Title: Re: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 3^rd, 2012, 9:16pm

on 02/03/12 at 17:40:11, omar wrote:

Maybe I can persuade him to coach new players rather than deceiving them.

Thank you for doing, or at least trying to do something about it rather than ignoring the problem. I hope your persuasive powers carry the day! If not, Ivan's suggestion of a rating of 2300 (or whatever seems appropriate post World-Championship tournament) plus an RU of 0 seems like a mild remedy.

Title: Re: hanzack's sandbagged games
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 6^th, 2012, 10:16pm

From chatroom, about hanzack:

Quote:

2012-02-05 14:55:14 omar no, that was just a chat to ask him to help the new players rather than deceive them.
2012-02-05 14:55:40 omar he agreed to do that
2012-02-05 14:56:22 omar he seems to be a very nice guy
2012-02-05 14:56:52 omar at least if you talk to him nicely.

Thanks for reaching out to hanzack, Omar. I'm glad you had a friendly conversation, and glad that hanzack agreed to help new players instead of deceiving them. But I wonder if you two were on the same wavelength about what "deceive" means, given that hanzack, in his very next game, resigned on purpose in a won position:

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/games/jsShowGame.cgi?gid=214414&s=w

I don't understand what purpose such a resignation can have other than deception, or at least to prevent his rating from reflecting his true ability. Did hanzack offer an explanation for his behavior? In the chat room when people ask why he has resigned in a won position, he says, "My hand slipped." Perhaps his true feelings are too difficult to express in a language foreign to him. Perhaps over the course of multiple conversations it would be possible to understand his motives and/or persuade him to have a genuine rating instead of a fake one.