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        Arimaa >> Site Discussion >> Autopostal Automatic Pairing Spam
        
(Message started by: mwest on Apr 19th, 2013, 6:32am)
Title: Autopostal Automatic Pairing Spam
Post by mwest on Apr 19th, 2013, 6:32am
Hi, I was about to report a bug in the "Automatic Pairing" e-mails after having received 4 e-mails in the last 4 hours for a match against the same opponent (Kevin Pettifer - turtle). The timing of the mails was 10:08, 11:08, 12:08 and 13:08 (local time is GMT+2) - with me being Silver I couldn't understand why cause there was nothing for me to do...

However, closer inspection of the game URLs revealed that each had a unique gameid:

  • http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/opengamewin.cgi?gameid=344226&side=b&plid=6313&auth=961902189714
  • http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/opengamewin.cgi?gameid=344234&side=b&plid=6313&auth=455059941362
  • http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/opengamewin.cgi?gameid=344236&side=b&plid=6313&auth=476039680406
  • http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/opengamewin.cgi?gameid=344239&side=b&plid=6313&auth=132951826324


So I guess what's actually happening is that turtle is repeatedly cancelling the match and then the system is matching us up again an hour later?

*Edit: Fixed a spelling error and made nicer URLs.
Title: Re: Autopostal Automatic Pairing Spam
Post by Nombril on Apr 19th, 2013, 10:38am
I just had a similar situation with 6 started games over the night with the same player.  I reached the same conclusion as you, and after narrowing the desired score range stopped getting new games.

With the smaller range, I don't get any games, probably there are fewer people looking for postal games with the mixer recently starting.

I don't know if this can be easily fixed or not.
Title: Re: Autopostal Automatic Pairing Spam
Post by mwest on Apr 19th, 2013, 2:39pm
I guess it could be as simple as blacklisting a player for auto-matching after a couple of rejected matches, with the blacklisting being cleared out after a few hours / days.

However, sitting at work after 21:30 on a Friday night to pull the first in a series of all-nighters on my boss's 3 line requirement, I'm also pretty confident that the above is much easier said than done :P!

So I'll just reduce my desired score range and number of games for now... thanks for the advice.
Title: Re: Autopostal Automatic Pairing Spam
Post by omar on Apr 27th, 2013, 8:44am
Interesting problem. I had not considered this situation. I just made some changes to the pairing program to prevent matches that had recently been paired. Let me know if it doesn't work.
Title: Re: Autopostal Automatic Pairing Spam
Post by Fritzlein on Apr 27th, 2013, 12:46pm

on 04/27/13 at 08:44:22, omar wrote:
Interesting problem. I had not considered this situation. I just made some changes to the pairing program to prevent matches that had recently been paired. Let me know if it doesn't work.

Omar, thanks for fixing this.   If I understand correctly, you have just formalized the ability to pick one's opponents in AutoPostal matches.  If I took this principle to the extreme, I could sign up for one AutoPostal game with a wide rating range and quit all my games until I got paired with the one opponent that I wanted to play.

I am not opposed to having the system work this way, but if that is how it works, AutoPostal games should definitely not be "event" games.  Using WHRE to seed tournaments when WHRE includes games against hand-picked opponents would then be no better than using WHRH ratings, and we might as well abolish the WHRE.
Title: Re: Autopostal Automatic Pairing Spam
Post by omar on May 18th, 2013, 7:59am
They show up under 'Event Games' in the gameroom because the 'event' field is set to "Auto Postal" instead of the usual "Casual Game". However there is another field called 'eventgame' which is still set to zero for these games. So these games should not be effecting the WHRE ratings. Maybe woh can double check and let us know.
Title: Re: Autopostal Automatic Pairing Spam
Post by woh on May 20th, 2013, 3:58am
The AutoPostal games are included in the WHRE rankings.
Title: Re: Autopostal Automatic Pairing Spam
Post by Fritzlein on May 20th, 2013, 10:23am

on 05/20/13 at 03:58:51, woh wrote:
The AutoPostal games are included in the WHRE rankings.

I thought so, given that Alfons had the #2 seed in the 2013 World Championship, and his claim to fame was primarily AutoPostal games.


on 05/18/13 at 07:59:23, omar wrote:
They show up under 'Event Games' in the gameroom because the 'event' field is set to "Auto Postal" instead of the usual "Casual Game". However there is another field called 'eventgame' which is still set to zero for these games. So these games should not be effecting the WHRE ratings. Maybe woh can double check and let us know.

Well, that sounds like an official ruling that AutoPostal does not belong in WHRE.  Woh, is it easy to recalculate the WHRE excluding the AutoPostal?
Title: Re: Autopostal Automatic Pairing Spam
Post by woh on May 20th, 2013, 3:40pm
I've updated the rankings (http://home.scarlet.be/~woh/whr/whre.htm) excluding the AutoPostal games.
This has shortened the list quite a bit. Only about 1 in 4 players remain on the list.
Title: Re: Autopostal Automatic Pairing Spam
Post by Fritzlein on May 20th, 2013, 4:20pm
Thanks, woh.  I think that makes WHRE closer to its intended meaning, albeit still far from perfect.
Title: Re: Autopostal Automatic Pairing Spam
Post by harvestsnow on May 22nd, 2013, 3:56pm
The selectPostal.cgi (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/selectPostal.cgi) page should be updated too. As it stands, it says
"These games count as event games and effect your WHR and WHRE ratings in addition to your gameroom ratings."


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