RoRoRo in the waiting room

I'm looking at getting RoRoRo back in the waiting room again...

Back in the olden days RoRoRo used to happily sit in the waiting room. Such games were unrated, and people had to chose to accept those games, so nobody played a robot they didn't want to play. The *unrated* games in the waiting room still seem to behave that way. I presume that nobody will be offended if I get RoRoRo to offer every discipline he's capable off in these *unrated* games? (Yes, that's a lot of entries in the Einstein section, there are something like 8 variants.)

However, *rated* games are different. You queue up, and you get assigned partners. What should RoRoRo do there? In some ways, they're quite similar to the old "Ratings Tournaments" which disappeared (which may have been because of cheaters gaming them for ratings points by stuffing them, I'm not sure). For some disciplines, RoRoRo was welcome in those RT's, so I hope that he'd be welcome to sign up in the waiting room too for those. As the waiting room permits a ratings range, should RoRoRo make use of that ratings range? If so, how broad/narrow? The old RTs were bands which were about 200-wide, IIRC, so +/-100 would be closest equivalent. But what about max # games against the same opponent - what should I do with that? I presume most people signing up sign up for 5 games. I know I wouldn't want to suddenly have 5 RoRoRo Dvonn games even if I might want 5 colonelmoutard Dvonn games, so perhaps the human's "max # games" setting shouldn't be relied upon to limit things. But if I set RoRoRo's max too low, then what about the people who like playing any fast opponents, have no max#games limit and just want another RoRoRo game? (Well, they can get the games from other means, I don't think I should specifically cater for them.)

RoRoRo is programmed such that every discipline (what the site identifies as a "gtid" (= game type ID, presumably), so the 2 hexes are different, and the 3 gos are different, but the 9 einsteins are the same) is individually configurable - what he can and can't sign up to - so there's no need to worry that things that work for one crowd won't work for another crowd - they can all be configured independently. (Sorry if that sentence is too long to be understandable, it's too late for me to rewrite it now!)

It might be easiest to just start with some fairly conservative settings, and then get feedback on how to improve things. Whilst bug reports can be sent to me privately, I do prefer "policy" discussions public, as I never like to say "yes, but someone else has asked for the opposite" when complaints come in.

> every discipline (what the site identifies as a “gtid” (= game type ID, presumably), so the 2 hexes are different, and the 3 gos are different, but the 9 einsteins are the same) is individually configurable

This of course, is just a matter of history - if it needs to changed to be finer grained, it can be changed. However, I'd prefer to keep things simple and manageable.

Well, I finally got it working, and he's filled up all the unrated slots that he's configured to do, but that still leaves the question of rated games.

Opinions, please?

If the ratings games are automatic, could there be an "accept up to n games with bots" option?

Alas not, the site doesn't distinguish between humans and bots.

I don't know if I really want RoRoRo in rated games. I feel like he might dominate them, and wouldn't really be what RoRoRo, or the rating games are about. But I never use the rated game waiting room, so it doesn't really affect me.

I think the rating tournaments were replaced by the user tournaments. I don't know why but it is my feeling that Richard just wanted to keep it to 3 types of tournaments and the 2 defects of rating tournaments were solved simply by getting rid of them. I don't think that the defects were the reason.

I don't mind to have rororo in the waiting room, but it my be wise to put his entries to 1 game per player.

well, my meaning is, that a player who want to play with Rororo rated games (me) can send you a message and both meet to a fix time in the waiting room. For the distance what thes want. 50 Point ... 1 Point.

My opinions about bots playing rated games depend on which game we're talking about. For unrated games in the waiting room or by invitation, I agree that it should not be a problem for any game (everyone decides if he wants to play against the bot or not, and it doesn't affect ratings).

For games where bots are dominating, I think it's best to keep unrated games in the waiting room or by invitation the only option. Even rated games in the waiting room would be a bad idea for such games, in my opinion (it could potentially distort ratings). For other games, like, say, EWN, I have no problem with bots playing rated games. I personally don't see the need for rated games in the waiting room with RoRoRo, but if others would like that for such games, I don't see why not.

So to me, it becomes a matter of classifying games. Maybe in three classes:
1) Bots play unrated games by invitation or waiting room only
2) Bots play rated games, but stay away from the championship (what about MCs?)
3) Bots play in rated games and all types of tournaments

I'm sure there are lots of different opinion about which games belongs in which category, although some are quite obvious to me (Reversi = class 1, EWN = class 3). Some may prefer if bots always stay out of the championship for all games, for all I know.

PS: Why have RoRoRo in the (unrated) waiting room, when he always accepts invitations anyway? If I want to play unrated games with RoRoRo, all I have to do is invite him to a game...

On the final question - I think some people just browse the waiting room, and just pick off things that look fun. Sending RoRoRo an invitation is a little bit more work.

I think I quite like Jonny's idea of rated signups being instigated by a message. I can do that quite easily I'm sure.

Knyx's worries about dominating games are at least partly abated by (a) responsibly parametrising the bot so that it has a more sociable behaviour, and (b) restricting the rating range in his waiting room registration.

One way of telling RoRoRo to join the waiting room, as you want a rated game against him, is to just put that in your signup message?

i will do that

I notice that the naive child is all over the rated games in the waiting room now.

@Jonny - I'll see if I can get him to parse such requests tomorrow...

Whilst it looks good:
Found an invitation from Jonny to me!
einstein var 50-points match is invited
gtype 'einstein' has variants 50-points match 11-points match 5-points match Black hole 19-points match 7-points match 1-point match 3-points match
Checking einstein 50-points match - invited=1
Enter einstein/DEFAULT50 into waiting room (rated)
OK, now sign up for 2 waiting room einstein, DEFAULT50, true, range -1.
extracted magic codes from form
Added 2 einstein games to waiting room

there are some bugs, expecty chaos...

OK, 1 bug. There's no such variant as "1-point match", it's "1-point game". Fixed.

Of course, there's no guarantee that his 2 games will be paired with you, so this is still firing a shotgun with a blindfold on, but it's better than nothing. Enjoy.