Re: [pbmserv-dev] bughouse time control problem

[John Williams <williams@morinda.com>]

On Sat, 26 Oct 2002, Benjamin Good wrote:

> below is a message i just sent out as a 'chat' for bughouse 100.  for those
> of you who didn't actually play in the game, i don't know if i explained
> this clearly enough or not, if you have any questions you can send a message
> to asdf.  and of course in the second paragraph i'm speculating on how the
> server processes forfeits, i could be wrong on that.
>
> thanks,
> ben
> asdf
>
> ---
> this game shows a serious problem in the system that i had not thought of
> until just recently - namely how the 30 day cap may not work properly.  the
> way the server works now, if you're in a game with a total cap, and you go
> over it, you don't actually lose until you make a move - the server does not
> check your time when you're not moving.  in a 2-player game this works ok,
> if my opponent goes over his limit, he will forfeit on time either when he
> moves again or when he goes 21 days w/o moving.

That's the way the server used to work.  In fact it did not support a
total time limit at all.  Only a maximum time per move was enforced.

Since adding the total time limit was a core change anyway, I made it work
for all games, and added options to set the time limits, for the
convenience of tournament directors.  To review, the options are as
follows (all times are in days):

  --totaltime=0      maximum amount of time a player may use per game
  --forfeittime=21   maximum amount of time per move
  --nagtime=7        how soon to start nagging

The nagger currently only forfeits players on Friday, as Richard has it
set up, so players might get extra grace days after the forfeittime
expires.  But forfeittime resets every time they make a move.

The totaltime, on the other hand, never goes back, so those extra grace
days don't make a difference for total time.  For that reason, I
programmed the nagger to ignore the "only on Fridays" rule when the total
time expires, and kill the player as soon as possible.

I'm not sure if I have it killing the players in the right order if they
are less than a day apart, but I guess I can check that out while I'm
working on the resign bug someone found in Bughouse...

~ John Williams