Hopefully the Zone will one day introduce saving of matches played in
rated backgammon rooms. In the meantime, players must cope with incompletes
and the associated ratings penalty.
There are some things things players can do to minimise incompletes or
their consequences.
Experienced players will be aware of these, so this is written to assist
newcomers.
I have considerable experience playing on the Zone. Playing from a geographically
remote country means my internet connection goes through more servers
than if I lived in the USA. Before the Zone improved its incomplete penalty
system and I had learned what I know now I took a hammering from incomplete
penalties. So I know how frustrating it is to lose hard-earned points
in this manner.
These are the actions I took to keep my incompletes under control, and
which I recommend anyone at risk of losing points to the incomplete penalty
consider:
Optimise your Browser Settings for the Zone.
To do this select Help
and then Browser Settings (To see the latter scroll down the LH column
on the help page) and follow the instructions
Regularly delete your temporary internet files.
To do this with IE5, select Tools, Internet Options, Delete Files,
Delete all off-line content.
Play matches in the Doubling Cube and then 'post' the result
in a rated room.
To achieve this, both players agree to play in DC (Doubling Cube room)
then post. They go and play their match in DC (where matches are saved
in the event of a disconnect). When complete, both commence a match
of the same length in a rated room and the loser forfeits when the
match has commenced by clicking the X in the top right corner of the
board window. Do NOT click instead the X in the top right of the room
(lobby) window as this will result in an incomplete rather than a
forfeit.
Whether you play and post like this depends on the length of the match
and how close you are to getting your 5th incomplete. Were I two incompletes
away from incurring the ratings penalty I would endeavour to play
all my matches this way.
Some have asked me about the risk of losers refusing to subsequently
post. The vast majority of players are , in my experience, honourable.
The risk of post-refusal happening with a player you have previously
played and found to be pleasant is negligible. But I would not risk
it with a player with a poor reputation or with whom you have previously
had difficulty.
One warning about playing and posting. Always post straight after
each match. Never be tempted to play a series then bulk-post the results,
because doing so leaves the same signature on the Zone records as
cheaters leave.
Be aware of boot conditions and adjust your playing to suit.
Boots are not randomly distributed but tend to cluster. If I get two
within say 2 hours or see others being booted I am more wary of playing
in a rated room. Also keep an eye on your connection status light.
Green = good .
Yellow = bad
Red = fasten your seatbelt and pray you are not booted.
Frequent yellows or worse means playing in a rated room is more than
usually likely to result in an incomplete.
Play one point matches.
One incomplete disappears from your record for every 50 matches (not
games) that you play. So playing one point matches works off incompletes
much faster than playing matches of longer length. Note you cannot
work off future incompletes once your incompletes are at zero so there
is nothing to be gained incomplete-wise by playing one point matches
once you are on zero incompletes.
Keep a record of how many incompletes you are away from incurring
the ratings penalty and adjust your play to suit.
On the old Zone this was unnecessary as this information was displayed
on the rating page. Unfortunately this disappeared in the revamp.
Note that the penalty does not necessarily apply on the 5th inc (incomplete)
and multiples thereof. It occurs whenever you reach 5 incs incurred
since you were last penalised or last worked one off (by playing 50
matches).
Any comments or disagreements? Post them to my forum.
