lichess.org
Donate

Rating adjustments for ultra-short abandoned games

I started a rated correspondence game 3 days ago, which was promptly picked up by another conditionally rated (1500?) player. I was randomly assigned white, so made the first move. My opponent actually followed with their first move, so naturally I made my second, killing my chance to abort the game.

Unfortunately, as you can guess, the game was immediately abandoned after that, with no black second move. The game automatically ended today, and I was give 58(!) rating points for the "effort".

I know it's not a big deal, ratings here don't really matter, and they settle in on their own over time anyway, however...

Shouldn't there be a minimum required number of moves for a game to be taken into account for ratings at all? After all, in standard chess mate in less than two per side can't even be done. At a minimum, a rating adjustment shouldn't be applied until at least two moves per side have been played, and perhaps even three (unless people are really concerned about their ratings gains for fool's mate!)
Were that the case, even more people than already do so would simply abandon games against higher-rated players. Bad sportsmanship is already a massive problem in online chess, so I doubt any site could afford to promote it beyond its current proportions.
I agree with @pwwaring idea. But chess allows us to checkmate in 3 moves. If we abort all games abandoned before 3rd move, then the opponent will just abandon all games which aren't on his preferred opening. So a middle-term solution could be to count just half of what a full game would count.

In such case you'd win just 29 points instead of 58.

The person that abandoned should lose rating points as per usual. What's up for discussion is how many rating points (if any) the 'winner' gets .
I agree with #3 and #4, the player who abandons the game should lose points, though not sure how the game should affect the other player...

This topic has been archived and can no longer be replied to.