Hi all,
Would like to hear your opinion about the need to play a match.
In chess, for comparison, you are not allowed to agree on a specific result without playing the game. Also, not appearing to a game and losing it that way is frowned upon (and fines are being issued for that in the higher leagues).
I think it should be the same in ML. A match needs to be played, a time needs to be arranged.
I see a number of scenarios (bear with me, will try to keep it brief 
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- A match time is agreed, match is played (normal case).
- A match time is agreed, player B does not show up. 4-0 for player A.
- A match time is not agreed: Both players did not care. Should lead to a deadline miss for both players with warning/removal.
- A match time is not agreed. Player A wanted to play, had entered their availability. Player B did not enter their availability and did not care / react / could not play due to (foreseeable) schedule problems. Should not lead to a deadline miss for player A, but for player B. If player B continues to not be available / does not react, they get their second deadline miss and are removed.
What is not possible in my opinion (and if it is, it should not be), is that one player simply “resigns” a match without even playing it, without even arranging a time, simply forfeiting it by entering 4-0 in the League tab.
I get it that the intention might be just to get all their “matches” on paper, to avoid a deadline miss, but I feel that is the wrong way to do so.
If your opponent is not available and if you can show that you have tried what you could to get the match arranged, you should, in my opinion, surely not get a deadline warning/removal. Just inform @Simon about it and things will get sorted out. But simply giving the match away without playing, just to increase your “played” matches, seems like the wrong approach:
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For one, such a non-match should not count towards a players deadline number because it is not a “played match”, to the contrary, it is a non-match.
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Players who do not have enough time to play all their matches (or who, at the other end of the spectrum, suffer from a not available opponent) and try to “solve” that problem by padding their match total with some unplayed 0-4 matches are, in my opinion, distorting the competition in their division: in such a “non-match roulette”, it becomes arbitrary who gets a 0-4 win without even playing and who has to play a real match against the person. This distortion ultimately leads to ranking that does not reflect the true strength of the players.
Again, such things are frowned upon in other sports, too, so I think it is not simply a matter of “well, if the person wants to give away the match, it is their business”: it is not only their business because basically all other players in the division are affected, too.
It would be really great to get a clarification from @Simon on that topic. Maybe an easy fix could be that players cannot enter a result in the League tab if a match time has not been arranged by both players.
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