Endless Battle Issues

Zarel

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I'm going to implement a chess-like threefold repetition rule (resulting in an automatic tie), unless someone stops me...

There is zero reason for a repeated game-state to exist. The ABR thing has been thoroughly debunked by Tele, but even if it hadn't, we can do it by math.

You have, idk, Slowbro vs Mew. However many turns later, you've done several doubleswitches and you're back at Slowbro vs Mew. There is no reason to repeat this process. Either you're going to doubleswitch infinitely, in which case it should be ruled a tie. Or you're going to stop at some point, say, the 528th repetition. But whatever you were going to do on the 528th repetition, you can just do now, because nothing has changed in the interim. There is no "slowly setting up a wincon" because mathematically, the gamestates are identical.

Like, think of it in terms of travel. If you want to go from A to B, there's no reason for you to go back to A at any point, because you could've just done the second part (the part after you go back to A) to get from A to B.
 

MattL

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I'm going to implement a chess-like threefold repetition rule (resulting in an automatic tie), unless someone stops me...

There is zero reason for a repeated game-state to exist. The ABR thing has been thoroughly debunked by Tele, but even if it hadn't, we can do it by math.

You have, idk, Slowbro vs Mew. However many turns later, you've done several doubleswitches and you're back at Slowbro vs Mew. There is no reason to repeat this process. Either you're going to doubleswitch infinitely, in which case it should be ruled a tie. Or you're going to stop at some point, say, the 528th repetition. But whatever you were going to do on the 528th repetition, you can just do now, because nothing has changed in the interim. There is no "slowly setting up a wincon" because mathematically, the gamestates are identical.

Like, think of it in terms of travel. If you want to go from A to B, there's no reason for you to go back to A at any point, because you could've just done the second part (the part after you go back to A) to get from A to B.
I don't think this is a very good idea. This happens all the time, even in offense versus offense. For example, Landorus-T switching into another Landorus-T. I think that X consecutive turns of double switches is a better metric of lack of battle progression than "repeat the field." Repeating the field only consists of having the same two Pokemon on the field, which is very common if a team only has one good switchin to something. Repeating the board in chess is very difficult though due to how many squares there are.
 
I'm going to implement a chess-like threefold repetition rule (resulting in an automatic tie), unless someone stops me...

There is zero reason for a repeated game-state to exist. The ABR thing has been thoroughly debunked by Tele, but even if it hadn't, we can do it by math.

You have, idk, Slowbro vs Mew. However many turns later, you've done several doubleswitches and you're back at Slowbro vs Mew. There is no reason to repeat this process. Either you're going to doubleswitch infinitely, in which case it should be ruled a tie. Or you're going to stop at some point, say, the 528th repetition. But whatever you were going to do on the 528th repetition, you can just do now, because nothing has changed in the interim. There is no "slowly setting up a wincon" because mathematically, the gamestates are identical.

Like, think of it in terms of travel. If you want to go from A to B, there's no reason for you to go back to A at any point, because you could've just done the second part (the part after you go back to A) to get from A to B.
If my game isn't a testament to the fact that we should not have this kind of rule then I don't know what is. There isn't necessarily an "objectively correct move" for every situation, like Slowbro vs Mew. The game is much more complex than that, and sometimes a win plan requires perfect positioning from both your end and the opponent's end. I double switched ~50 times in a row to see what kind of switching pattern he was following, and attacked on the proper turns. It wasn't "mindlessly doubling" because if I did the wrong move (that I needed to do to win eventually) on the wrong turn then the game was lost.

I also explained this here:
http://www.smogon.com/forums/thread...-2-loser-brackets.3583752/page-8#post-7021314

I ended up attacking on the right turns and won the game, so clearly the double switching wasn't just to delay an inevitably tied game.

Generally speaking, we shouldn't ignore the psychological component of playing this game competitively. As you're not playing a CPU, there is no "objective" move. Your plays often depend on what your opponent does, so analyzing switch patterns over the course of many terms is a very legitimate way to go about winning. I think that a simple offer draw button is the only viable fix here, otherwise people just have to accept the fact that some games are going to last long.

Also I'm not sure if you know this but tele is a known troll, just check his infraction points.
 

Josh

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I'm going to implement a chess-like threefold repetition rule (resulting in an automatic tie), unless someone stops me...

There is zero reason for a repeated game-state to exist. The ABR thing has been thoroughly debunked by Tele, but even if it hadn't, we can do it by math.

You have, idk, Slowbro vs Mew. However many turns later, you've done several doubleswitches and you're back at Slowbro vs Mew. There is no reason to repeat this process. Either you're going to doubleswitch infinitely, in which case it should be ruled a tie. Or you're going to stop at some point, say, the 528th repetition. But whatever you were going to do on the 528th repetition, you can just do now, because nothing has changed in the interim. There is no "slowly setting up a wincon" because mathematically, the gamestates are identical.

Like, think of it in terms of travel. If you want to go from A to B, there's no reason for you to go back to A at any point, because you could've just done the second part (the part after you go back to A) to get from A to B.
however, pokemon is a largely psychological game. if the same position repeats itself 528 times, you have conditioned your opponent to the point where you feel it is safe to change it up the 529th time. that's why once in a battle you may set up rocks with your Heatran on Lando-t but next time you'll switch it out. pokemon is not like chess where you know what position your opponent will have after you play, you move at the same time, thus you'll do different things in the same position over the course of a battle. Lando can pivot in on medicham for the intimate, but if you predict ice punch/zen metagross could hard. then next time you might go Lando, or you might predict ice punch again. it's like Garchomp vs stall: over a course of the battle they could switch in all of skarm, msab, quag, and tang. or they could bring chansey in on your double to Thundy. the point is, pokemon has different thought processes so the "same position" isn't actually the same position even if the hp and pp are the same.
 
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To contribute a potential solution:

Player 1 believes he has entered an endless battle with Player 2. Player 1 then clicks "declare endless battle" button. Once this button has been pressed, Player 1 can only switch for 50 (or some number X) turns. At the end of 50 turns, if Player 1 has not lost a Pokémon and not used a move, the match ends as a tie. Otherwise, Player 1 loses the game.

I can only think of two limitations of this fix at the moment: (1) ladder abuse and (2) not accurately identifying a truly endless battle. A potential remedy for (1) would be to force a coin flip instead of a tie. I don't have a remedy for (2) besides the fact that switching for 50 consecutive turns seems difficult to pull off and less preferential than just trying to win.
 

Zarel

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If my game isn't a testament to the fact that we should not have this kind of rule then I don't know what is. There isn't necessarily an "objectively correct move" for every situation, like Slowbro vs Mew. The game is much more complex than that, and sometimes a win plan requires perfect positioning from both your end and the opponent's end. I double switched ~50 times in a row to see what kind of switching pattern he was following, and attacked on the proper turns. It wasn't "mindlessly doubling" because if I did the wrong move (that I needed to do to win eventually) on the wrong turn then the game was lost.

I also explained this here:
http://www.smogon.com/forums/thread...-2-loser-brackets.3583752/page-8#post-7021314

I ended up attacking on the right turns and won the game, so clearly the double switching wasn't just to delay an inevitably tied game.

Generally speaking, we shouldn't ignore the psychological component of playing this game competitively. As you're not playing a CPU, there is no "objective" move. Your plays often depend on what your opponent does, so analyzing switch patterns over the course of many terms is a very legitimate way to go about winning. I think that a simple offer draw button is the only viable fix here, otherwise people just have to accept the fact that some games are going to last long.
I see, this makes sense. I recognize repetition is strategically viable in a prediction game in a way it isn't in a pure combinatorial game. I really wish someone linked to that earlier, because I spent so much of this thread asking for an explanation of why the game took that long and getting nothing but Tele's post (not counting the handwavy "it needed to take that long, just trust me" stuff).

(Like, I can trust "it needed to take that long, just trust me" if someone I know and trust says it, but I still need to know why to be able to think of good solutions to the problem.)

This sucks, though. We're back to offering draw, which is a button that doesn't even exist on cart ladders, and has abuse potential. :/

Also I'm not sure if you know this but tele is a known troll, just check his infraction points.
Man, people should tell me these things.

To contribute a potential solution:

Player 1 believes he has entered an endless battle with Player 2. Player 1 then clicks "declare endless battle" button. Once this button has been pressed, Player 1 can only switch for 50 (or some number X) turns. At the end of 50 turns, if Player 1 has not lost a Pokémon and not used a move, the match ends as a tie. Otherwise, Player 1 loses the game.

I can only think of two limitations of this fix at the moment: (1) ladder abuse and (2) not accurately identifying a truly endless battle. A potential remedy for (1) would be to force a coin flip instead of a tie. I don't have a remedy for (2) besides the fact that switching for 50 consecutive turns seems difficult to pull off and less preferential than just trying to win.
This doesn't solve the problem ABR mentioned, where doubleswitching more than 50 turns is useful for prediction reasons.
 
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Zarel

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I have an idea: We can hide the "Offer draw" option until three doubleswitches in a row.

The issue with the offer draw feature is that people abused it on suspect ladders, dodging games against their friends and leveraging it to avoid Stall vs Stall matchups. If we decide to go this route, I do not think Offer Draw should be an option until ~100 turns into the battle, although that is arbitrary
Hm, nevermind, that doesn't solve that problem.

100 turns is I think a sensible minimum.

I'm not sure this is a side effect of an "offer draw" button, though. Even without a button, people can still collude by letting games time out.
 
I just came across this thread and, after reading some of the posts, I came up with something. What about if after a certain number of turns in which none of the players have attacked, a timer simmilar to the one existing in 3DS battles shows up? It would just avoid these kind of endless battles and wouldn´t affect the rest of them. Just and idea I had.
 

Arcticblast

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static timers like that are not implemented on PS because they give the player with better internet an advantage, which is not an issue on cart (outside of disconnections, but if you know you're gonna dc you shouldn't be playing)
 
If you have bad internet connection you should play something more offensive than stall to avoid being a long time in battles and disconections. So these kind of battles should be between players with a decent intenet connection. But, yeah, you can also be right.
 

Bughouse

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I'm not satisfied by that answer against timers seeing as every other online game has timers. Like I've lost loads of chess games to lagging out.

We already have a timer that increments. No one is saying instant fixed timer on all matches.

But there's no reason it can't be: standard timer with increment through turn XX, followed by fixed timer of XX per turn and XX per match (no increment).
 
I normally don't contribute to this policy stuff but I figured since I worked on testing the original endless battle clause I might have some sort value here.

I was wondering if it's possible to implement some sort of "shot clock" similar to the ones used in NBA games. Every 5 or 6 turns or so you could require players to go for a move otherwise they the game results in a loss or draw. That way players are incentivized to go for moves more often instead of pulling double after double after double. Similarly to the offer draw idea you can probably activate this clause after a set number turns.
 

DragonWhale

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No. Players shouldn't be forced to make unoptimal plays with elements not included in the game. If your wincon is to PP stall your opponent by double switching, you should be able to go for it without the need to make the wrong play because of a "shot clock". That only exists in basketball to prevent winning teams from completely stalling out the remaining time hugging the ball.
 
The thing is, PP stalling is impossible if players don´t attack. By double switching forever, battles end being endless loops with no end because none of the players want to use any moves. I personally think something should be done to avoid that.
 

MZ

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I've currently been stuck in this for the last half hour or so in a tour game I'd rather like to win and my problem with an offer draw button is that it does give the other person the opportunity to say no. The solution ought to be something that forces a draw under certain conditions so that nobody can intentionally create this situation with the intent of winning due to more free time. What that is I don't know, perhaps something like the chess rule but any situation that happens 5 times bc at that point you can creatively mess up the situations but not forever, but either way an offer draw button isn't going to solve malicious use of the feature.
e: going on 5 hours now, just proof that giving people the ability to mutually agree to a draw does not solve the issue
 
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HoeenHero

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I've currently been stuck in this for the last half hour or so in a tour game I'd rather like to win and my problem with an offer draw button is that it does give the other person the opportunity to say no.
Also, a draw button wouldn't work for elimination tournaments (since drawing forces the battle to restart), and its not really wise on round robin, I can see it being abused. Though I guess the system can be abuse by one player agreeing to forfeit when battling another atm anyways.

I think something added to the endless battle clause would be good (as mentioned above).
 
Posting on behalf of xDesch. We both were involved with testing the original endless battle clause and found a way around it in the past:

Before I show my own solution to this problem, I'd like to start with what I think we should not do here.
* I do not think adding a button that will tie the match if both players agrees/presses it will be enough by itself, as this can already be achieved in regular play by both players leaving simultaneously, and one of the players can simply choose not to accept the draw and carry on with the match for as long as they or the opponent are able to.
* I also do not think that whatever solution we end up with should choose a winner based off some arbitrary factor, such as # of Pokémon left or total HP/PP or whatever. If you can't beat your opponent, you should not win, like in chess, whereas even if your time runs out, your opponent will not win if they have insufficient material to win with. The match should tie, as neither player has any real advantage in a scenario where they both constantly switch in order to not waste PP.

Now, if we examine the original Endless Battle Clause we can see that it was designed not to include these scenarios where either the endless battle is not forced, as in these cases either player can technically choose to waste PP to end the battle, although usually losing in the process. My approach to this would be to extend the Endless Battle Clause in order to cover these situations, but how do we do that? Personally, I think there need to be some sort of limit to how many double switches you can do before the system should do something about it, like the "shot clock" or the "chess-like repetition rule". Now, it has been argued against this kind of solution before, as it seemingly limits the psychological aspects of the game and i.e. doesn't allow you to analyse your opponent’s switching pattern. But what if we still could? What if we find a way to not only have the system detect these endless battles, but also force ties when needed while still giving both players room to analyse, and strategise in the battle?

I suggest that if both players doubleswitch 8 times in a row (this number can be adjusted), both currently active pokes will get +1 confinement and make it so whenever PP is used, it will reset all Pokemon's confinement to 0, unless a Pokémon has gained a Leppa Berry it did not originally start with. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the clause, when a Pokémon gets +2 confinement, they become half stale, if not already half stale, and stale, if already stale. If both/all active Pokémon are stale, the game will end, and if either of the team started with one of their Pokémon holding a Leppa Berry, that team will lose, if both or neither of the teams started with Leppa Berries, the game will tie. This is all how the original clause works, but now with two more factors that take care of these kinds of situations.

So how will this solve anything? Well, for starters, the system will pick up on this pattern, regardless if the players are aware of it or not, and it can even be modified to tell the players if and when they are about to enter an endless battle that will forcibly end if nothing changes. This means that the players can't "mindlessly" doubleswitch for eternity in order to try to out-tire their opponent. On top of this, it also gives both players a chance to continue the battle for a very long time (which could be both good and bad), in case they believe they still have a chance of winning. At first it may seem like they only have to use PP every 7th turn to avoid confinement, but +1 confinement won't do anything in itself, as it will reset to 0 if either one of the players decide to use PP, effectively giving that player an additional 15 turns before you'll start to stale, at the cost of 1 PP. In a battle where both players constantly switch, finding an opportunity to waste one single PP in order to continue analysing your opponent's switching pattern is pretty easy to do in 15 turns. You can easily get 50 turns for the small prize of 4 PP, and if you think you can't win, you can simply stop using PP at any given time, and let the system take care of the rest.

So would there be any downside with this? My extension to the clause allows both players to continue the battle if they so wish, by investing PP. And by using PP, the battle WILL progress. If for some reason the player who has used any PP no longer thinks he can win, he can simply choose not to do so, and the battle will end shortly, if less the opponent starts prolonging the game. The biggest issue I can see with this, would be that one of the players can still attempt to draw out the game for as long as they're able to, by only using PP once every 15th turn, and if they have a lot of expandable PP, this can take a very long time to end. For this reason alone, we can change the number of doubleswitches needed to get the +1 confinement down to 7, 6 or 5, but at that point, it'll get increasingly harder for players who believe they can win to analyse switch patterns and so on. Keep in mind that this is just a general idea, the specific parts of it can be tweaked if necessary. All in all, I think this should work, and it doesn't seem to clash with the pre-existent clause.
 

Zarel

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I feel like you're all going around in circles here.

The core problem here is that many players would not accept any proposal that would force ABR vs Tele to end early.

Lord Outrage, Megazard, akelly96, Piratilla

All of your proposals would force ABR vs Tele to end early (so they're not very different from any of my proposals). I feel like if you're going to put effort into a proposal that would force ABR-vs-Tele to end early, you need to explain why you disagree with the people who think it should not end early.
 
I don´t think that these kind of battles should finish being endless loops of double switches because the winner wouldn´t be the best player. It win the player with the most available time. So, this would also lead to more problems at scheduling games for tournaments because players may need more time for their battles in case this happens. This is the reason why I think there should be a limit in certain battles in which none of the players make any attack.
 
xDesch:

“The core problem here is that many players would not accept any proposal that would force ABR vs Tele to end early”

While I can agree with that, this suggestion doesn’t force ABR vs Tele to end early. During the entirety of the match, there were only 33 instances were both players doubleswitched more than 15 times in a row (if the doubleswitched more than 30 times in a row, that would count as 2 instances). This means that ABR would not have to use any more than 32 extra PP in order to not get caught up by the clause (as getting half stale won’t end the battle in itself). And if you think that he did not have enough chances to use PP, or too little PP to spend, I’d disagree. Finding Opportunities to invest PP at least once every 15 turns is not that hard when both players a constantly switching, and here’s a short list of all the PP ABR didn’t use during the match:

- Lopunny: 8 Fake Outs + more
- Slowbro: 17 PPs left on the moves he revealed + one unrevealed move
- Clefable: 1 Softboiled + 16 Stealth Rocks
- Zapdos: 1 Roost + 8 Discharge + 23 Defog + 5 Heat Waves
- Garchomp: 13 EQ + 2 unrevealed moves
- Skarmory: 18 Sword Dance + 15 Roost

Slowbro, Zapdos and Skarmory all had a lot of PP they could easily use without having to worry to run out, and with the help of Lopunny’s 8 nearly free Fake Outs, spending an extra 33 PP would not be a problem. And even if Tele were to switch in Zapdos every single time ABR attacked, ABR would still have much more than 66 PP at his disposal he could still use without running out of the PP he'd need for his wincon, and this is only if Zapdos is switched in specifically the turns ABR were to attack.

Something to keep in mind though, is that Tele would probably not have used PP as often as he did if this clause were in place, as he’d then prolong the game himself, so logically he’d use less PP. But if this were the case, then ABR would have even more opportunities to invest PP than he did in the replay and would have an even easier time attacking on the right switches. Sure, ABR could adapt and start attacking, but then Tele would not necessarily have to use as much PP.

So no, this proposal would not force the game to end earlier than it did, as in tie the game prematurely, if less both players would want it (which both didn’t). The only thing the clause would force would be some kind of progress, which was already made in the battle. So I don’t think I have to explain why I disagree to the people who wouldn’t like to see the battle end prematurely, as I don’t, and my proposal doesn’t force it to do so.
 

nyttyn

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At the very least there needs to be some sort of sanity check for a hard time limit.

There is no reason a match should last longer than an hour, much less five. Even if you have the world's most toaster of a computer on an incredibly poor connection that only lets you make a move every thirty seconds on average vs someone with a similar setup, it still should not take that long. Looking through the replay videos for tournament matches in the past, even in super fat super long super stall matchups didn't go past 54 minutes or so - and that was for videos which were best of three sets. Even if you set the time limit to a hour and thirty minutes to account for the slowest match ever known in mankind, that's still infinitely better than forcing people to sit through five hour long matches.

After a certain point there needs to be a line drawn in the sand where a match is forcibly ended in a draw/rematch so we don't result in this kind of shit where neither player backs down and it just turns into "who can throw away more of their life in a single match." If anyone's argument is that we should allow six hour matches because they can be 'hypothetically' won by either party, they need to remember that A) It is fucking absurd that it's even possible for someone to spend that long on a single match (much less that it's already happened twice), B) Most people do not have that kind of time to throw away on a single match and rightfully do not expect to have to spend that long, and C) That is a fucking absurd amount of time. Even a hour and a half is really, really pushing it, but something along those should be sufficient to handle even the absolute longest of matches played against two players on toaster PCs with more lag than a Falcon Punch.

This shouldn't be a replacement for another, more sophisticated approach to the problem, but should be put in place on top of it as a fail-safe for the matches that take way too long and manage to slip past any more refined tie detection system. As for why this over an Offer Draw system - if two players are already going on a hour and a half into a match, it's extremely likely at least one party is in it to win it at any cost, so having an offer draw button means jack shit if the other player is free to decline.
 

termi

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It's been two months since the last post in this thread and nothing has been implemented to mitigate the problem of endless battles yet. I don't think there is any conflict over whether something needs to be done about it to begin with - everybody hates endless battles and they are objectively not something that should exist in a competitive metagame - so the only thing that people disagree upon is what method of preventing endless battles is the best. I'd say implementing a stopgap fix for the problem like a draw button or whatever is the best course of action, and if we reach some sort of consensus on what method is truly the most effective and fair then we can implement that later, but let's at least take some sort of action rather than letting the issue sit for months without doing anything about it due to minor disagreements.

On a more general note, I think it would be to the benefit of all if a council of sorts - probably just the OU council, although an exclusive PR council is not unthinkable imo - decides after an x amount of time/posts in a thread what action should be taken if no consensus can be reached, either by shutting the thread down with an explanatory post as to why no action will be taken or a decision to create a suspect test or a show of hands or whatever they deem fit in order to settle the issue at hand. In any case, something needs to be implemented in order to give threads like this one, the Scald thread, or any other thread about a contested issue some sort of conclusion. Certainly, it's preferable to letting threads dwindle out.
 
I've been following ladder a little bit these past few days and I've noticed that endless stall games are still happening. This is a much bigger problem for ladder than in tournaments because there's no TDs to intervene. Although, even in tournaments there's issues with player negotiations/agreement, as proven by the recent GSC game between HANTSUKI and HJAD in World Cup (plus the issues it causes with rescheduling).

I don't think it's in the best interest of a competitive community to have situations like these occur. Honestly, I don't see why the chess-like fifty-turn rule that has been discussed here can't be implemented. Yes, that would have forced the ABR-Tele game to be a tie, but there's no reason why we have to respect the play in that game as a potential win condition in the first place. It's not even possible to perform in a game played on cartridge, and yet, here we are forcing countless games to be played until someone disconnects just to keep it in our game. If we're breaking in-game mechanics to play without the timer then we should at least come up with something that protects us from the scenarios that the timer was made to combat. The fifty-turn rule does just that and seems like an ideal solution.

OLT starts in a few weeks and it's obvious that stall is going to be used a lot. Endless games aren't always caused by both players using stall, so you can't even blame an individual for putting themselves in the position to begin with. Unless we want to deal with more and more of these cases, I strongly suggest implementing the chess rule or something similarly suitable.
 

Bughouse

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I think Ciele raises a really good point here:
there's no reason why we have to respect the play in that game as a potential win condition in the first place.
I'm a big chess player and I'm reminded of the fact that in chess the rules on how a stalemate (a somewhat analagous situation to what's going on here), is treated as an outcome have changed about a billion times before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalemate#History_of_the_stalemate_rule and in fact today, some want to change it yet again https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalemate#Proposed_rule_change

There's really no reason that we HAVE to have a way to preserve ABR-Tele as a win for ABR. If it's consensus good tournament policy or generally good battle policy to remove these pseudo-endless battles, then we should do it, and not be concerned with the fact that it changes outcomes... like that's the whole point of it in the first place.
 

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