Observations from our ladder

Hello all,

am new around here so apologies if the observations I make below are old-hat. Our ladder has been running for about 6 months now and the following issues have crept up:

- the person at the top of our ladder often gets penalised for not playing, even though they are not able to challenge anyone. If nobody challenges them they will consequently fall a few places. I would think that the leader should be immune to such penalisation.

- once someone has been penalised due to inactivity they seem to become immune to further penalisation until they play another match, in which case the clock starts ticking again. Thus, we have seen people who have not played a match in 4 months get penalised only one time (ie after 2 weeks of inactivity) but thereafter not suffering. If however you play lots of matches you are always at risk of penalisation in the event that you do not play for a couple of weeks. I would think that all players should be penalised for not playing, ie there should be no immunity (except fot the leader). In this way those people who simply remain inactive for months on end will be repeatedly penalised and fall towards the bottom, thus not clogging up the ladder. We have seen people who play a lot of matches (in general) suffer many penalisations and fall far below those who have not played in months!

- the procedure of forfeting a match has a major loophole. On our ladder there have been people who have made challenges and then fail to contact the person they have challenged (and not respond to attempts to contact them). The person thus challenged has no way of arranging a match with the challenger, suffers a forfeit of the match and drops down the table!! This has happened several times ... hard to believe that anyone would use such tactics to climb the table, but it happens.

Are these issues a matter for our own ladder administrator (I am not he) or have these difficulties cropped up in other people's ladders too? I'm keen that our ladder should be a success and that those people who play often and conscientiously are rewarded and encouraged to continue playing.

Best regards to all - Pete