Games only count in order of creation - Prevent Stalling from inflating ratings
Apparently after all these years stalling is still considered an issue.
There is a simple and completely effective way to resolve the issue, with the only downside being that the ratings system wouldn't be as 'real time' with its ratings, but why should they be for a game that takes such a long time to play a single round?
You simply make it so if a player has previously created games, future finished games don't count towards their rating (yet). You make the games count in order of their creation date. So if you create 3 games, finish 2, then create 2 more, those 2 new ones won't count until you finish the one from the original batch. That way new wins won't help you until you finish out any losers that are on going. Like wise, losers won't hurt you until you finish out your winners, if they happen to be going slower due to someone else delaying the game.
You expand the effective length of games being relevant to ratings, if necessary and then ratings are applied over time as the older games are finished. This way integrity is maintained and no gaming the system is possible due to games only counting in order and requiring completion of prior games created (either by player or possibly applying this to the entire player base).
You can still delay losses to avoid taking the hit for a period, but it merely freezes your position in time as if you'd quit before taking that game, until the game is finished and then your rating is applied with that game and any others already finished, but created afterwards.
This would slow/delay a great many games counting towards ratings until the slower games got settled, but for such a slow game, there is no great ranking system that is time-accurate when over the course of a single game your skill can change significantly and games take so long as to make any true 'real time rating' anywhere near accurate. This way it would probably be like looking at a time-delayed more accurate rating of games and players.
Some games take fewer turns to win than others so only making games that finished in the order they were created in is a disadvantage.
The boot time for ladders has since been reduced to 1 day 12 hours and 1 day 12 hours banked.