In case anyone was wondering what happened to our friend "akire1", he apparently chose to retire after his successful game on March 23rd (against two AI's and a first time player who quit in turn 3).  "akire1" posted an impressive record of 51 wins in the 52 games that he played, achieving an overall tournament rank of 9th place and earning one weekly Silver badge in the process.

The day after "akire1's" last game, on March 24th, a new player arrived on the scene with precisely the same method of racking up victories as "akire1".  "uschi" is presently 1st for the current weekly top ten race and is overall 19 of 19.  Of those 19 wins, 10 were achieved with zero humans still playing at the end of the game. 

Oh, and if the method of play doesn't convince you, "uschi" even assumes the same chatty nature previously displayed by "akire1", which is to say he starts the game with a "hi", followed by a "gl".  Nothing else is heard the rest of the game.

Just another public service... if you didn't like getting kicked out of "akire1's" games, don't join a game hosted by "uschi".

I'm in  - thanks

Joined a game today hosted by "akire1".  Had one other human player and one AI.  I had a relatively high ping (400), and noticed considerable lag during land grant and auctions.  After 3 turns, the game disconnected.  The same three players rejoined to start another game... again, I was experiencing a fairly high ping.  I offered to host the game, but "akire1" said no.  I should have suspected something at this point.

The game proceeded through round 8 - with a few predictable lag problems associated with the latency problems.  I was in the lead, the other human was 2nd, the AI was 3rd, and "akire1" was 4th.  At this point, "akire1" kicked the two human players from the game (verified from the game log).

I noticed that "akire1" finished the game in 1st place and has established a very impressive 13 of 14 win ratio of 94%! And, as of this writing, "akire1" is ranked 3rd in this week's Top Ten (with an overall ranking of 44).  Curious as to whether my experience was a rare occurrence or not, I checked the results of the other games played by "akire1".  He's hosted the last 12 games in a row and, of course, won them.  In all but one instance, "akire1" finished against AI's only... the human player(s) were kicked mid-game after "akire1" had fallen behind.  In short, "akire1" has posted 13 victories, but only one time did he win a game with another human remaining after the last auction.

As for me, I have two "Abandoned" games for today's effort. 

I've read lots of discussions about highlighting bad hosts and realize that's easier said than done.  There are occasions where a host has every right to kick another player, and there certainly are accidentally dropped games that have added an undeserved "abandoned game" to our records.  The rankings aren't perfect and other players have posted good ideas on how to address some of the issues.  However, when we have a player intentionally and obviously cheating to pad his or her record, there should be some way to let the rest of the MULE world know about it.

I obviously won't play with "akire1" again - and hopefully no one that reads this post will either...  but what about everyone else?

Mean Jim