When I started on KGS a long time ago, I started at 25k (or maybe was it 30k at that time?) and I could progress normally, although not being especially smart.
There were probably more beginners at that time and a lot less sandbagers also.
I believe the 25k+ range works well for adults or teenagers. They can fight their way up.
But for introducing the game and competition to a young kid it doesn’t work.
That’s why I can imagine a 50k-30k range. Having kids myself, maybe a kid account that cannot go higher than 30k (to limit sandbaggers and trolls) could work.
All in all, I agree that allowing lower ranks is good. But it would be better with special, limited accounts. (we can imagine chat disabled…Etc.)
How to “varify” someone is a kid or not? I feel requiring adults to varify by paying would be an even worse idea. And some kids are actually very talented and very strong.
Well technically, first line of terms of service (like most ToS’s) starts with a “In consideration of your use of the Service, you represent that you are of legal age to form a binding contract.”
I guess that if ogs were to officially have “children accounts”, many things regarding messaging and chatting, group activities, shared content on profiles etc. would need to be changed, including the ToS itself. I can imagine how huge pain in the butt it would be to make all of the necessary changes >___>
Also it is not right to assume that kids can’t be strong. For example, i remember one active ogs chatter who reached 8d on tygem and 6d ogs under the old elo-based system (which was notorious of being harsh system) at the age of 14. And there are even younger players who are dans, like the last european U12 championship in early 2020 had 7 children with dan ranks and many more in high kyus.
There’s no verification needed. It’s not an adult site… I said kids account because it’s the first category that comes to mind. It could be very beginner who don’t have time to study or have other difficulties.
If there’s a limited account, for kids or whoever, then people can play at 50k to 30k level, no chat enabled. That’s it.
If they get strong they create a 25k regular account.
How are people expected to get strong if they are relegated to their own restrictive, limited “pool”? This seems to me more of an attempt to keep the “real player” pool clean of those weaklings, than a protective measure for the weak.
Also, let’s not mix the fact that children are not adults with the assumption that children can’t be clearly, (embarrassingly), competitively better than adults at certain skills. And if they are not, they are deserving of our care exactly the same, we don’t have to only cater to the geniuses.
Imagine gatekeeping the “good” ranks from the next Sumire Nakamura.
If you go from 50k to 30k I guess you can say you got stronger? Thus you can play in the wild.
It’s not an attempt to purify the pool of players on OGS. On the contrary, it’s to prevent beginners from getting polluted by the strange people we can encounter here.
Again, that argument of kids being professionals doesn’t make sense. I’m talking about kids because this is what comes to minds when we talk about ultimate beginners below 30k. Yes there are strong kids and weak adults. I think we all agree with the obvious.
I do have 2 kids and I will never let them play go online. Not much because of people’s behaviour but mostly because I’d like them to enjoy the game and playing against a bunch of SDK who found it funny to register as 25k would definitely destroy the interest they have in GO.
I do believe there’s an equivalent chess website for kids. I thought having one for GO could be great for our kids… Apparently not. Maybe they’ll prefer chess.
I want automatch to work reasonably well even for currently-weaker “25k” players that the rating system considers 30k. Let them play each other, and let one experience a win, while the loser gets to play a closer-to-50/50 game with a 31k or a higher ranked player with a handicap.
The terrific new rating system, with its better appraisal of strength, is designed to help automatch work better—i.e., for setting up games where both players have approximately equal prospects of winning. Why hurt that advantage by treating everyone in the big range with 25k at the top as if they had equal strength?
If you fear that a current 29k is embarrassed about not being 25k, I think that that is a minor issue. The 29k wants to win a game sometimes, maybe even half the time. Let him experience that. Whether his official ranking is 29k or 25k is minor consider in comparison.
And please, there is no reason to make a difference for kids. Why do so many of us want restriction after restriction on players based on crude demographic categories? Instead, please make the goal for OGS to be simple: After a new member plays his first several games, he can get a 50/50 game with automatch. Even if his current strength is bellow 25k.
Since we’re already computing ratings sometimes well below 25k, let that determine their public rank for now so they can get an interesting, competitive game today instead of forcing them to wait for months. They won’t feel a stigma of 29k or 34k if they are at the same time sometimes winning. The stigma of almost always losing is surely worse than a likely-temporary kyu label.
Well, I hope your kids don’t get sandbagged each game and pickup chess instead
I used to have an OGS account for my older daughter (was 6yo at the time. When she asked me why she lost a game and I couldn’t answer because her 25k opponent was actually a dan venting off, she told me that chess is better.
I don’t have children yet, so I’m hesitant to jump into this discussion, but is it better to make your children believe that they could win every game, or better to teach them that there are some players who just are stronger? I think the best thing you could teach a kid is that it’s okay to lose and that it’s a natural part of playing games, yet keep them wanting to improve: make them awe their opponent who managed to beat them so effortlessly, and aspire to become strong like that.
Instead, keeping children locked under 30k does the exact opposite. It would tell them that they are inherently unable to be strong, and cannot and should not be compared with the actual big fish.
And I’ll tell you beforehand: sandbaggers will find their way into the kids pool as well. I doubt it would solve any problems.
I was under the impression that the matchmaking was done using the glicko rating and not the kyu rank. So assuming there are other 30k looking for a game, a beginner would be matched against another 30k if that was his or her rank. He would just get the same handicap as a 25k against stronger players. Am I wrong on that?
