sounds like something wrong is with your opponent
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I donāt want to name names, for obvious reasons, but I remember the margin to be pretty elastic for certain players. Iām sure (and vaguely remember) they left many opponents fairly sandbagged, but I found it normal because a person who has that playing style will have a volatile rank. I still donāt believe they were supposed to restrict their games so as not to have an āunacceptableā rank.
Iām not good enough to judge, but Iāve won against stronger players and lost against āweakerā players, within 5 ranks difference or something. It happens.
Would you say players should only be allowed to play ranked games only when they pinky swear they are at top form and they will make no mistakes uncharacteristic for their rank?
Iām not saying to let OGS be an unregulated mess. Iām saying itās a bit of an overregulated mess.
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I donāt think I understand this. Someone who was 5k canāt permanently play like 8k? Maybe they are older and more tired?
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It kinda sounds that way haha. I ask again, where do you propose OGS draws the line?
Iām a DDK, I canāt even judge myself.
What is a rank I could never ever realistically beat?
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dan
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Okay, letās say 15 ranks is a good margin then?
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The OP says he is 5k but could be 2k if he didnāt resign early. That assumption is yet to be proven of course.
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I could be 10k if I learned my corners (no offense to OP).
If they resign early, maybe they donāt have the endgame that is actually fit to 2k? Or maybe they have some strengths, some weaknesses, and it depends on their opponent which will come on top?
I mean, Iām notoriously scared of invasions, I will lose against any weaker opponent who dares.
(OP, Iām just using as an example and not mean it personally for you, I hope you donāt mind)
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I think itās doable to judge if the person is sandbagging in order to play against weaker opponents. If I was regularly playing against 8k players and crushing them I would understand that there is a problem. Their experience is being negatively impacted.
But I very rarely play anyone worse than 4k so in my case, thatās not a problem.
It makes sense to write the algorithm such that it looks at if youāre resigning games where youāre ahead, or resigning in the early game, because those are clear signs of sandbagging, but itās not the full picture. Perhaps the algorithm could be improved to look at if the player is also regularly playing against weaker players.
As for the argument that my resigning habits throw off the ranking system, I donāt think that is the case. As far as the ranking system is concerned, I am legitimately a 5k. Whatever the expected chance is for a 5k to beat a 3k, is also the expected chance for me to beat a 3k. Otherwise 5k would not be my rank. Itās not relevant to the ranking system that some of those games against the 3k will be resigns from a winning position.
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The thing isā¦ there is no sandbagging detection algorithm AFAIK. If moderators have reached out to you, itās because youāve been reported (probably by an opponent who had a bad experience)
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there are sandbaggers who like to play vs even opponents while having ddk rank, for prank purposes
You are correct, my endgame is abysmal, probably because I tend to avoid it by resigning 
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Tbh, I think this is part of the problem, because this is not at all what Iām saying. For some reason it sounds like that, but I donāt think the misunderstanding is on my end.
Fair enough. I suppose playing against someone who is a couple of stones underranked and losing can be considered a bad experience if you have a somewhat unhealthy relationship with your internet points.
But at that point, we are basically saying it should not be allowed to be a couple of stones underranked, which I think is going way too far. I mean, Iāve swung 2 or 3 ranks before simply by having a good or a bad couple of weeks.
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I propose a new sentence for sandbaggers:
Play 10 games to scoring, where your opponent is a TPK!
Make it correspondence!!
Make itā¦ slow correspondence!!!
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A couple stones? A few stones? Several stones? They are all different
I think you and I agree that a couple stones off is no big deal.
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I guess I would take action if itās anything above the amount of stones that players generally swing, which is probably around 5 stones. I think someone around 3k strength can sometimes hit 1k or even 1d on a streak, and can also drop to 6k if theyāre having a bad week.
This is what I understand about the OP from this thread:
- Plays opening better than a 3k
- Plays endgame worse than a 4k
- Is 5k overall
- Is not a sandbagger
So, no problem then.
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Well ā¦
Last year or so I scratched at 4k for ~24 hours, then I fell back to 5k ā¦ then 6k ā¦ then 7k ā¦ then 8k, then rose back up to 7k, IIRC, and fell back again to 8k (where I still am currently), due to ā¦
- a somewhat complicated and sometimes painful Real Life,
- lack of ambition,
- getting old faster than I had expected and agreed to,
- etc., etc.
And, being totally bad at counting (some will say Iām lazy, and then I will agree, but numbers/maths/arithmetics really arenāt my thing), I have also resigned games where the system afterwards told me that I was leading 
I may also have forgotten to check the SE
And now āthe meā is confused. Again, as so often.
āAnyone who isnāt confused doesnāt really understand the situation.ā
ā Edward R. Murrow
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