If a game takes 10 min then that is 60 min of wasted time. Can’t play simultaneous because stronger bots refuse to play and all bots have very tight limits how many games they accept.
Or you could start 6 simultaneous games vs humans and get the same rank in only 10-15 min. Or if some opponent is stronger than you and you lose then the ranking algorithm gets better data.
I’m not advocating sandbagging but it is the fastest way to establish a rank. This isn’t good obviously.
Once again, as I said, it is a personal choice. I choose not to sandbag.
Using this thread/quote as one of many about forcing new accounts to pretend to be 11ks and lose a lot being a terrible welcome. Here’s the latest reddit post from an upset beginner complaining about being crushed on OGS.
https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/tray52/looking_for_review_on_this_frustrating_game_where/
@anoek Please stop making beginners get turned off go by forcing them to be crushed by much stronger players before they can play other beginners!
If you let new players choose their starting rank, they will usually overrank themselves for reasons of pride, or to get more games with stronger players.
So you’ll have the problem of the dan players now being the ones getting bothered, by airbagging 5ks who think they can translate their Fox rank.
On the other end of the scale, allowing players to pick a DDK rank makes sandbagging easier.
I’m not criticising the idea, only pointing out issues.
By the way, for all the talk of there being a difficult experience for ? players, they don’t cooperate to make it easier.
Every time I face an unranked opponent, I ask them “Excuse me, how strong are you?” before playing. Only about once in ten games do I get any kind of response. If I don’t get one, I cancel the game.
And what can you get a rating playing with bots? If so, that’s cool
I always surprise myself with this attitude of believing that ourselves are smarter than anyone else and we have the short answer that no one had before.
Why did we get rid of humble rank again?
The story I heard is that the Spring 2021 rank update broke it, and nobody could be bothered to fix it, after which there was an apparent effort to forget that it ever existed.
There are not real issues, as their ranks will auto correct automatically after some time.
If we want to prevent abuse, just limite the rank manual ajustment to something like once an year or like 3 times max. Anything like that will be just fine.
Yes, all issues that have been raised and I have responded to before; quoting the rest of my post from above:
So to respond in turn (using 11k for sake of argument of the initial rank of new accounts, I’m not sure what it is in the current phase of the moon and brokenness of humble rank):
Will they really? Through malice or poorly designed registration process? I am advocating for a well designed registration process to help guide ignorant beginners (who don’t know what kyu means) and also allow experienced players to choose their rank. The current system forcibly overranks all players below 11k, giving them no opportunity to say “Hey OGS, I’m a beginner”. I imagine the majority of new accounts on OGS are of players weaker than 11k. I think it quite likely the currently system has a far greater sum of distance of true rank from initial rank error than the system I propose.
The improved registration process would include a “Have a rank somewhere else?” feature so that you can say you are Fox 3d and it puts you in as OGS 2k or whatnot. Also to register as a dan you need to solve a few tsumego, so that will keep errant registrations by both malice and incompetence down (I don’t claim 0).
Loads of 30ks are currently being forcibly airbagged as 11k. 30k to 11k is a big gap.
If the sandbagger’s true rank is stronger than 11k, which I guess quite a lot are, then they are already sandbagging in the current system. Maybe I am naive, but my guess is that the number of non-maicious beginners who are registering on OGS and would say they are beginner if asked in a well designed registration process is far greater than the malicious sandbaggers in the 30k to 11k range who can’t currently instantly sandbag by making a new account. To help grow the Go community, I think a good welcome for beginners so they keep playing Go instead of getting pissed off at getting crushed is far more important than making life harder for a few sandbaggers.
11k? Has it been changed while I was on vacation? The pseudo-rank for ? players was 6k, and still is unless it has been changed recently.
All this stuff about the starting rank has been discussed in multiple threads.
Edit: The pseudo-rank is still 6k. I just saw it in a first game by a new account.
New accounts are 11.9k for a long time, as far as I know
(I have serious doubts about the grammar of this sentence but I can’t think of a better way to write it)
No, it was changed the last time the ranking system was updated.
As far as I understand, all it takes to get a rank is to play 3-5 games on a 9x9 board. This can be done in less than an hour. I don’t understand what’s the problem?
Because:
The rating system should serve the players, not the players serve the rating system
3-5 games and 1 hour is infinitely more than 0 games and 0 hours
People might not play 9x9 but 19x19 and then it’s a lot more than an hour
People might play correspondence not live and then it’s not hours it’s weeks or months
Beginners can be frustrated and demotivated from being crushed by far stronger players. They might give up on go before they even reach the 5 games. Why do we force all new players to go through this painful and unnecessary hazing ritual? It’s also no fun for the real 11ks getting bored of crushing them.
Exhibit A. https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/tray52/looking_for_review_on_this_frustrating_game_where/ “Does it feel this awful for everyone in the beginning? Every single loss feels absolutely bleak and unsatisfying somehow”
I don’t know or really care if its 11k, 6k, 12k, 6k humblified to 18k or whatever. The point is there’s no choice and it’s far stronger than 30k.
There has been so much confusion about the current number, that I don’t like seeing the confusion multiplied. Last night I edited my previous response because I verified that the current number is definitely 6k.
This has all been discussed before. In another thread, @dragon-devourer showed that the mid-point starting rank (or whatever one wants to call it) is not necessary for the proper functioning of Glicko 2. Consequently, I agree that the 6k pseudo-rank should be abandoned in favor of some other system.
Well, okay. I think anyone can determine the approximate level of his strength in Go these days. A novice player can start 5 games by correspondence, relying on his approximate level and picking up approximately equal opponents, make a few moves, then give up. Perhaps the rating will be underestimated in this case, but this is some kind of start. 
Everyone talk about 5 games to get a rank. What rank? It’s still a wrong rank for a beginner, there was a post on that, it takes like 15 games to get the right rank for a beginner. See that post. I completly join @Uberdude in his posts, there is a deep problem with ogs welcome of beginners since years and proved by feedback from them.
a lot was written on this, nothing moved yet.
and personally i don’t play bots and won’t require anyone to do it.
Do you have an alternate ranking system in mind?
For players that wouldn’t be 25kyu or below, I agree it could take more like 9 or 10 games to get a rank, at least from experiments I’ve done on the beta site.
I don’t believe it’s as bad as 15 games though, unless the player gets some wins from a 6kyu that has resigned because they don’t want to play a beginner. It looks like it took this player 6 games to be ranked at 27kyu asbngbgbdk (25kyu+), this player about 7 games to hit 27kyu (25kyu+) 聂助理小弟.
I’m not sure this is really factual however, unless this is a common complaint you’ve been hearing from beginners?
Even if one player feels like losing a few games is bleak and unsatisfying, I’m not sure that means one should upend the ratings system. Is there a similar thing in chess? Does one suggest that chess ratings are broken because one has to start at 1500 lichess rating, and every scholars mate is deeply unsatisfying somehow.
Now to be fair, chess dot com seems to have the ability to select from multiple starting ratings based on experience
Choose your skill level! How experienced are you at chess? This determines what your rating will start as. These are the options:
- New to chess: 400
- Beginner: 800
- Intermediate: 1200
- Advanced: 1600
- Expert: 2000
However chess dot com also use Glicko, as opposed to OGS and lichess both using Glicko2.
I suppose if someone could confidently show that there would be no adverse affects on the ratings system, like some largescale drift or general loss/gain (inflation/deflation) because of an influx of new accounts at many different starting ratings - then I’m sure it would be much easier to transition over to a new system.