It seems a lot more useful if it includes
But I won’t stand in the way of incremental progress!
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That sounds fine to me - at least get something in there that says they won and it will be a much more satisfying resolution.
By the way, we already have games (example) that are listed as “ranked” but do not affect ratings. So it shouldn’t be a big deal to have more games in that category.
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Wah - how did that get listed as “ranked”?
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Tournament
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Yeah, tournament games are all listed as ranked, altought only 9x9, 13x13, and 19x19 games actually do affect the ratings.
Oh what it comes to tournament standings, moderators can fix those, assuming that the tournament is point-based (swiss, mcmahon, round robin), and if the tournament is still ongoing, and if we notice that the game is part of a tournament… That being said, unfortunately we’re often either too late, or we simply miss that the game was a tournament game :<
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The display of “ranked” should be replaced by “unranked” for tournaments games not following rules for being ranked.
I am curious about komi changes too btw.
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All tournament games are tagged as “ranked” in the system. I don’t think the frontend should be ignoring the tag just because they’re non-standard board sizes (frontend shouldn’t second-guess the backend).
Note that “ranked” doesn’t necessarily mean “affects ratings”. It means that (a) participants are expected to follow the rules of ranked games and (b) the rating system is allowed to look at it.
I see two reasonable options:
- Backend could stay as-is. Then, in the future, if the rating system gets smart enough to do something with non-standard board sizes, we could back-populate using this treasure-trove of ranked game data.
- Backend could change to start tagging them as “unranked”, even though all participants are expected to follow the same rules as ranked games.
I’m inclined to stick with the status quo (option #1), even though it’s a bit unintuitive that ratings aren’t affected. I think it’s important that participants know they’re expected to follow the rules of ranked games, and it’s nice to think the ratings system would have the option of using the data in the future.
Regarding komi, tournaments with non-standard board sizes are presumably not turning on handicap (since the system doesn’t know what to do with “automatic handicap” for non-standard board sizes). So, they’ll be even games, resulting in komi of 7±0.5, just like standard board sizes. (If they’re using automatic handicap, then maybe there’d be some 1 stone games with komi of 0/0.5? Those are the only two options, anyway.)
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Even if unstandard tournament games dont affct the ratings, they do still count towards the tournament standings, so i feel like it makes sense to have the “ranked” text there ^___^
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I don’t really agree with this - specifically from the standpoint of “what a user expects”.
Ranked to me means “specifically does affect my rating”.
I can’t actually see what the point of calling them “ranked” is other than this?
Maybe if I could understand that better it’d help.
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Same for me. IMHO for 99% of OGS users.
And to say that my car is electric because maybe one day i can change my thermic engine to an electric one is a complete fallacy.
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I don’t have a problem with the proposed definition (although I, too, associate ranked with “affects ratings”) but it does seem odd that certain settings disallow the “Ranked” setting if that’s the case.
Like shouldn’t a player be allowed to set up a 7x7 game where “participants are expected to follow the rules of ranked games”? Why does it just work this way for tournaments?
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I think there might be other cases, like extreme rank differences, that don’t result in an effect. And presumably outcomes like “both players lose” if they were properly handled? Or it could just be that mathematically it works out to zero sometimes.
My interpretation is that “ranked” means it’s a serious game that will be part of your official record. How the ranking system actually uses it is mysterious and subject to change. “The user” is not told anything about what to expect.
I have a rechargeable battery, but I can’t find an appropriate charger for it. Does that make it not rechargeable?
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“Ranked” means “can affect rank”. Currently a 7x7 tournament game can never affect rank.
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(emphasis mine)
On the contrary, currently a 7x7 tournament game does not affect rank. It can, even retroactively, if we change the rating system.
I think it’s also reasonable for it to mean “can affect my rating,” as in “ranked means the rating system sees it.” (Note that there are other ranked games (e.g., extreme handicaps) that the rating system sees but currently decides to ignore.)
Maybe you disagree with the importance, but I did share two points above:
I think it’s important that participants know they’re expected to follow the rules of ranked games, and it’s nice to think the ratings system would have the option of using the data in the future.
Regarding the first point, maybe some here disagree that “ranked” implies certain etiquette in how you play?
Regarding the second, more concretely, I have some interest in improving the rating system (eventually) to have some understanding of non-standard board sizes (particularly square ones). Having a library of ranked games could be useful for testing the quality of any changes here, and also enable retroactively setting ratings based on those games.
Then again, even games inherently provide less data to the rating system than handicap games do, so maybe it wouldn’t be worth enough. (With even games, the system can construct an ordering of players by strength, but it learns nothing from games with big strength differences. With handicap games, the system learns something even from those games, giving better definition to the space between each rank.)
(My motivation would be to support a better brand-new-to-go experience on OGS. When I teach my friends how to play Go (in person), I always start with 5x5 handicap games until they understand capturing (usually 1-2 games at 4 stones), then 7x7 handicap games for a while. Short games where they learn a lot, aiming for 50% win rate from the start so it’s a challenge (and fun) for both of us. If we could get the rating/handicap system to understand extra-small boards, we could probably handle extra-large boards too, which might also be popular.)
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That’s a good point. It’s probably the individual games, many of which have handicap, that would be more valuable to look at for data analysis…
… but the rating system can’t look if it’s unranked (since maybe one player was playing blindfold go, or using a computer assistance, or who knows?).
Why does it just work this way for tournaments?
Probably an unintentional loophole in tournaments, since “all tournaments are ranked”, and most players just didn’t notice (until recently) because approximately nobody looks at “Game Information”.
But I think allowing non-standard boards in normal challenges to be called “ranked” would be pretty confusing, since, unlike tournaments, you see “ranked” vs. “unranked” when you select which games you’re going to play and when you set up challenges. I think my somewhat unintuitive (albeit arguably “correct”) definition of “ranked” might cause way too much confusion if we allowed that before the rating system actually looked at the games (to be clear, there isn’t even a plan for that yet, it’s just something I’m thinking about on my own).
I’m not strongly against closing the loophole (option #2 above). Seems like most people disagree with me, so maybe we should just close it.
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That’s probably the key point. For me, the only difference between ranked and unranked is that I care more about winning ranked games, since I assume they affect my rank. Otherwise I don’t see any difference in etiquette.
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Now that I look, I can’t find the etiquette difference between ranked/unranked anywhere in the documentation. Perhaps the only place I’ve seen it was @GreenAsJade’s post in the silly-features-that-we-won’t-get thread.
“You’re asking for a breach of a fundamental OGS prohibition: no outside assistance from bots or humans, unless agreed in advance in an unranked setting ” (for example teaching games are fine).
There is one issue with this being set retroactively : if users currently expect the non-standard board size tournament games to be unrated, they may play differently ( for example less seriously, trying crazy and interesting things… etc.)
I myself can be more inclined to experiment more on unrated games with new and interesting ideas, or not worry about the outcome of starting a fun and crazy fight in which either player might end up dying half the board, for example. ^^
When I play tournaments with nonstandard board sizes (non 9x9, 13x13 or 19x19) currently, I expect them to be unranked and thus sometimes try interesting or crazy things. ^^
I suspect there are others who might expect this, knowing that they can’t be rated currently.
(and have seen a question/answer posted a few times, of whether e.g. 12x12 would be rated, in which the tournament director answers ‘no’, before the nonstandard size tournaments start)
On the other hand it might still be a good database of games to look at on average for data/testing if you’re trying to develop something like this. 
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