Are OGS rankings inflated, deflated or neither?

Well, people have different talents. Go beginners come in all shapes and sizes. Some Go beginners surprise me by playing moves with purpose and forethought, some play mostly random moves, like playing out a lost ladder even though they know about ladders.

Well, I talked about my first experience on a Go server. Though thinking back, I’d say it might have been a psychological experience caused by the presence of the rating itself.

As a beginner, I was assigned a specific rating, and without knowing anything about rating systems, I just assumed “oh, this is an appropriate rating for someone starting out!”. So I kind of immediately adopted the rating as part of my identity. Seeing it drop game after game, realizing how much better the players I was being matched with were, was quite the jarring experience.

So my conclusion is that a) taking too much to correctly rank a beginner can be a problem if they’re not educated on what to expect, and b) seeing the rating from the start is potentially very bad for the psychology of their first experience.

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I won 5 out of my first 47 games. Unless I’m a complete exception to the rule, I wouldn’t call this proverb a myth (unless you take it literally).

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If they know about ladders, IMO they’re not a complete beginner. :stuck_out_tongue:

On a similar note, I still remember how devastated I was when I learned that my opponent was allowed to capture my group even if it had an eye…

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Allerleirauh has created his own strawman myth. The saying about losing 100 (or 50) games as fast as you can is not about how long it takes to win. It is about encouraging beginners to play a lot of games quickly, even if they lose them all, because experience is the best teacher. We might well dispute whether that kind of experience is best, but it has nothing to do with how long it takes to win, and no one I know ever imagined it did.

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I was showing that beginners are allowed to have ranked games (restricted to ±9 ranks) with 1d players. So something about matchmaking assumes they are at 6k; it’s not just a display bug.

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It was just pointed out to me in the other thread that the uncertainty in the provisional rank is apparently one-sided. 11.9 kyu is actually the lower bound of one deviation.

So I was wrong, in some sense there is a “hidden” true provisional rank at 6 kyu, but the graph displays it at 11.9 kyu artificially - as a prov player loses against a 1d, their true rank slightly lowers, and the deviation shortens, making their graphical rank increase.

My freaking God. That’s REALLY weird.

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Well, you see in places people say that it’s ok for complete beginners to lose a lot. That it’s fine to start them at 6k or whatever because, oh, they’re just gonna lose a bunch and it’s fine and so on. That it’s fine to have them lose 9 out of 10 games as Maharani because, oh, well, they’re beginners. I don’t believe it. I think it’s best to pair them with other beginners so they have a fair chance at a game and expected to win 50%. And although I don’t remember exactly, I had an impression some teachers recommend to let the beginner win their first 9x9 game.

I mean why are we pretending that losing 9 out of 10 games isn’t a discouraging experience. Do you want go playerbase to consist only of masochists?

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We could make this one for, hmmm, like players who end up lower than 20k if there’re any?

Do you think it is reasonable for people who know nothing about go to lose 90 % of their games in the beginning?

  • Yes, this is to be expected; no need for change
  • No, it is humiliating; we should rebuild the ranking system so complete beginners can win 50 % of their games from the start
  • I don’t have a strong opinion on the matter

0 voters

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I can’t answer the poll :sweat_smile:

I believe it might be humiliating, but at the same time it’s idealistic to imagine a system where beginners (or weak players) win 50% of the games from the get-go.

If beginners can self-identify without vetting, sandbaggers will self-identify as beginners. If we start players with a low rank, sandbaggers don’t even need to do anything.

Unless we have a solution, I can’t answer 1.

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None of this has any relevance to my comment. My only point was you seem to have misunderstood the saying. I wouldn’t even care except that you criticized it for being a myth. You also seem to miss the kind of “gallows humor” quality of it, which I guess is understandable with a foreign language.

It is pretty obvious that discouragement is a serious problem in any difficult game (or sport). I think few people would disagree with that. Any other truisms you want to debate?

Btw wow, is the discrepancy really that enormous? dwyrin is 7d on Foxy and easily beats 3d on OGS without even remarking that they seem stronger than Fox 3d.

I, too, can’t answer because it mixes together what we expect and what we want. And, of course, it depends entirely on whom they are playing.

7d on fox is very different as 5d on fox

I intentionally worded the poll that way because if you do believe that losing 90 % of your games as a complete beginner is humiliating and unacceptable, you’d have to devise yet another complete overhaul of the ranking system. Otherwise, why complain?

Well, when I was 1d OGS I managed to get 5d Foxy but I’m not sure if I could hold it, I kinda got bored there. But 1d OGS is solid 4d Foxy, 2d OGS is surely 5d Foxy.

But on Foxy ranks are jammed. You have like 9d pros and AIs. Some weaker pros even got knocked down to 8d. And you have 1d amateurs at like 4-5d. So jumps in difficulty with 6-7d are big.

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It’s not difficult for me to imagine a system where beginners can play rated games together and so, have a 50% chance of win.

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I didn’t say it was difficult, I just said it was idealistic, but whatever. How would you solve the sandbagger problem?

Don’t you expect the increased presence of sandbaggers at the lower ranks to make the true beginner’s experience worse?

So how would you achieve that?

Well, that has been debated a lot in the threads i mentioned before. Want me to write all again?

One thing to mention is that it’s completly useless to give a unique entrance point to the gliko system to work.
Besides a beginner could enter as beginner, even no need to set a ranking on his own, and get what he wants.

Anyway please read the debates which already happened and which are not out of date (unless you find some new ones, and i would be pleased to update the compendium)

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