Bot's rank fluctuations

[shinuito]

@SomeGoGuy

the constant changes in their reported strength remains an artifact of the ranking algorithm, not a genuine change in playing capability.

@Feijoa

Bots don’t have fluctuating skill levels, so the fluctuations must be an artifact of the rating system.

This is such a weird take. If anyone just sat and watched a few weak bot games you’d realise it doesn’t make sense.

Bot ranks

I don’t even know anything about this specific bot, but when a bot can play well enough to reach like a high ddk rank, it must be doing something correctly. At that stage, it shouldn’t randomly be ignoring ataris especially in the late stages of games. Unless you’re ok with the bot being very volatile. But the whole point is to question why the bots have large swings in ranking. If you imagine there’s two ways to program a weak bot Your bot just is that strength naturally, you coded up a bu…

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Bot ranks

Since @siimphh commented, I don’t have to look further than the last two games to find an example [image] Winning, winning, winning vs a 25kyu, randomly ignore an Atari on a group of 17 stones = game over No player, bot or otherwise can have a consistent level if you do that randomly. I think the bots need a safeguard in their move logic. If you’re going to randomly choose to make a mistake, don’t ever choose a mistake bigger than size X, which might depend on their rank.

I think in the case of Amybot it was something about a neural net not realising a stone or group of stones was in atari.

But the point would be that bot can be a decent ddk like 13kyu and not see the most basic Ataris.

It can be winning all game and then throw away the game by ignoring a massive Atari for seemingly no reason.

It’s a similar effect you might get if a human was playing with a handicap where if they flipped a coin and it was heads they had to tenuki, and tails they can play whatever they want.

Essentially you won’t get a stable rank from randomness like that. You can beat players regularly because you’re bot is decently strong (it can make it to 13kyu etc) but it can lose to anyone regularly, even 25kyus.