So I’m new to the site and the game of Go. I’ve started by playing the site bots. What I have noticed is while the “beginner” rated bots all have a rating of 25k when one plays them it certainly does NOT feel that way! Anyone else experience this? It’s more like they range from 25 to 20k.
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25k is the lowest visible rank on OGS, but internally the rating system goes all the way down to 69k or something. So a 25k bot, a 30k bot, and a 50k bot all display as 25k despite being wildly different in strength. The 20k bot will display as 20k.
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I really wouldn’t put too much weight onto the bots supposed rankings. They get rankings from playing players but people don’t treat their games with bots the same as human games. The bots are also managed by different people like volunteers. The bots on places like the Fox go server or Pandanet are much better to play against because you can’t tell if you’re playing a bot or not except guessing based on their game history and maybe if it is an off hour. They are much better calibrated for their servers. They still don’t play like humans though.
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Thanks for this info! BTW how does one play on the Fox server?(apologies to the OGS guys for asking about a competitive site 
). I Didn’t see an Android app at all. I seem to remember trying to visit their domain and for Non Chinese internet users one had to install an exe client? I’m busy learning Mandarin so hopefully in 6 or 8 months I’ll know my ma from my má from my mā 
and be able to read the Mandarin sites without translate.
Yeah OGS is kinda the most modern feeling go server I know about and you can play on any device because it’s a website not a client you need to install. Fox is kinda not well localized and their English client is in an obscure place. As far as I know you can only play with the exe on Windows. There are various places that explain how to get on the Fox go server like here Fox Weiqi at Sensei's Library
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Pandanet has better localisation, it should be easier for you to navigate the site as well as the application.
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It doesn’t make a ton of difference, but the bots are sorted by their actual rank (like Uberdude said, below 25k). So in this case, Agapanthus ranked lowest.
A little off topic, here is someone who plays all bots from lowest to highest which might be interesting.
It looks a bit optimistic to me but I hope the best in your studies
yeah probably! But one can hope! I hope to get to level SHK 3 in half a year. I know full proficiency can take a number of years, as it’s the hardest language in the world to master!
Especially writing (refering to your goal)