Can't accept (almost any) games?

I am new here and I don’t quite understand how the “Accept/Can’t accept” option in the “Games” page works.

When I go to that page, almost all the games are always greyed out for me, and if I hover over the “Can’t accept” button, it usually says that I can’t accept the game because it is rated and the rank difference is more than 9. However, I get that feedback even with players ranked very close to me (in the 20s, say).
When I look at my profile page I see a whole point matrix and no ranks for the various category (blitz/normal/long//9x9/13x13//19x19)

I’m confused. How is the system supposed to work? For instance, if a 20K player (say) offers a long 13x13 rated game (say), how does the system decide if I am allowed to accept or not? By looking at my overall rank (which right now is 19K, so I should be able to accept)? or by looking at the matrix, extracting my 13x13 long score 1425 ± 239 right now), converting it to a kyu rank (is so how?) and then deciding if the difference is less than 9?

Is this explained anywhere already?

There’s a tiny checkbox on the bottom of the page:

Show all games

Uncheck it. People can use rank restrictions and even if you’re 20k and they’re 18k, if they choose ± 1 rank, you won’t be able to accept.

The whole thing also gets really weird if your rating hasn’t stabilized yet - someone might be 4k according to the rating system but won’t be able to play a 5k because “the rank difference is greater than 9”.

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You wrote:

The whole thing also gets really weird if your rating hasn’t stabilized yet - someone might be 4k according to
the rating system but won’t be able to play a 5k because “the rank difference is greater than 9"

I guess that was part of my question. Is the point–> rank map function visible anywhere?

Let’s just say you don’t gain anything from knowing how it’s calculated. But if you’re just casually interested in how rating in general is projected onto ranks…

rank2rating=function(rank)850*exp(rank*0.032)
rating2rank=function(rating)30-(31.25)*log(rating/850)

…where rank is a number from 0 (30 kyu) to 39 (9d+). The second formula will output 30:1 = kyu and 0:-9 = dan.

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Interesting that is a log function, anyways. I guess rating points accumulate linearly or close to. Thanks for the info. May I ask where did you pull it up from?

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Cool, thanks.

You might also like to consider making your own custom games for others to accept. This link will assist: https://github.com/online-go/online-go.com/wiki/Finding-(starting)-a-game#custom-game

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