I could make a custom game without analysis but I wouldn’t be able to automatch then. Please add the function. I’m sure the majority would like a fair game not having to doubt their loss over their opponent’s integrity and not their own lack of skill.
What’s the connection between analysis and integrity?
If you’re afraid that your opponent could analyze his moves, you better know that analysis is always active for non-logged users. So, if someone really wants to do it, he will… at least in correspondence games: log off, analyze, log in. You can do this without even change webpage. 
I don’t know what would happen if someone logs off while playing a live game, but I usually haven’t enough time to analyze live games.
I think that
-
Having analyze off in live games seems like an obvious “right thing”. It can be used, but there isnt a lot of time, so turning it off is good, because there certainly isn’t time to try other tricks. Logging off causes live games to timeout fast.
-
For correspondence games, temptation and ease is the thing. I would prefer myself and my opponent agree that we’re not using it. When that happens (eg in the Fast Correspondence tourneys) I find my reading improves, and I am not at all tempted to cheat by logging out. However, if the tool is enabled in the game then I am going to use it… so I prefer if “off” were the default there too.
1 Like
I agree with you, but…
If I don’t use it, why bother with having it turned on or off? 
I feel myself like a student trying to improve. For this, analysis is a useful tool: instead of guessing a move and do variations only afterwards, I can understand better the situation while playing.
We all know that reading is fundamental, but we must learn reading someway.
If a player keeps on relying on analysis indefinitely, I fear he’s already punishing himself enough.
In both cases I can’t think of that player like cheating o being corrupt and don’t understand the need of having it disabled.
2 Likes
You answered your own question. Don’t ask redundant questions that you already know the answer to. If you play normal live settings, that’s a good 20 minutes to have more than enough time to give you an advantage playing variations out at least in the opening to mid game stage for quite a while. For 9x9 you get 5 minutes which is good enough to cover the whole game.
Of course people can tab out to another program or use their phone. But why are we making it more conducive for them to do so?
Who cares if in the long run those players are sabotaging their own game? They are also ruining MY enjoyment by taking away my win and giving a false sense of inflated rank because those players are actually using cheating tricks to play better than their rank would be playing. If they are doing it in a closed environment with an AI, then great! But the fact is each time these people use analysis to cheat their way into reading something out that they shouldn’t and play some amazing game-changing move, they steal the win from the other player.
Self-sabotaging your game is fine, sabotaging the game and screwing with the other person’s head about the validity of his rank is not.
2 Likes
I already answered this:
GaJ
You can disable it in your general settings. Isn’t that enough?
Well, now I see better what’s the matter: you feel like someone is stealing you something.
I don’t think it’s the case.
I find myself losing against 15k and winning against 8k in the same week. I really don’t trust my rank: I was 9k few weeks ago. Now I’m 12k. Who knows where lies my “real” rank?
This quote looks so weird to me.
How can you tell when a win is “yours”?
Two players can play many games winning some and losing some other. There’s no holy rule that tells who should win. Especially not your rank number.
Anyway, you can choose settings that fit best for you. Have fun and good game.
2 Likes
Same here!
Currently I’m winning some games against 9k, 8k and lossing to 14k, 15k…
My feeling is that this, for me, has been happening more since the change to Glicko??
And dare I bring this in from some other threads (!) On the old OGS when timeouts did count at some point, it seemed common to have wildly fluctuating ranks due to timeout inflated or deflated ranks.
And why are some people so concerned about cheaters anyway. In nearly 10 years on OGS I’ve never felt that I’ve been cheated and I don’t actually care.
(yeah, I know, I’m repeating myself)
1 Like
-
Rank is fluid, it changes even faster after the new Glicko2 (?) system was introduced.
-
Thus it also is more accurate—for the moment.
My rank, for example, is currently oscillating between 9k and 6k, and it has for a short time even touched 5k.
I’m totally OK with that, and it also is totally normal that we sometimes win against stronger players and lose against weaker players as we all have different partial strengths (fuseki, mid-game, end-game), and strength also fluctuates from day to day.
5 Likes
That’s getting the correct sense of it, but your subsequent diversion into rank went the wrong way.
It’s simply that I want to play on a level playing ground. I don’t want to play against someone using Leela to tell them their moves if I am not, and I don’t want to play against someone using the Analysis tool if I am not.
Clearly the Analysis tool doesn’t give as much advantage as Leela, which is why it is currently allowed
But still: it is a fact that I enjoy more and grow more playing the games in the Fast Correspondence Tourney, where everyone has agreed to have Analysis Tool turned off.
GaJ
2 Likes
Forgive me, friends, I have cleaned up here a bit.
Please do not take it as censorship, but we were getting a little too off topic and too personal If you are concerned about another issue, please start a new thread for it and try to limit personal lashes. Sometimes passions take better of us, but ultimately we are all here for the same reason
4 Likes
I suspect that the concern about cheaters, at least in the weaker ranks, is more about the waste of time than the potential loss of rank. In any case it violates most people’s sense of justice.
More cheating occurs on OGS than anyone can judge based on their own game experience. I watch a lot of games, at all levels, because I enjoy it, and I have seen a great deal of cheating in just 17 months. To take just one category of cheating, I have seen at least half a dozen players who are bogus komi cheats. They set the komi at, maybe 550 (in a 9x9), and their opponent has a big surprise when they win the game only to see that they have lost. Many people just don’t notice the discrepancy when they begin playing.
1 Like
I really feel it’s important to note that this thread, and this request, is not about cheating.
It is entirely within the rules to use the Analysis tool.
This thread is about having a level playing field to play where the Analysis tool is not available to either player, so that the environment feels even.
It is also about discouraging the use of Analysis tool, because that tool inhibits our growth as players.
Having the Analysis Tool on by default is like having hurdles set at the bottom rung while running hurdles races.
Sure, I could go and put all my hurdles to the official height and run against people who have low hurdles, but that’s simply not the condition that I want to train in. I don’t want to compete in low-hurdles and I don’t want to do training runs with high hurdles against competitors training with low ones.
And I do think that high hurdles is the right thing. If you don’t want hurdles, don’t train for… the hurdles race.
GaJ
4 Likes
I’d like to challenge that statement… maybe better to put it this way: “some players think that this tool inhibits their growth as players” ?
“To each their own” … but please, let me decide for myself, like I’ll not decide for others. If I agree to play a game where the opponent has disabled analysis, fine, likewise with tournaments where this is disabled, but I cannot agree to a blanket statements like above.
It’s like “9x9 is bad”, or “don’t play Atari Go with beginners”. It may be so for some, but for others it may be very different.
2 Likes
If I may be permitted to nitpick, my statement, which you only quoted part of, was that the thread is about that topic. This thread is about a proposal that has “The Analysis Tool inhibits our growth as players” as one (and not the only) premise.
Enough meta?
Clearly this may be so for some but not others, otherwise we wouldn’t be having a discussion.
To return to the topic, and my personal experience of it offered here in support of the proposal:
- I grow more as a player when Analysis is disabled. My reading improves dramatically, and quickly.
- I find that to be comfortable with Analysis disabled, I want my opponent to be playing under the same conditions.
- My own belief is that this is a “better” way to play, closer to “real life” play, where there is no analysis tool
- but of course, this is just my opinion.
If enough other people have one or more of these experiences/beliefs in common, then we’d have a basis to ask for this proposal to be implemented.
It also could be worth implementing even if it does nothing for some people, as long as it doesn’t actually damage those people’s experience.
What do you all think?
GaJ
2 Likes
I’m puzzled why this is even being debated on. I would think it is glaringly obvious that having a tool that aids you in the game should be disabled in general until the post-game unless specified under settings?
Other servers like KGS and Tygem, both don’t provide analysis/review until after the game unless specified in the settings (for one of them at least, can’t remember which or if both). Afaik, chess servers don’t do that either.
Why people do people support analysis? To improve by being able to explore variations they wouldn’t have been able to otherwise and expand their mind? That’s fine and dandy but that very same tool that is allowing you to improve is also giving you an unfair advantage if the other person doesn’t use theirs! How do we ensure both use or don’t use it to ensure a fair and even match? Disable both!
“Bu…bu…but I wouldn’t be able to improve.” Then make your own custom setting!!! Or make it unranked/free then (free games could conversely have analysis enabled by default, because it’s a casual free game y’know)!!!
I’ll even go one step further and propose disabling of score estimation too. Why? It saves you the trouble of counting! Ignoring the fact that it’s not exactly accurate, it can still save people the time to count while on the clock by at the very least giving an estimate, giving an unfair advantage to the one who uses it. Particularly so in fast games. i challenge anyone to tell me what justification score estimation has in a game? I don’t suppose it actually improves your counting by helping your lazy brain do the work?
Even if we throw all morality and sportsmanship away by thinking using aids are justifiable simply because they allegedly improve your own personal game in RANKED matches and making it the norm, are we forgetting that you could potentially be RUINING the RATING SYSTEM by inflating everyone’s rank? Your 1D might very well be a 5k elsewhere who is just making very good use of the score estimator and analysis mode to not have to read out anything and simply play it all out. Unless the aim isto have an inflated rank system.
You might argue that I am imposing my view of zero aid as much as those who support game aid.
But unless we live in a world where ones skill can be enhanced by using tools without being deemed as cheating or unfair, the day where swimmers can once again wear those high tech swimsuits that can enhance your timing not by your skill but by the power of the aid, the day where Go players are free to use an empty board to play out moves beyond their reading or even use AI (hey if you talk about improvement, you could stretch it that far couldn’t you?) in official tournaments, then having analysis enabled in default games is expected. But we don’t live in such a world do we? Or is OGS some Bizzaro world where everything is the opposite?
1 Like
Honestly, I don’t think it should be puzzling at all - though I guess hyperbole around that is one technique to make a point.
It asserts “I feel this so strongly I can’t even see how you don’t”.
An unfortunate aspect of this sort of hyperbole is it draws divisions, and emphasises a lack of ability to see another person’s point of view, which rarely actually helps close a discussion.
For any given item where there can be an opinion, there will be opposite opinions. For example, I can’t really see why people like to play out games that are obviously over, but there are people like that in our community.
Similarly, there are clearly going to be people who think that game-aids during play are perfectly fine, and some of those people unfortunately won’t even be able to understand the point of view that I have: which is that I don’t want to play agains you if you are using those. And if I have to play against you (eg ladder) then I will use them too, even if I think it would be better if both of us didn’t.
So the ideal outcome of a proposal thread like this will be to get enough concesus that actually Analysis belongs off by default, and to make sure that those who like it on still can have it on and be happy with that.
So far it appears that 6 people like the idea, and only 2 people have indicated that they don’t see why it’s necessary. None have indicated that a change like this should not actually happen. Not-understanding is not the same as putting forwards sound reasons for a change not to happen.
As far as I can see, a change like this would take nothing away from those who like Analysis.
So we appear to be heading in the direction of “this would be a positive step”, albeit bumpily.
2 Likes
I feel that two players should have the option, and be provided the ability, to mutually agree upon a game that resembles a face-to-face match on a goban with stones.
In a custom game, when setting up a tourney, and in automatch. The option could be called “real board”, and have no analysis, no conditional moves, no scoring estimator, and–to be most true to life–not even have a “plunk then submit” to get a lookie-loo as to what a stone will do to shape/moyo on the board.before officially playing it.
3 Likes
I’m really only interested in the outcome, and I had hoped that bringing the discussion back into less argumentative territory would be a good step. I will put that aside.
We agree that having Analysis Tool available in game appears to be an unfortunate decision because:
- It encourages people to use a crutch
- It forces an uneven playing field on people who would prefer not to use it
- It artificially inflates our rankings compared other servers where such tools are not allowed in-game, in ranked games
Therefore, as a minimum it should be an option to have it disabled in auto-matches, and ideally that would be the default. Even better would be having it disabled for all ranked games, to bring us in line with other servers.
I also support the idea that the Estimation Tool should be bundled with the Analysis tool wherever disablement happens.
GaJ
2 Likes