Don't let "?" ranks queue into my custom games

2 things, new accounts must start at the bottom of the ladder

and i want to exclude ? ppl from my custom games

3 things:

  1. Please stop saying ladder, it’s confusing
  2. No. It’s not good making a dan player start at 25k. Not for them, not for their opponents, not for the ranking system.
  3. Allowing ? rank players to accept custom games with rank restrictions is a totally separate issue. I think if the highly uncertain rank behind the ? is in the range it would be reasonable to allow the match, and if outside disallow it. So if you ask for 10k - 5k, then you might get a 7k?, but not a 25k?.
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  1. what shall i say moving forward
  2. incorrect, you never wanna sacrifice overall ladder health for anyone’s individual game
  3. but whos to say the he earned that 7k rank and it’s not just some kid lying about his rank?

@rexwatchover,
Can you tell more about the problem?

How often do you play against [?] players?

How many of those games are against players who, in your estimate, are much lower ranked than you?

—-

Can a mod please merge these two threads?

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so there was a long stretch where i didn’t see too many ? ppl (im 17k btw)

but then it seems like they come in droves, maybe 10-25% of my matches would have ? person

it leads me to believe that it’s just one person making multiple accounts

it’s always a person much lower than me

but it’s about the principle of the matter.

am i allowed to see all ladder/rank participants? yes

am i allowed to block all the ? ppl? yes

so just let me block them from the custom game screen

You don’t have to play the game. You can always press the “cancel game” button, and it won’t be rated.

And making new accounts start at 25k would be extremely bad for beginners, who would likely quit the game after being repeatedly crushed by [25k?] dan or SDK players. No other go server does that.

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hi.
Is the main problem that the players have the “?” and you don’t get the full ranking points for the win/loss?
Or is the problem that the rank itself is wrong and you often play against way weaker/stronger players, which you don’t want ?

As far as I got the idea, ? players can get into the ladder (default one, not rating), and that’s maybe a slightly weird thing to do, but I don’t think it matters that much.

Anyways, I have a different question: can you really annul any game in the ladder without losing your placement? Or am I reading something wrong?

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This is a bigger change than the fix Rex is asking for, but would it be crazy to make all new players play one or two games against a bot to sanity-check their self-estimated rank before moving them into the automatch queue and custom games? I’m guessing everyone in SDK would agree that games with [?] players can become very tedious, because they can be losing by 200 points and still play the game out to counting.

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The terminology here is all so wrong that the question is hard to understand but this is true: you can cancel any game within the first few turns and it does not affect your rank.

Only moderators or the system can annul a game, that is different, and if you cancel a ladder game, you still drop your position in the ladder (even though it doesn’t affect the your rank).

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OP did not mean ladders, but rather just our ranking system I believe, that’s caused the confusion.

Yes, but it is not exactly what OP is concerned about

That of course happens, but provisional ranks “?” are regarded as basically unknown. Yes, we pair them with a stronger player if they say they are stronger, but the rating system still “knows” their rank is basically unknown. (If you pardon a bit of a simplified explanation).

You can cancel a ladder game, and it will not affect your rating. However, for the purposes of the ladder, it will count as a loss, and the challenger will be put above you. Hence you will lose 1 place, which is probably not that big of a deal. You will not be DQ from the ladder.

Not crazy at all, but I think not exactly our preffered vibe. We (well at least I) want to encourage players (and especially newbs) to interact with the community. Bot games can be weird and confusing, and they can’t offer any help. I know newbie games can be boring, but again, the cancel button is near enough if either experienced player does not feel like “risking” it.


Both approaches to ranking (starting from a fixed point vs giving players a choice) have their pros, and cons, that’s true. But as far as I know there is no current plan to change that, as we (I at least) believe this is the “better” compromise…

Yes, done, thanks.

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It’s definitely a thing.

I made 8–10 challenges for different shaped rectangle boards last month and ended up with only 3–4 real games. This is normal. At this point I just make double the challenges of games I actually want to play. Not really an ideal state of affairs.

I think the main issue is [?] players who don’t understand what they’re joining. Also I thought I rank restricted the challenges (usually something like 15k–9d) but somehow I end up with 23k and 24k players. (I don’t know how to check what was the rank restriction of my initial challenge.)

I’m simply providing information here, I haven’t formed a strong opinion on whether anything needs to change with the [?] players.

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Oh, I see, thanks

Just another opinion, another county heard from. KGS has ? ranks and honestly I see it as a bit of a problem because as soon as you start excluding these, it makes it harder for new people to get a rank because once the option is there folks will often exclude. And so harder to get a game, means folks don’t come back.

Basically a game is a game is a game. If it’s a ?, pretend they’re Shin Jinseo and going to eat your lunch, and if you win, hey you beat Shin Jinseo! And then rank starts to get established and they’ll settle to their approximate strength.

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I have this exact mentality and enjoy the uncertainty, but unfortunately the added problem—and this may apply only to correspondence games—is that [?] players, even strong ones, rarely finish a game.

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Well that’s a fair point of view and I only do a middling amount of correspondence and usually with people I know. that is to say, I rarely put out an open correspondence game and take all comers. Still, if you have a lot of correspondence, those just filter down to the bottom don’t they? And eventually they lose on time. You were willing to play the game at the time settings selected, so ultimately in a week or two, that game will be over. But… I do get the “there’s a game waiting” tension and so I can see a reason to dislike questionable rank in that situation.

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I think that the [?] issue is really about live, surely?

As you say, an abandonned game in correspondence is not such an imposition, and in any case it’s probably better to get correspondence games through other ways that let you select the opponent somewhat - ladders etc are good for this.

How to avoid having time wasted by a tire-kicker at the site in a live game is a connundrum.

thanks gang

if i create a custom game, get a question mark person, and immediately cancel the game, will this hurt my rating?

No

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