Glicko-2 does not require accounts to start at 12 kyu. So why do we do that?

We did do something. In theory. We introduced humble rank.

Unfortunately, it either broke or was not fully working.

As a result, I for one don’t really know what we have anymore in this respect. In theory, humble rank should have been a great solution.

@anoek - can you fill us in on where all this stands?

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On the profile page, it looks like it is still working properly (except that the entry rating points haven’t been retuned since the the latest rating update)

However, there are multiple reports suggesting that despite the profile page saying HR is working, users are able to accept and create games as if it is not… so, arguably, we have a worse situation now with it faultily implemented than if it were never implemented at all.

However, anoek is neck-deep in a time-sensitive and critical project right now, and likely won’t be able to look at this until next year at the earliest I would imagine.

I’ve heard this term “humble rank” lots of times before but I don’t know what it means. Can someone clarify please?

Glicko starts everyone on a certain rating to balance the whole system, with an upper and lower confidence interval (1500 ± 350). Humble rank makes new accounts interact with the server as if they were actually the lower estimate (1150 + 700). This allows beginner new accounts to get lower matched games, and strong new accounts to swing up faster, working out better for all (in theory). As your confidence interval gets more accurate, your humble rank approaches your actual rank. By the time you lose your ? both ranks are the same.

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I wonder if this touches on the problem! 1500 ± 350 is a range. 1150+700 is just 1850, which seems to be what new accounts are (sometimes?) ranked at if I remember previous discussions.
It shouldn’t be 1150+700, it sounds just be 1150 it seems to me.

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Sorry I worded that poorly. It is just 1150 rating (~12k) with a confidence rating of -0 and +700 as opposed to a rating of 1500 (~6k) with a confidence rating of -350 and +350

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As one datapoint, my test account that has played no games is ranked 1150 ± 350 and is not allowed to challenge amybot-beginner [18k] to a ranked game.

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Yes this matches

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In the meantime I wonder if we can work within the system to get the beginners more ranked games.

You can play ranked games with anyone in a tournament, so how about a tournament series for beginners? We could create them periodically and invite ALL the hundreds of new users.

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Another problem is that beginners

  • don’t know that there exist groups such as Double Digit Kyu Room
  • don’t know what “Double Digit Kyu” means.

It would be useful if new users were told something like “if you are a beginner, find games against novice players here Double Digit Kyu Room”. Or better, create a Beginner’s room and advertise it (since many DDKs are not beginners anymore).

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Seems like even if they find these rooms, it’s got to be frustrating for the new players to not be allowed to challenge the players in there with ranks around 20k.

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Just a quick question because it has been a while since I made the account and I do not remember the process. Of what I can read here it seems that everyone is getting automatically assigned to 12k in order to dissuade sandbaggers.

Why not just let a beginner declare their own rank or, even better, a ranking range?
Have a small option window explaining the ranking ranges e.g.
Triple digit kyu = I am a beginner. I just know the rules. I have not played the game before or I have played only a few introductory games.
Double digit kyu = I am an advanced beginner. I know the rules and some shapes and basic joseki. I have played a few games before.
Single digit kyu = I am a seasoned player. I have solved tsumego and I know fuseki and some advanced tactics. I have played a lot of games before.
Dan player = I am an experienced player with lots of real life Go experience or coming from another server.

That way you can have people simply be able to play games with players within their own range (with some adjustments if they win their first games easily) while the [?] becomes and actual rank, without them having any troubles finding opponents or having any rank anxiety :slight_smile:

You could even break DDK to two categories 19k to 15k and 14k to 10k, if you want a better balance.

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Anyone have ideas? I tried making one but found that Round Robin is limited to 10 players, which wouldn’t be enough to get beginners a lot of games. I’d like them to have more like 30 games, so that even when most the players disappear, play slowly, or do something completely random, there is still enough going on in the tournament to establish ranks.

Idea: ladder tournament?

I guess round robin is limited to 10 because 10 is actually quite a lot of games, especially if they are simultaneous correspondence games for beginners. I know some people play hundreds of simultaneous correspondence games but that is difficult to manage even for a lot of experienced players, let alone beginners.

Is that a thing we have?

well, a ladder is just like an ongoing tournament with no end a no winner - just a current leader. Can these not be set up then? Are they the main site ladders only? Maybe there should be a beginners ladder for 20 kyu plus and provisional ranks only.

But a ladder just gets you 3-6 games, and there’s not an invitation system for ladders. Also we can’t set them to Chinese rules, which I really would want for beginners.

Fair enough. I don’t know too much about ladders or tournaments so I can’t say much more. Might just have to settle for round robin then. 10 is enough, surely? Especially for beginners. Maybe even 1 is enough for a beginner, no?

Why?

It is kind of frustrating to read these threads where we’re trying to talk about “how can we make the site welcoming to TPK beginners” and all of the discussion seems to be around “how can we get beginners to jump through the hoops that work for us?”

Can you imagine showing up to a new place, where you know nobody, and are shy about your lack of knowledge and skill and told that you have to join something that sounds like a tournament/competition (what IS a “ladder” if you’ve never heard of one) in order to even get a provisional rank so you can learn to play a game?

Why do these conversations keep circling around questions of what’s best for the mods or the site? Shouldn’t we be talking about what would be best in terms of on-boarding new players who are just starting out with this game? Shouldn’t we be focused on making the site easy and non-intimidating for them to use?

: /

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Other than OGS? No. :laughing:

I’m not sure best for mods is a recurring theme :face_with_raised_eyebrow: But best for site sure is :slightly_smiling_face: Reason is that we do need to protect the integrity of the rating system and the experience for existing members. However, there is no reason we cannot support new members, especially beginners, at the same time. As per this other topic, (Glicko-2 does not require accounts to start at 12 kyu. So why do we do that?) there is no technical reason against new accounts declaring an initial rank, which would effectively solve a lot of these jumping through hoops issues overnight :sunglasses:

Absolutely! :+1: Biggest and quickest win is declared initial rank. Now that the general instability in the rating system has been sorted out by finding and fixing the volatility bug, I think this is the most important issue facing OGS ATM. Declared initial rank is used on DGS and it works great. I started out there with a declared rank of 30 kyu when I was an absolute beginner and I was immediately able to get ranked games with or without handicap as appropriate on any board size against players of a similar level 20-30 kyu. This was ideal to enable me to get exactly what we should aim to provide for all players: to play and have fun while also learning and improving. :grin:

Agreed :+1: And it doesn’t need to take much. One step at a time in the right direction leads to continual improvement. First was to fix rating system volatility. Done. Next is to allow declared initial rank. Simple prompt is all that is needed, e.g. “If you know your rank, e.g. from AGA, EGF, etc., enter it here. If you are just starting out, enter 30 kyu. If you have played a little bit already but are still a beginner, enter 25 kyu. If you really don’t know, just leave it blank.” Then there’s other simple little things, like on DGS there is a prompt when you pass, something like “You are passing. Please ensure all boundaries are closed before passing. Are you sure you want to pass? Yes / no” So simple but will go a long way to prevent all these problems with people trying to score unfinished games that has been discussed on this forum recently. :roll_eyes:

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