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

[tonybe]

^ I am in complete agreement

[Conrad_Melville]

I can’t believe how these issues keep going around in circles. The question of the starting “pseudo-rank” (for want of a better term) given to new players and used for matching was discussed in detail in another thread two or three months ago. Before the recent rank adjustment, players started at a psudo-12k and were matched by humble rank (which GreenAsJade described in that other thread). The recent rank adjustment seems to have broken humble rank, and the new starting pseudo-rank is 6k. Anyone can verify this by watching some games in the overview thumbnails (the only place so far as I know where the pseudo-ranks are actually displayed). You will see, for example, a 6k playing, and upon checking his profile find that this is the first game of a provisional (?) player. I have done this. Moreover, on September 6 I created an account for playing live 9x9 games and wanted to rank it up by playing some bot games to avoid unintentional sandbagging. I could not get a game with amybot-beginner (19k then) because that rank is more than 9 stones away from 6k.

This is how it works unless it has been changed in the last 3 weeks.

But this is old news.

[BHydden]

Not everyone is on the forums as much as you, it’s really no harm explaining it again when it comes up in a new thread.

[tonybe]

also, now that we have “cursed the darkness” (identified the issues)

we are advocating for “lighting a candle” (addressing those issues)

[flovo]

@Conrad_Melville

Before the recent rank adjustment, players started at a psudo-12k and were matched by humble rank

Match making never used humble-rank

[BHydden]

Match making always used humble rank, that was the whole point of it.

[flovo]

Just because it should have done that doesn’t mean it actually did.

I checked it multiple times in the past. humble rank was not applied on custom games.

[shinuito]

Apologies for bombarding this thread, but I believe we were having two separate but parallel discussions of the current rating system, it’s impact on beginners and what has been done, and what to do about it.

For reference

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

Not true any more Thank you for your reply Conrad But I must protest that I’ve been quoted out of context. A more complete quote would be (emphasis added): Thank you for noting that the 12 kyu is wrong If I understand correctly, it should be 12 kyu because of humble rank but that’s broken so it’s actually 6 kyu. So the situation is even worse than I thought! The important point is though that new accounts are starting at this high rank (12 kyu or 6 kyu, doesn’t…

This was the current post before the merge.

As a rough summary:

• Do we need to require accounts to all start at the same value be that 12kyu 6kyu etc? --OP

• Can the Glicko Rating system handle multiple starting ratings/rankings in terms of stability

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

I agree that 1500 is arbitrary The fact that 1500 corresponds to 6 kyu basically says that if everyone is given the same starting point of 1500 and Glicko is allowed to do it’s thing, then the players that end up with this arbitrary rating of 1500 are those of a strength of approximately 6 kyu in other systems (AGA, EGF, etc.), as determined by surveying members for anchor points. Therefore, we will call this arbitrary rating of 1500 by a certain rank to give it real world meaning and that…

@flovo

This makes we wonder what the impact of setting individual ratings on the overallsstability is.

• Alternatives to the uniform starting points

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

I’d solve that with: People can pick starting rank but it still has very low confidence so will adjust quickly Better help and instructions on the pick your rank page so that they get it right. You could even have a few tsumego. A policy that admins simply say “No, make a new account and choose better” to such requests and stick that in the FAQ.

• The current attempts at dealing with the issue for beginners and weaker players than the starting value

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?

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

Match making never used humble-rank

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

Just because it should have done that doesn’t mean it actually did. I checked it multiple times in the past. humble rank was not applied on custom games.

• How to do something now without changing the system in place

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

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.

---

I probably have my own comments I could add on any of these, but I hope we can agree it’s the aspects of the same issue/discussion and apologies for any confusion with the merge.

[_KoBa]

As someone who still remembers well how ogs used to be when players were allowed to choose their own starting rank…
It made both dan-ranks and the lowest kyus into a total mess.

Back then ogs had 3 kinds of dan-level players: 1) total beginners who didnt yet know how go-ranks work and (correctly) assumed that they should be the end of the rating scale, and for everyone familiar with metric-system 6d looks lot smaller than 30k. 2) users who deliberately chose dan-rank in order to boost their own ego or appear stronger in chat, or to get teaching games with real dans, or just for the fun of it. 3) actual dans, whom were small minority between the other two groups.

Basically any time you saw “high-dan” game being played on ogs neither of players knew how to make two eyes. And back then “how we can get more strong players to join ogs” was one of the main questions pondered on the chat and forums.

And on the other end it made the lowest 30k rank a real dungeon, and lot worse than the “forever 25k” problem which was somewhat fixed by rating update in this january. It doesn’t matter what is the lowest available option, there are always a lot of players who think “i’m gonna start from the bottom and see how high can i climb”. Its quite natural for people to challenge themselves like that, and go players in general are people who like challenges. The downside of this was of course that real beginners were stuck at 30k for very long time without any realistic hope of reaching 29k.

This was the ogs rank distribution when user were allowed to choose their starting rank between 30k and 6d…

I’m afraid the same thing would happen again with the lowest available option for starting rank…

[Gia]

I’ll just say absolutely NO to making new players take tests and tsumego and stuff. Most would just close the browser and never come back, which would be the normal reaction.

Imagine going to a new dance club (as a trophy winning dancer or someone who just wanted to check out that place faint music is coming from) and being stopped at the door for “just 5 minutes” for someone to ask you how many feet positions you know, if you’ve danced before, what style of dances etc.
Just getting a dancing partner for starters is the goal.

And FYI being stepped on is much more painful than a bag of sand or air online.

Most solutions suggested are all for rank accuracy, seasoned players looking back, but I see once again the distinct lack of empathy for clueless newbies. inb4 I expect experienced players who hop online to be more understanding of having to play a few games to adjust, after all they surely know how ranks work.

---

What about a simple introductory window of “to quickly assess your rank, we start you at about 15kyu. It will take about 10 ranked games for the system to assess your actual rank. Feel free to challenge bots or other players. You can also play unranked games! Welcome.”

[shinuito]

@Gia

inb4 I expect experienced players who hop online to be more understanding of having to play a few games to adjust, after all they surely know how ranks work.

I was thinking about this angle or something related to this angle

tldr - other games have ranked placements

There’s quite a lot of games that when you want to play “ranked” you have to go through a placement period, whether it’s a shooter like Valorant or Fortnite to an extent, car football like Rocket League, or RTS like Starcraft 2 or Age of Empires 2. I don’t necessarily play these games but I think they probably do the whole “Placement Period” or “Placement Games” part a bit more clearly I imagine.

In various other games a “Ranked” mode is kind of synonymous with being competitive though.

tldr - maybe we emphasise rank in go too much even in casual games

In Go it’s possible we overemphasise ranks, even in casual games, to try and figure out if handicaps would be appropriate for example. It’s probably quite common to ask a player what is their rank if they show up at a club?

In particular with beginners, it’s probably not the case they want to be competitive but just to learn how to play, although I’m sure some do want to get good.

One could think of having the equivalent of “Beginner lobbies”, that is a particular pool you can only enter if you’ve played less than X games. Other games have done this to different extents I believe, and there’s pros and cons with such an idea. On OGS one could set up a separate matchmaking beginner pool for example which you can only enter for X games, lets say 5 or 10:

Pros:

• you don’t need to join if your an experienced player, it can be opt in.
• beginners get to play beginners until they have some experience, and don’t have to be crushed immediately
• beginners don’t have to play 6kyus or DDKs etc, wherever the default rating would land them in order to drop down in rating.

Cons:

• You could keep making new accounts every 5-10 games to troll beginners. It might have to be manually dealt with.
• It’s obviously something new that needs to be implemented
  Edit
• It might also be incompatible with ranked if it also happens to lower the beginners uncertainty/variance. Imagine a bunch of beginners that all settled at 6-12kyu because they played each other starting off

@jlt

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).

^^Alternatively you could just do as was already suggested and direct beginners to existing groups and tournaments aimed at beginners. Maybe add a sitewide tournament every day for beginners.

@Gia

What about a simple introductory window of “to quickly assess your rank, we start you at about 15kyu. It will take about 10 ranked games for the system to assess your actual rank. Feel free to challenge bots or other players. You can also play unranked games! Welcome.”

I agree that the current question mark business is just a bit vague. One could even update the 10 games, with a best guess on how many more it might take (assume we know how much the deviation tends to drop per game)

[Gia]

I don’t know if, and only if, someone enters an EGF, AGA etc link to their profile they could have that rank and not ? from the get-go.

[Conrad_Melville]

General FYI: In case anyone hasn’t noticed, the posts in this thread are out of order, as can be seen from the timestamps, due to the merging of two threads. My two posts regarding the 6k rank are out of order, making them appear rather inane (I’m old, but not yet in the dementia category), and the general flow of discussion is somewhat disjointed and confusing. Nevertheless, I do think that merging the threads was a good idea.

[Conrad_Melville]

@shinuito

You could keep making new accounts every 5-10 games to troll beginners. It might have to be manually dealt with.

That is alt sandbagging, which has long been a huge problem for TPKs and DDKs, and to a lesser extent for SDKs.

[Uberdude]

@Gia

I’ll just say absolutely NO to making new players take tests and tsumego and stuff. Most would just close the browser and never come back, which would be the normal reaction.

My suggestion wasn’t to force them to do some tsumego, it would be an optional extra to help you asses your rank if you choose. The workflow would be more like:

• Know your rank? Select it from this dropdown (with some texty descriptions so people who don’t know what kyu and dan don’t pick nonsense)
• Don’t know your rank? If you are a beginner pick 30k.
• Have played a bit but don’t know your rank, do these 5 tsumegos and we will assign you 30k / 20k / 10k / 1k/ 5d based on the first one you get wrong (the first one would be just capture a single stone in atari).

[Gia]

@Uberdude

you asses

I love the typo from a heavenly dan to a lowly kyu.

(I know it’s a typo, I’m my usual cheeky self)

[Groin]

In my opinion nothing will change if we mix all and propose to change things which are not badly working. I’m refering here on the system we have for not beginners players.

So we should focus only on how to welcome beginners better. For that you need to determine who is beginner and i don’t really see better friendly way as to ask directly when someone register.

The welcome process could be more elaborated as now. I too don’t think a test is the way.

The way is

• Let them play together (shouldn’t this be obvious?)

• Give them an opportunity to have a kind of coach (we have the means to do it).

• Let them be automatically registered as 30k at first (why asking them to do it?)

Starting from that we can build a specific system for them to make them experiment the best beginners’ place on internet.

Mods may not agree with my perception so It’s a kind of question about the sandbagging problem. Is there so many beginners that we could not assign a tutor/coach for each of them? I mean a 15k or stronger who on his will take care of the first steps, helping to close boundaries, understand the 2 eyes, the scoring… Same time isn’t this a very good filter against some sandbagging intention?

On a side note i think live games are much more appropriate as correspondance games as it was suggested.

[Conrad_Melville]

@dragon-devourer

Thank you for your reply Conrad But I must protest that I’ve been quoted out of context. A more complete quote would be (emphasis added):

I’m sorry for misunderstanding what you wrote. There was no intention of quoting you out of context. I see now that both statements were in regard to the Glicko-2 algorithm. I took the first statement (the one quoted) as referring to what is happening on OGS (which has caused tremendous confusion in multiple threads over months).

[dragon-devourer]

No worries pal