Guess rank game

man, I don’t go around searching for games, and you only came up with this rule after I got it right.

Lots of trash but 10k, how about that.

Sorry man I must have been out of it yesterday I thought you’d volunteered :joy: sorry about that

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9 kyu

14 kyu

Wow! This is one of the best games for guessing we’ve had for a while. Great choice.

Of course there is a very marked character difference between Black, who is a steady honte player with a theoretical grounding, and White who is a greedy, improvising freewheeler.

Wh. 8 is an “improper move” but I’ve seen even professionals play it, or something like it, every now and then. Bl. 9 is the honte response.

Bl. 13 is quite telling. I’ve found that players typically learn this tesuji in low SDK.

Wh. 16 is an interesting deviation. I think the way to refute it is to turn immediately at B3. It’s important that Black has the ladder from B3 E5, E4 (atr.) D3, C2 E6. But even without the ladder this sequence feels good for Black. Understandably Black makes a mistake at Bl. 17 – this shows he’s learnt the tesuji but not become familiar with it.

Bl. 23 is honte-ish but terribly slow, letting White settle on the side. Not the move of a strong SDK.

Bl. 25 is natural, Wh. 26 is another typically greedy move by White.

Bl. 32 is notably weak move, Black ignoring the proverb that cautions against atari’ing the cutting stone. Both players then make mistakes in the fight.

Bl. 55 is an unusual but still reasonable-looking choice, but his follow-up moves are weak.

Black fights somewhat weakly in the upper-right fight. I think I can leave the analysis there though I’ve looked at the rest of the game.

It’s an interesting one. My feeling is that the combination of theoretical knowledge and fighting shapes, along with key weaknesses that seem familiar nails it down to a narrow range. I would be surprised if the players weren’t 7k, 8k, or 9k. I’m going to lowball it and say 9k.

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11k (only because 9 & 10 are taken)

I’m going to throw in a guess of 11k for variety 12k

Edit: Darn it! @Eugene beat me to it by a very short margin :joy:

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I believe there won’t be any new guesses, so here we have the result:

And the answer is....

…11k! @Eugene was on the spot, but generally everyone was very close this time.

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How about this one:

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Hmm. Game looks so familiar for some reason. I vaguely remember playing a game just like this one. What a weird feeling.

There’s nonsense here and there but feels like the players are on the verge of understanding what they’re doing. It would help if I knew how different ranks play ko. I can totally see stronger ranks getting confused by ko fights and playing weaker moves because they’re trying to figure out the ko nonsense all the time. Maybe 7k, that’s my guess. At least I hope so.

Edit: who would play Chinese rules? I didn’t think about that one, but already made my guess, too late.

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There was another thread where I had my own theories about what TDK-level play would like:

Of course, one could also consider QDK (quadruple digit kyu):

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I felt that way about the last game, but knew I had never played with those time settings… Was still unsettling.

I don’t think I have to give a long commentary here. Both players show a lot of good shape knowledge, although I think I can see some mistakes especially by White.

I’m going to say

1d

6k, lots of bad choices of moves but play isn’t really that bad
shapes are not good
both players miss out on life n death situations life top left

What were the time settings on this one?

Ah yes, sorry - vital info!

Fischer: Clock starts with 5 minutes and increments by 10 seconds per move up to a maximum of 5 minutes.

hmmm 6kyu.
Feels like there wasnt much thinking here, so blitz didn’t have a significant impact on the game

Hmm 4k

3 dan