Help with a dilemma

Hi,

I’ve been playing correspondence almost exclusively for the last year and would like to change that (learn to think faster, play some casual games etc). I wish to be able to play good matched games in live time setting and in correspondance - since I still intent to play them most of the time.

The problem is, that as far as I know, OGS will always choose my main rank when using automatch. I will probalby loose a live game on that rank as I’m much weaker under pressure and this will cause my “main rank” to deviate, which will make it harder to find a good match in correspondence. If my main rank will get close to my live rank then when playing correspondence it will be artificially low. It would be great to find what both my rankings are and play accordingly. What are my options?

  1. Play on other server, live games only (suggestions?)
  2. Have two accounts here (don’t believe it is allowed?) one for live only
  3. Always choose opponents by hand when doing correspondence and calculate my kyu from Glicko points in the table. This will still cause live-automatch to find opponents that are stronger then me, but same main kyu level.
  4. Stop caring about rating and just play go, even if this means not always finding the right opponents (somehow this is tougher for me than it should be)

This all feels a little painful or inconvienient. What to do?

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When I beginning to play worse than usual, I just create unranked games with max rank restriction and have no problems with waiting for opponent
(not automatch)

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Correspondence players who were hesitant to play live games because it would trash their rating were the original reason the separate rankings were introduced.

That said, I suggest that you make two accounts.

This is the best option imho. Also you are overthinking it - you will MAYBE lose kyu or two, and maybe not :slight_smile: opponents plays weaker too when they dont have that much time. You can try long live games at first (like 40min + 5x1 min) and see what fits you the best.

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It’s not so much about trashing the rating as about acknowledging that I am much worse playing live. I would be happy to know what does that mean and use it to find opponents. I’m afraid the changes related to new rating system make that harder (only main rating is taken into account when matching opponents or setting autohandicap)

Ok, I’ve actually found a thread stating that multiple accounts are allowed. I’ll go with this option then and it’ll solve all my problems :slight_smile: thanks

If your really think you are weaker at live games, then why not make custom challenges that are only open to players you think you’ll match up well against?

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The best option is to not use automatch, so you can set up custom rank restrictions and set longer live time settings. In a sense OGS and KGS are best servers in this regard, because on IGS/Tygem you can play only 30 sec byo-yomi, which is a bit too short for serious game.

To stop caring about rating you can play on different servers, so you’ll have like 5 different ratings.

By the way, difference between live and correspondence was 3 stones in my case, so not that much.

There are many good suggestions here, but there is another way of thinking about it: you don’t want these games, where you are just getting accustomed to live play to affect your rank, right?

So therefore, why not just play unranked games?

That’s exactly what they are for: playing games where you don’t want them to affect your rank :slight_smile:

GaJ

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I actually think the second account will actually be best solution for me. I could not worry about my rank, get to use automatch and find good matching games and find out what my live rating is in comparison to correspondence.

When (and if) I ever make those two be equal then I could forget about the second account.

Thanks for all the answer and suggestions!

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