I'm new and I don't know how the rankings work

When I win a game, does my ranking go up? How does Kyu and Dan work? Thank you!

[OUTDATED] OGS Ratings and Ranks

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Basically, yes. When you win a ranked game (you can specify wheter or not you want your game ranked when creating a challenge), your rank goes up a bit (not by whole point). The gain is smaller on smaller boards and the win/lose margin does not matter (only win or lose no matter by how much). When you lose your rank goes down a bit. If you win enough times (without losing too much) your rank will change and others will see your new rank.

As long as we are kyus the lower the rank the stronger the player. (5kyu is much stronger than 15kyu - 1 kyu is the strongest kyu there is). When you become stronger than 1 kyu (something to look forward to :slight_smile: ) you become 1 dan (sometimes called amateur dan) and then it is the other way around (the higher the dan, the stronger the player) you can go up to 7d (and then there are some honorary 8d and stuff like that). People who make a living by playing go and (and are incredibly strong) then get to have P instead of D (9p = 9 dan proffesional and again is the highest not counting honorary titles) but the idea is the same.

generally speaking the difference between ranks should roughly be how much stones one should get when playing a handicapped game.

You can watch your rank progress on your profile page. It has graphs and everything (awesome).
Also not to be confused OGS tracks a separate rank for your blitz, live, and correspondence time settings. Some people are way stronger on correspondecne opposed to playing blitz etc…

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Do remember to differentiate between rating (points) and rank (kyu and dan levels). Otherwise this part is a little bit confusing:

When you lose your rank goes down a bit. If you win enough times (without losing too much) your rank will change and others will see your new rank.

What changes with win/loss is rating (you add or subtract points according to the win/loss), rank is determined by the rating and does change a bit slower (I can’t find it now, but it is like 100 rating points for one ranking rung).

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