KGS vs OGS ranking

[shinuito]

@zxtremedemon

However KGS rank calculation is absolute bs

I think kgs regularly recalibrates your ranks based on players it thinks are very consistently some rank.

So if these players drift a bit in the system (I think) it recalculates peoples ranks based off of them.

https://www.gokgs.com/help/rmath.html

and

https://www.gokgs.com/help/anchor.html

From time to time, the anchors are adjusted ; some old anchor whose rank is no longer reliable enough is removed, and some new anchor is added. When such an event occurs, it will slightly change all the KGS ranks.

Anyway, you can even have played no games and then have your ranking move around up or down. I also don’t really enjoy that that much.

@zxtremedemon

I find that the OGS ranks are a little strict compared to my country.

I think OGS won’t match every individual countries rating system, in the same way ranks across different servers don’t match either.

At one point OGS did shift slightly to align itself better with the EGF and AGA rating systems around the 1d level.

@anoek

Summary of the update:

1. We are attempting to align our low dan ranks to be comparable to the EGF and AGA low dan ranks. Currently we are projecting that a 1d OGS rank will be about .7 stones weaker than an EGF 1d and about 0.8 stones stronger than an AGA 1d. These numbers will be re-evaluated once the dust settles, but we believe we should end up fairly close to the goal of being within a stone of each system, on average.

I think those (AGA and EGF) rating systems are seen to be somewhat strong as to compared to others at least at the lower ranks. Probably once you hit 5 or 6d in any rating system it can be hard to compare.

For instance though, as an EGF 1 kyu I could play even games with Japanese 5 dan’s when I visited Japan. I was able to win a two stone handicap game

@zxtremedemon

I think that KGS is more accurate for me (im some 12k in ogs and 7k in kgs).

I think that’s also ok too Each system is doing its own thing for its own player pool, and they don’t necessarily match other unrelated systems.

My feeling is that if OGS is a popular western server then the correspondence between AGA and EGF ranks with OGS ones starts to become self reinforcing at some point. What I mean is, if people learn to play go on OGS and play their first tournament, they might give an OGS rank as their entry level. It might get slightly adjusted then as the EGF, AGA and OGS ranks probably don’t align well the further you go away from 1dan, but still there will be some correlation between them as more people come into the system with OGS ranks say.