Has there been a shift in the rank distribution? It seems that all my games are against low kyus or dans, rarely players from 25k to 7k.
In a sense.
New users are now assigned a rank band based on their response to a question about that, which means that there are probably more new-users who are in the lower ranks now as compared to being wrongly in the higher ranks (the whole reason for doing this 
)
I’m not sure that this explains your experience, it seems the opposite, except for the fact that now we also are less likely to have someone who is ranked mid-level by default challenging upwards to try to get their rank up. IE this motivation for wrongly ranked people in 25k-7k to challenge higher ranked players is lessened.
This possible explanation isn pure speculation on my part: the only fact is that there has been this change in new user rank assignment.
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thanks for the explanation. Also, do you know if the total number of players on OGS has been increasing or decreasing over the last year?
I know that it’s been increasing over the years, although I am not aware of numbers in the recent past.
Covid and the movie caused a big increase, there may have been a correction after that, I’m not sure.
The numbers that I can see (OJE use) imply this is the case.