Ideally we could just test it mathematically here:
But that page seems to have a hard coded limit of 9 stones of handicap.
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Iirc, itâs fallen out of sync in other ways too
Itâs true, itâs strange, but we donât have to punish them for that. If they play against a human again, theyâll lose. Give them a lot of points.
If he wants to play like that, fine. If his goal is to be at the 20th dan level, that doesnât mean heâs 20th dan. Whatâs his goal? Is it to finish the game for the next game? If so, itâs a shame that he plays like that.
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Apricot is close to Shin Jinseoâs level, he is 3864, you are 3833, maybe you can play against him, good luck to you
I did not realise this existed, and some quick searching failed to throw up a description. Where can one find out more?
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Thereâs not much to know. Itâs the same as the âmainâ site, but used for testing new features.
I guess important thing to know: it has a completely separate db, so you need to create a new account to join it, games wonât carry over to the main site etc.
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katago based ranking system is coming soon.
new player will only get rank if won vs katago.
playing vs human will not impact playerâs rank.
letâs play AI more.
What a strange idea.
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Maybe it makes more sense that you think.
If you play vs a bot of known strength, then for sure your own strength can be calibrated.
If you play vs a âsupposed humanâ, whoâs to say that youâre not actually playing vs an unknown AI anyhow, which tells us nothing about your rank⌠
We could stop hunting AI cheaters 
That would free up a lot of resource for feature developmentâŚ
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What if what interests you is playing humans, not bots?
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How about: play humans for interest, get rank vs a bot.
This even improves the fun of playing the humans, because you can do it without worrying about the effect on your rank. Get properly rank-matched games with humans that are even better because there is less motivation for the AI cheaters to be in that pool.
(Downside: you have to semi-regularly play a bot to maintain your rank)
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Sounds like the best advertisement for Fox Go server if OGS even hinted going in that direction
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Iâve never been there. Is that what they do? Thatâd be fascinating if trueâŚ
⌠oh, no, you mean
âeveryone will move to Fox, where they can get rank from every game vs humans and enjoy accusing their opponent of being an AI every time they loseâ to their heartâs content⌠got it ! 
That and I start to feel sick.
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We should be open to explore interesting new ideas
I find it interesting that the idea of ranking vs AI is less appealing than ranking vs humans-who-might-be-using-AI.
I also find it interesting that this little exchange/conversation suggests that weâd rather spend development resources trying to minimize humans-who-might-be-using-AI than bypassing humans-who-might-be-using-ai and then developing new features and fixing old bugsâŚ
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Itâs the same reason you donât use a sledgehammer to put in a screw. It might work, but you wonât necessarily be happy with the results.
People on average like playing ranked games against other people, thatâs why we go to tournaments in the first place. People want to feel theyâre improving vs other people, not vs bots which they may or may not be able to exploit (remember even Katago has blindspots like the adversarial attacks, and we had a user that could consistently exploit it).
I also donât think itâs equally likely for your opponent to be using AI at all ranks, I would assume you have a far higher chance once you get closer to the dan ranks than in the lower half of the kyus for instance.
So that particular argument for scrapping human ranked games doesnât make much sense for most of the kyu ranks I would say.
We also have some real examples of âranking vs a botâ in the form of the HJJ school and the feedback was that it wasnât good at all.
This would be in the context of a course where you do puzzles before eventually playing vs AI to rank up.
I donât necessarily believe even the human-like Katago nets or nerfed thinking ones, or ones just randomly being forced to make mistakes will necessarily be good to fine grain humans into individual Dan and kyu levels like we have now.
But I also would expect it to be not very fulfilling and probably people will cheat vs AI to get to the rank they want, for the same reason people always cheat: they have something they think they deserve and they do whatever to get it. Similarly players do cheat in unranked games, so it doesnât even solve the idea of people cheating vs humans. It only solves having to annul those games.
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Ah well, there goes that nice idea then 
Back to the cheat detection for me hi ho, off I go⌠it was a nice little what-if fantasy while it lasted 
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This is a real thing, like
but I think the better way OGS has approached it has been with a hide ranks feature (which might not be widely known), rather than removing ranked games vs humans
I think the reason a server like Fox could potentially have less of a OGA than say OGS is like the caveat to the fact that ranks adjust quickly on OGS. When you loss a game you immediately lose rating points, and more when itâs a bigger upset, so people will potentially feel that game to game on OGS.
On something like Fox, I expect it to be more so the critical promotion/demotion games that might cause some anxiety like if youâre within a couple of wins of a rank up or double rank up streak, or similarly on a losing streak to rank down or double rank down. But generally game to game it doesnât matter as much.
But there can be other factors too than just the rank, like the time settings you play that can factor in.
Not a direct comment on this, but kind of an observed behaviour from streams. I think when someone might suspect opponents can be likely to use AI, on Fox (but presumably on OGS too), one might check the players win history before playing the game. If itâs all wins, or specific to Fox that they recently ranked up, you might see people avoiding playing that opponent and cancelling the game.
I wouldnât necessarily want to encourage that sort of thing by making a win streak counter visible (imagine on the player name card), as we might see a rise in game cancellations. Itâs more of an observation on how peopleâs behaviour can adapt to the current situation on a server when theyâre motivated to play games regardless.
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Why not give different types of games different weights, like in real life ranking (like in EGF with different classes, and in East Asia, there are different sizes of tournaments that may or may not be able to rank players). Instead of all or nothing for ranked or unranked, games, giving serious tournament games full weights, while most âregular gamesâ a lot less weights, and even less so for vs AI games (AI can played a lot of opponents, so it would still be able to calibrate their rankings). Even, giving different groups different âratingsâ if they can govern their own players for their internal matches, and mods can focus more on the higher weighted ones.
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