Recognising and fully implementing ranks beyond 25 kyu

I have much less experience with adults, but I taught some parents who were interested (some have more than one child in the go club).

From this (limited) experience, I feel that adults progress much more quickly than children (in terms of number of games played, not in calender time, because the parents play much less frequently).

Most parents reach 30k after only a (few) dozen games on small boards (if they keep playing), but only the fastest children progress that quickly.

One difference is that the parents ask questions and they want to understand how things work. They are better at logical reasoning and learning actively.
Young children have a much shorter attention span, so I only teach them a little bit at a time and they need much more repitition than adults. So it’s a slow process. Adults learn much more efficiently.
With children it seems more like a process of gradual assimilation, learning happens almost by accident. Most children prefer to just play and learn by trial and error.

Many children do seem to like solving tactical problems (if they are easy enough), but after solving a few, they have enough of it and prefer to go back to playing.

9 Likes

With the recognised ranks extended to 35k such a user (30k in your example) would enjoy the same choices as the rest of us. ie. They could still seek a no-handi game if they wished using custom game or quick-match prefs.

There is a definite question mark over how well auto-handi will work below 25k but that seems to be an ongoing issue throughout the whole OGS ranking system anyway and so I count it as a separate issue and as mentioned above, players can choose to seek auto-handi games or not.

That might be part of it in terms of being able to perceive progress but for me the larger issue is allowing 35k-25k users full access to OGS functionality in terms of match-making, viewing their progress, viewing opponents level and even custom tournaments.

Bollocks. If this were the case they would all end up with around the same Glicko2 rating.

This deserves thought. It might be worth adjusting defaults based on rank even though people can ofc change these settings themselves.

Unfortunately 25k and lower players are even less represented on forums than the average. I see an advantage to OGS in effectively offering more of it’s features to more members, in this case those ranked below 25k who are often newer to OGS.

Currently tournaments with NO rank restriction still show a 25k-9d range limit.That would/should change as part of this.

A monster that OGS should slay! (or at least make irrelevant).

Irrelevant. It typically takes longer to get from 9k to 1k than it does to get from 19k to 11k. This is simply diminishing returns. Some people will never reach 1k, some will never reach 11k and some will never reach 21k but that doesn’t mean they can’t enjoy Go. And enjoy OGS fully.

11 Likes

Here it is again (ty flovo and S_Alexander):

I can’t give exact numbers from this chart but there is a significant % of users below 25k(~10%), a fairly small % below 35k(1.5%) and for comparison less than 1% above 4d.

These figures predate CV-19 which may have changed things significantly, probably in favor of the proposal.

13 Likes

Nothing really changed over time. New accounts follow a similar distribution.

10 Likes

Has there been any sort of decision or anything regarding this topic by OGS staff?

2 Likes
3 Likes

That was 3 years ago, and I’m pretty sure there are enough convincing arguments here that the matter is worth revisiting.

14 Likes

Also this is a very important point that should be taken into consideration. Most new players won’t even know how to ask or what to ask for regarding this matter.

12 Likes

People complain about it all the time on discord. It’s actually the biggest topic on the OGS channel… “Why can’t I rank up past 25k?”. “why are 25ks so strong?”.

16 Likes

Thankyou for the link flovo.

  • As noted above, it also makes it harder for new OGS users to perceive their progress.
  • It makes it harder for any player in that category (below 25k) to view the relative strength of an opponent who is also below 25k.

25kyus

  • It prevents those in that category from using quickmatch prefs or custom game prefs to the same extent as other users. eg. a 26k player can’t specify
    24k-28k for opponents in a custom game.
  • Similarly, custom tournaments can’t be arranged where either or both of the rank restrictions would be below 25k.

Disclaimer

10 Likes

@Kosh opened a ticket for this issue on GitHub, so if we don’t get a reply here there should at least be on there at some point :slight_smile:

7 Likes

To be honest, I think the timing of this is such that this topic is not high on the agenda.

At the moment, the top priority is restoring ranks after the disconnect drama - work which will bring other much needed improvements (such as the ability for moderators to annull games more "the most recent ones, hopefully).

I think that when this is out the way, it might be a better time to ask again…

4 Likes

I will not let the opportunity to call it “The Cor-Corr Incident” go to waste.

For people with no imagination

(corona-correspondence)

7 Likes

So shall it be written, so shall it be done :sweat_smile:

4 Likes

Long time ago anoek said that he’s going to revisit ranks at some point.

5 Likes

Before I call, ‘Alea iacta est’, I think there is one more important point to make in favor of the proposal. I just hope I haven’t left it too late in the thread to be noticed…

Having a minimum ranking (ie. 25k) carries with it an implied judgement or standard. Perceiving this minimum, a new user is apt to think that they are expected to quickly surpass this standard or they just, “Don’t Get It”. They may even feel that they are not welcome at OGS!

I hope and believe that it is not the intention of OGS to portray an elitist attitude to new users but that is what we are in danger of doing. I think that is why I am so passionate about this issue.

I believe that Go can be played AND enjoyed across a wide range of skill levels with or without an active desire to improve. It is easy for those with a natural talent for the game to forget what it was like to regularly not recognise atari.

Frankly, I am more concerned with how new players feel at OGS than whether or not the auto-handi works just right, which ofc people will never agree on anyway.

Alea iacta est

Cookie

download

14 Likes

I happened across a possibly more useful TPK game history here:

https://online-go.com/player/737363/

Here is another person who was driven deep into >25k … down to 740 points (25k is about 1000 points).

They stayed there at 740 points (~34k ) learning stuff for about 20 games, and all these games were against other TPK.

About half of them were amy-bot beginner, 24k, which at first I thought spoiled the sample.

But then the person learned and started winning more than losing - including transforming from losing in a big streak against amy-bot beginner to winning against it.

On May 1 they were right in the balance, playing ~70 9x9 games with 50/50 win rate.

Then they clearly improved again and on May 2 they won many more than they lost - their rank climbing comensurately.

… and the whole time they have been showing up as “25k”. According to rank, they haven’t changed the whole time…


(I fixed up the actual numbers based on flovo’s info in the next post)

8 Likes

740 ≈ 34k and
1000 ≈ 25k

5 Likes

When I created the original thread, I incorrectly assumed that this was simply a cosmetic issue of correctly displaying the rank corresponding to the player’s Glicko2 rating. However, it turns out the reason it’s statically displayed as 25k is because ranked games can only be played against players with no more than a 9-stone rank difference. If the Glicko2 rating was accurately displayed as the corresponding rank, apparently the player pool for below-25k players to play ranked games against becomes far too small.

I joined OGS after learning the very basic rules and immediately got beat down to Glicko2 623, which IIRC translates to about 40k*. After that, it took me 106 games to reach “proper” 25k*, which roughly corresponds to Glicko2 1000. Here’s my rating graph from that period:

My current opinion on the matter: I agree that the best way to tackle this is to display ranks correctly and remove the restriction that non-handicap ranked games can only be played within a 9-stone rank difference. As someone else said, I’m sure Glicko2 is well-equipped to deal with larger rank differences.

*EDIT: This was prior to humble rank, not sure how these Glicko2 numbers would translate now as far as displayed rank.

7 Likes
  1. It looks like there are enough players below 25k to get games in a decent time even with ranks reaching as low as 35k. This is assuming, not most of them playing only bots.
  2. While glicko2 in theory works for any rank difference, it gets worse when too many games in a row are between players too far away from each other. I encountered some problems there when experimenting with glicko2 for myself.

Btw. I’d like to get rid of the kyu/dan ranks for range selection in even games and use ±glicko instead.

9 Likes