Pempu-level server flooding incoming…
This avoids the main point and latches onto a point that I offered with enough caveats to dispel the notion that I would disagree with the obvious statement that playing is needed for improving go. I should be the one asking you if you are being intentionally obtuse. In fact, I made it quite clear that you were making an invalid leap (or just intentionally obfuscating the issue) by somehow trying to defend your claim that people should play live games to improve reading by pulling the old switcheroo and replacing it with the argument that people should play live games to improve at go in general.
Baseless claim my flat bottom. Yeah, I suppose it’s baseless if you start with perverse assumptions. If you’re thinking so long and so hard about each go problem that the activity is an unbearable burden on your spare time, then you’re doing problems that are too hard for you! Put down your pride and do easier ones.
Go problems are all independent of each other? Most problem collections are actually organized so that they are not. In fact, sometimes the problems become easy very quickly because each series of questions often shares a theme. Sure a game has a “natural flow”, but most players (I include myself in this category) don’t know what the natural flow is and what we perceive to be the natural flow is mostly wrong. It is doubtful that even players as strong as 5 dan know what the natural flow of a game is. Now, most of us perceive a flow that feels natural to us, but that’s all that is: Perception not reality. This is so vaguely defined. You’re probably Go Seigen posting in disguise if you truly understand the natural flow. The so-called natural flow is often easier to correctly identify in many problem books.
Again, I hate to repeat myself, but if you’re so pressed for time that you barely have enough to play a few moves a day, then you’re not going to be playing enough games to learn by experience anyways. This isn’t rocket science. How is someone who plays 10 games a year going to learn much by experience?
Totally right. Except not. I’m making no such assumption. Nice straw man. You might be confusing yourself with contortionist attempts to square the circle. According to your own words, Person A has a rank based on playing with analysis. If Person A’s opponent can use analysis, Person A can do so as well. Person A’s stated rank still matches the quality of his moves. The quality of play that A’s opponent expects will match A’s rank. This is not even an interesting scenario.
In fact, the uneven matches that you are so afraid of arise in the supposedly “ingenious” solution you have proposed. If Person A (whose server rank is based on self-selecting into matches with analysis enabled) enters a tournament with analysis disabled, then the quality of his moves will drop below his server rank. If his opponent’s server rank (equal to Per son A’s) is based on self-selecting into matches with analysis disabled, then the match will be uneven.
Hmm, come to think of it, the uneven matches you are so worried about would actually occur the least if analysis availability was uniform (one way or the other) across all correspondence games. Perhaps you may want to switch your position to taking away options?
At any rate, people’s ranks are not magically decided by the ghost of Sai uploading your “true skill” to online-go.com. As hinted above, people self-select into the games they want to play. Their ranks will be based on the distribution of game types they self-select into. For example, I’m terrible at blitz, but I also almost never play blitz. If I played a lot of blitz, then…I would probably still suck at blitz, but my rank would decrease enough to reflect my suckitude at blitz. In other words, the fact that a person’s server rank and preferred game setting are jointly determined means that it’s really a waste of time to worry about people whose ranks are based on using analysis mucking up matches with analysis disabled (or vice versa).
Simply put: Their ranks became based on analysis because they played games with analysis! They won’t be joining games without analysis often enough to cause significant problems. If they did, then their ranks would change!
Let’s not develop a persecution complex. It’s not always about you, especially if you are not directly addressed in that part. Hence “rant” in a public forum, not a dispassionate 1-on-1 chat.
The part about people who don’t like analysis was a rant. The parts of the post that concerned you were (yet again):
It just so happens that I have seen others (yeah, not you!) using these fallacies to argue that analysis should always be disabled since the merger. You can consider my post an answer to your specific statements AND others who use similar statements to support a conclusion that you yourself do not.
Lastly yet another rant:
I really like the new OGS. The interface is nice. People are friendly. Developers are active. Admins aren’t crazy. The tutorial is brilliant. Live games and sweet variation sharing in kibitz. That said, there is one thing that I do miss about the correspondence-only OGS: Ranks truly did not matter. In some sense, this is something that we should accept when games are played over many months. The strength of a player’s moves may change dramatically during a single game as he studies over many months. Improvements in strength took too long to be reflected in ranks because correspondence games take a long time to finish. The same went for decreases in strength due to age, absence, new children, interruptions in study or whatever.
Yet, I rarely heard a peep out of the old OGSers about ranks. Strong players accepted the fact that games against weak players was a price paid to get games against players stronger than themselves. Furthermore, the time commitment needed to play a weaker player in correspondence is way lower than the time commitment needed to play one in a live setting (where you have to sit in front of the screen until the game ends). Once you have a big enough lead, you just play obvious moves and concentrate on the more interesting games.
Weak players were happy to get games against strong players as opportunities to learn. Matched against someone several ranks higher in the first round of a tournament? The correct response: Hellz yeah! What a great learning opportunity. Wrong response: Boohoo. I expected a more even match up. In many smoke-filled Asian clubs, a weaker player often had to pay if he wanted a game against a stronger player. Getting such a match for free seems like a great deal.
A recent pet peeve of mine has been seeing rank-related whining pop up in the chat nearly once a day like clockwork. I suppose that this thread was the last drop that made the dam break. Rest assured, the rant-y parts had less to do with you than it may appear.
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I do realize that I’ve been a just a tiny bit (just? haha) snarky. I apologize if the snark is too much. It only comes out when pet peeves are involved.
I think I’ve already said more than I usually say in several months, so I’ll leave things as they are. Feel free to have the last word.