Stronger dan players on OGS?

For what it’s worth, handicap is on by default in automatch, not off.

I agree with the point on analysis which should be disabled, and it’s a bit puzzling it is still not done.

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Sorry but I fail to see how rank matters in this decision. Did you mean to say “If the people making the decisions were try-hard go players …” ?

Edit: To be clear I don’t mean try-hard as a bad thing. I just don’t understand why people bring up rank here, in my opinion it does not matter in the decision making)

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Sure, I’m glad OGS didn’t just die when dmg wanted out. And the original creators Graham and Andrew were total beginners when they made OGS in the very beginning, so they took advice from more experienced go players. I was giving what could be considered another symptom of the point snakesss made that the priorities and culture of OGS are biased towards weaker rather than stronger players. Which is no bad thing, there’s more DDKs than high dans and being a nice place for Western beginners to pick up go is a good thing. If the few who reach high dan then go play on Fox because it’s easier to get a game there oh well, not the end of the world, but it’s what this thread is about.

Not that I think making analysis off or handicap on by default will suddenly make loads of high dans start playing here! The network effect already mentioned that there aren’t many strong players here because there aren’t many strong players here is far more important. Also that OGS is primarily a western community and there just aren’t that many high dans in the west compared to Asia.

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Rank is somewhat of a proxy for experience in the go community; perhaps some of my comments would be more accurately expressed as inexperienced vs experienced players rather than weak vs strong. So I would equally think that a 10k who had been playing for 10 years in a go club so spoken to lots of Go players, been to tournaments, taught beginners, played on other go servers etc to think analysis board in live games was not normal. And it’s possible a 1d who has never spoken to another human go player in his life and just ground it by playing AI for 20 hours a day for 3 months would think analysis is normal in live games. Is thinking you should read in your head (in live games, correspondence is different) being a “try-hard” in your opinion? Some people would call it “not cheating”!

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No, I was trying to express that - from my experience - casual players usually don’t feel strongly about turning analysis off, while many “try-hard” (or competetive, if you prefer) players prefer to turn it off. Rank may be correlated to how try-hard one is, but I don’t believe that it is causally connected to how one would make the decision in question.

Seems not fair to people who are not high ranked but nevertheless dedicated supporters of the go community, so I would prefer not to use this proxy.

I suppose those people have a very fixed idea of how go should be played. It’s not cheating if you view it as an option given to the players by the rules of the game. Certainly it’s a rules extention that does not favour one player over the other per se.

By the way why is correspondence a different thing? Once again I fail to see what difference it makes for this matter.

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Want to (re-)read 318 messages?

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That thread should be pinned lol

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It’s a 1k rather than high dan, but over on the recent reddit thread about not allowing analysis in ranked games I saw:

Fugu

1k

The fact that you are allowed to play ranked real time games with analysis on on OGS is why I play on IGS.

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Anyway the poll in the other thread shows that even among OGS users, a majority wants analysis disabled in live games.

Note: before reading these discussions in the forum, I wasn’t even aware that analysis was possible since it doesn’t exist on other servers, and I still forget its existence each time I play a live game.

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I don’t understand this. Strong players are experienced enough to understand the options and create custom games with analysis off.

Quickmatch, which is better suited to new users (and players in the middle of the rank distribution curve) anyway, is more inclusive with it on.

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Custom games isn’t the answer if we are talking about ladders and tournaments which are site created games with the default settings (back when I played that was pretty much all my games, correspondence yes so analysis on by default was fine but if there was also a superpower AI score estimator that would be a major turn off). Also fragmenting the player base makes it harder to find a game as aesalon pointed out. If you want more strong players you want them to be able to find a game quickly, and forcing them to fiddle with options and not use automatch goes against that.

Also maybe strong/experienced/ones-who-didn’t-grow-up-in-OGS players / that 1k guy value and respect the ability to read in your head and don’t want to be part of a community where that is discouraged. It’s a culture thing, and defaults establish culture. Maybe you don’t realise how weird it is if you’re used to OGS, but anytime analysis in live is discussed elsewhere there’s invariably someone learning about it for the first time who responds “what?! How is that even a thing?”, this reddit thread no exception. It’s a bit like if Americans thought American football wasn’t a different game to regular football aka soccer and they just added a minor change that you are allowed to pick up the ball and rugby tackle people and then act all surprised that the soccer players don’t want to play with them.

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That’s a matter of tradition. Before the internet there were live games on a real board and correspondence games. In all live games using anything to help you (like using a second board for analysis) was obviously forbidden. In correspondence games using analysis boards and literature was always allowed. Internet live games are the followers of real board live games, while internet correspondence has largely replaced snail mail (fax, phone, whatever) correspondence. So it’s not far fetched to say the rules should follow the traditions.

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This I agree with because frankly I can’t see how any player can make significant use of it with live settings anyway. At best you might use it to visualise what you’ve already read out when you’re feeling too tired to think straight.

My own site usage strongly suggests that players gain no advantage from it whatsoever because I have an alt that is used for quickmatch only. Analysis is enabled, I don’t use it at all and yet my quickmatch account is fully one rank higher than my main account (which uses custom settings that suit me perfectly).

I think those who cite OGS’ live analysis as a reason for using another site are being superficial and probably disingenuous.

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It’s true that it is inconvenient to use analysis in a live game (with common parameters choices, a live game could go over hours).
Now strong players are strong… at go. Not in variants for which they can have a strong distrust. If you went strong using your brain, you will search places who play the same game, not a place with analysis on.

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I doubt the analysis tool is a big factor. Fox also had the analysis and SE on as default.

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Fox has analysis board? I know it has a decent but not AI overpowered SE, though isn’t that disabled in games people can bet on i.e over 7d iirc?

Just did a fast matching on Fox. The analysis board is disabled but SE is on. I’m not very sure about this, but I remember Ke Jie used SE playing some other pro during his stream.

If I remember correctly, before they implemented that fast match feature the default when you request a game is analylsis on. I’m pretty sure hanayeol used that sometimes in his stream.

And can people bet on 7d games? At least I don’t see any bet on my 7d games.

Over 7d so 8d and up iirc. Probably you can pay fox coins or something to get it nevertheless.

I’ve never seen an analyse board on fox, but then I’m not Chinese so didn’t explore every button and just stick to the workflow I know and need of automatch.

So here we have a suggestion, write everything in chinese only :rofl:

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If you are using the English client, it’s in the bottom right, next to the Estimator and Quit. I too wasn’t aware you could do that on Fox until I saw it in Hanayeol’s stream.

I just tried negotiating games using two of my own accounts. The analysis board is enabled and I can’t find a way to turn it off lol. What a weird server.

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