Stronger dan players on OGS?

[BHydden]

@aesalon

bugs with countdown so playing in the last second is unreliable.

AFAIK this is only true for “simple” time. I’ve never heard of this being reported for fischer or byo-yomi?

@aesalon

Strong players like fast games. There are too many adjustments players have to make from the status quo that other servers have established that deter players from OGS.

We literally have a single button for blitz games. What more can we do here?

[aesalon]

@BHydden

We literally have a single button for blitz games. What more can we do here?

Remove 90% of the other options for ranked games. Nudge users to start using it more.

Why does OGS have to be the special server that offers 9 minute fischer start time + 12 seconds per move to a max time of 3 hours 30 minutes? What is the point?

More specifically, if I hit that button but don’t go through more advanced hoops. What am I getting? It is not transparent at all? Am I getting absolute, fischer, canadian, or byo yomi? Oh yeah I can hit “prefer byo yomi”. A user has to look through all this noise to find that and all that achieves is splitting the player pool. I could go on forever.

@BHydden

AFAIK this is only true for “simple” time. I’ve never heard of this being reported for fischer or byo-yomi?

I am surprised. I wish you would put some legwork in to find forum threads that I know exist but if you choose not to, then I will do it later tonight.

edit: actually, I didn’t even find the thread that I participated in and skipped over a few… but here are some:

Timing out glitch

Not sure if this is known to OGS or not. But have been timing out of blitz games a lot at the 3/4 second mark. Is this fixable or is this a prob with a non-client interface? Never had this problem with Wbaduk or KGS. Experienced it like 10 times at least. Non-blitz or people who do not skirt the line with byoyomi often will not know this unfortunately.

Lost by timeout despite playing move

Just lost this game as white. Time settings were 2 minutes per move. I submitted what should’ve been move 108, B2, with about 30 seconds to spare. Stone appeared on the board and I didn’t get any error message, like the “error submitting move” popup I’ve seen occasionally in the past. But a few seconds later, I lost by timeout. I was very surprised. At that point, the stone was no longer on the board. There must have been an error of some kind in submitting the move, but as the user, I wasn’t i…

Countdown skipping last second moves

I just played my fourth game in which I placed a stone at the last second, heard the sound and saw the stone on board and then the system suddenly removed the stone from the board and informed me I lost because of timeout. This has been consistently happening to my friends in my region using OGS also. I have a fairly good internet connection which doesn’t have any problems with streaming 1080p streams and such. Even if this is a ping/speed problem it is unfair that people with worse internet co…

[Civilian]

@BHydden

AFAIK this is only true for “simple” time. I’ve never heard of this being reported for fischer or byo-yomi?

I’ve got a rather regular error, that basically says: sorry there has been a transmission error (also in fischer and byoyomi) that takes a few seconds to resolve and would make blitz rather difficult
I can’t say for sure that it isn’t my connection, so it very well may be a personal problem. But it’s rather unlikely since I didn’t have any comparable trouble elsewhere yet

[BHydden]

@aesalon

here are some

First two are simple time control, which I already acknowledged above. (Though I’ve heard some reports that that is fixed for live games now too)

Third one includes at least one example of something similar happening in a byo-yomi game… but notably all 3 posts are from 2016… suggesting maybe it used to be a problem and has since been fixed?

[aesalon]

I know of half a dozen people with this problem and I’ve experienced it in about 3 out of the 15 games I played in the past year. You also have the guy who replied right above you though the times that it has happened to me and that I saw on Twitch streams (multiple occurances) did not have an error popup.

There was also a threat sometimes in 2021 and many other threads I skipped over from that 2016-2017 era. The fact is that these errors even if they didn’t still exist (and they DO 100% still exist) already deterred OGS’s player base and caused the problem th at you illustrated in your first reply to this thread.

The attitude of disbelieve and disregard that you are displaying might be a contributing factor to these players not offering feedback.

Edit: and your “counter” to disregard my feedback is horse**** as well: go look at the 2nd game posted inw that 2020 thread and see Time Control
Fischer: Clock starts with 3 minutes and increments by 30 seconds per move up to a maximum of 5 minutes.

I don’t feel that discussing with you ever proves fruitful so I am going to disengage. It would be kind of you to do some work yourself and invovlve people on the OGS team other than yourself if you want to stop trying to disregard my feedback.

[Groin]

@aesalon

Strong players like fast games.

Coming back to the time when KGS had strong players to watch playing that’s not absolutely true.
There were surely a preference for quick games but not always. As kibbitzer I didn’t enjoy watching these games. Very tiring, no time to talk, less quality…
Even if I discarded them, there were still enough slower games to enjoy watching.

Now i still think that offering what users are looking for is positive and fruitful.

I am no blitzer myself so i can’t talk about the current situation regarding bugs on the last seconds.
What i know is that OGS grew up from different grounds, basically from correspondance games, at the opposite side of the spectrum.
That can explain a lot like the taste of a majority of users for multiple options and some priorities in the design and development. Of course both sides would benefit to consider all the spectrum but i don’t think that OGS can become Tygem, or Tygem be OGS.

@aesalon

The attitude of disbelieve and disregard that you are displaying might be a contributing factor to these players not offering feedback.

Ok i am not going to interfere into this, just reminding that there are more as two users here trying to contribute and get ideas, so no need to go personal and losing face. Your both contribution are greatly appreciated, just keep it like this.

[Groin]

@Samraku

@BHydden

Plus reverse komi doesn’t really change your way of thinking, you’re just doing more of the same thing, so there is no stimulus to question your thought patterns.

I disagree. The higher the reverse komi, the more the stronger player must ask for and fight for, and the higher the reverse komi, the more the weaker player must choose their fights judiciously.

The advantage of the stones handicap is to start with an advantage made by the stones themselves which is more dynamic as to try to stay quite and chose simpler way or let say to get a good submissive attitude.
You ll have still to accept and be interested in what is influence and how to use it instead of just trying to cash, but this is a key fundamental concept to work on it. And you get quick chances to win even if you overdo it.

I enjoy freedom of choices, free placement of the handicap stones, reverse komi… I feel that traditional Japanese handicap has an advantage in terms of teaching (and winning chances for black) and it can be very rewarding to see that you can master a bit this not that obvious concept at first.

[jlt]

@Groin

the time when KGS had strong players to watch playing

So strong players also disappeared from KGS. Is there a common cause or are the reasons completely different?

[Groin]

Talking about KGS, because, forgive me, I wasn’t here in the old times of OGS.

Thirst thing to be clear is that we are talking about very small quantities of players in fact like a dozen of 9d a dozen of 8d, and a bit more around 6-7d … That was already enough to get a turn over and games everyday to enjoy. These players showed quite motivation to stay minutes waiting for an interesting pairing. Their matches were attracting lot of players and they had to stand some really awful or stupid comments at time, luckily mixed with nice insights and thankful attitudes. I was specially amazed by the difference of go strength in one stone only. How a 9d could “play” with a 8d, a 8d with a 7…

I would greatly appreciate views here from old OGS users as i don’t know if and how live games were existing and watched.

Why did they run away?
First i don’t think it’s because of how blitz is implemented, as it works well there in my opinion.
There were complains about kgs itself didn’t evoluate (not shared by everyone, some like it) and other about escape policy, moderating… Not sure but myself I don’t see potent harmness for these stronger players to stay coming.

I think it’s more global phenomenon. Stronger went to go over the language barriers and enjoy larger offers in the CJK servers. They feel less entertained, seeing less players watching the games. They suffered from the AI too, not accepting the concurrence of these cold novelties for the show. In fact KGS was very invested in these new technologies so rapidly we ll have to scroll down the list of games to find a human vs human one.

I stay interested to hear about OGS old times (and stronger players then)

Note that it’s focused on live games, Kibbitzing…
OGS has a community of strong players playing (mostly) correspondance games. We even have M. Redmond coming to play here regularly, and a few other pro too so the situation is not that bad.

[Groin]

If you ask me how to attract strong players if it’s really what you want to, I would say beyond blitz and handicap, at a higher level, this:

1. Quality. OGS is still having many imperfections and bugs to be evacuated.

2. Money. Put money on the table. Tournaments with good money prizes will always attract top players. Good environment for teaching too.

3. Kindness. Gentleman attitude and respect between each other stay essential. Please, share your sensei with us, tell him how good OGS is.

[jlt]

Some people don’t play on OGS simply because they are used to KGS or other servers. To make things change:

• organizers of IRL competitions can relay top tables on OGS and ask pros to make commentaries.
• organize online competitions on OGS.
• Get young players used to OGS with teaching and youth competitions, like here Équipe de France Jeunes

[Samraku]

@Groin

Money. Put money on the table. Tournaments with good money prizes will always attract top players. Good environment for teaching too.

Lichess tried this, and I got the impression it worked pretty well; does anyone know if this impression matches reality?

[gennan]

My impression from the Sitewide 19x19 ladder, is that the number of stronger dan players active on OGS has steadily increased during the past year. About a year ago there were some ~2-3k players between #5 and #10, but currently there are no kyu players above #18.

The typical level for places #1 to #10 is currently ~4-5d:

[Groin]

A strong and as efficient as possible policy against AI cheating is required.

[BHydden]

That can’t possibly be a requirement of dans playing specifically here because it’s a problem that every single server and national organisation is still trying to solve.

If you want efficient anti-botting, go play chess. Go doesn’t have it yet.

[Kaworu_Nagisa]

I had rivals throughout ddk and ask that I wanted to beat. Once I did and I hit Dan, I found myself asking “now what?”.

I didn’t want to try for pro, and I had already spent so much time and effort and money studying that going for anything higher didn’t make sense.

There really wasn’t anything to even motivate me to rank up once I hit Dan. My rank settled around 2D, and the glicko said I was 6 for some reason.

[Groin]

I said as efficient as possible.
I’m not asking for the perfectly working anti AI system.
If you want high dans you need to invest on this (time, money, research, responses when reported … ) and i don’t think that every place has the same interest in it.

[jlt]

Not so sure. Fox has many high dan players but is far from being without AI users.

[Groin]

There will be always trolls, misusers, AI cheating everywhere but that’s no reason to have some limitating policies and counters.
I dunno if fox is better or worse, i just say it’s an important thing to consider if a player will feel more safe here or there even if it still may happen everywhere. And i think it’s especially important in regard to the topic itself as the strongest are the most vulnerable to AI cheating.

[Groin]

Maybe if you were at 2d the lowest ranked in a room full of players you will have some motivation again?