An update to this point, I am actually one game away from winning all the games in my bracket and that final game is one where I am massively ahead. I guess that it further proof that using the “general rank” to calculate the brackets, instead of the appropriate sub-rank for the tournament’s time setting is not optimal.
A similar thing has happened to a lot of the tables of the tournament, by the way, where there is a player in the bracket that has won all or almost all games. The most extreme cases are these though:
The players in the brackets are all DDKs, except the two top ones that got all those wins and rose to 9k. However, their “correspondence rank” is 6.9k and 8.2k, respectively.
The 6.9k fellow shouldn’t have been playing versus DDK players and the 8.2k fellow had no business being placed in a bracket that had even a couple of 25k opponents in it.
It is not their fault this happened. This is the bracket they got, they played and they won (as was expected), but that certainly doesn’t help the balancing of the server rankings.
That also makes sense. I have never made a tournament myself, so I have never looked into on how those options work and I didn’t notice that setting, at all.
(Edit: there was a post 66 above mine, to which I was replying, which seems to be gone)
I would like to remind everyone that I have mentioned similar issues. To fix this I’ve created a second account for correspondence games only and I only use my first account for live games from then on. The differences between my rankings in different time settings is too big to be of any use in either finding a suitable opponent for a game or, as I see now in this case, entering a tournament. I appreciate all the effort that has been put in to create a balanced rank but to me it seems the result has serious flaws in practical, day to day use. But it appears to be working fine for the majority of players on OGS
Yeah I’ll have to look into it more, before I can really blame it properly. Like some of the top groups do look like they roughly group players by similar rank but way down there’s 10k and 23k in the same group regularly, so I’m not sure what that’s about.
I was chatting with Pianotorious on this topic, who pointed out that the ranks of bots they play appear to have declined.
They have played as one example doge_bot_4 over the last year, and (by filtering for just that bot) you can see in their game history the steady decline of that bot’s rank from 5-8k in 2024 to 10-12k now.
Similar with noob_bot_2: 8-9k in 2024, 11-13k now.
I know that bot-ranks are notoriously variable, but these do seem to be long-term trends…
Do these bots offer handicap games? If so, then maybe people take advantage of them like that.
The larger the handicap, the faster the game goes out of the “optimal scope” of the bot, so it is much easier to win, than the ranks would suggest. And this might lead to situations where the bot is “8k” in gameplay, but ranked at 12k in OGS, so when a 12k player goes to play a fair game against them, they get a bot that is 4 ranks higher.
Consequently, if an 8k player goes against the bot and has to give handicap to the bot, they are probably never going to win, either.
There is a potential problem there though – What I’ve found with some of the weaker bots, is that some of them play much better when they’re behind, so one gets the opposite effect: the handicap actually gets cancelled out a bit by the bot going into what feels like superboss rage-mode.
I am a high SDK player at best though (8k on Fox for ex), so I don’t entirely trust my own subjective experience here. It might just be deficiencies in my own play. But it does seem plausible, in the sense that local fighting is relatively “easy” for an engine to calculate, right? So if it decides to pull no punches when invading/reducing because it’s way behind overall…
Perhaps it will be useful if I share some example handicap games I’ve played against the currently high/mid-SDK strength bots.
(A loss, very typically what happens is that I get into a high stakes situation, lose a big group, and then the bot doesn’t seem to make any mistakes that might allow me to catch up): Pianotorious vs. Deutzia
One where I actually manage to hang on to the handicap advantage throughout:: Pianotorious vs. Deutzia
In this one – going off the AI analysis – the 6k bot never makes any significant mistakes, and needless to say I do: Pianotorious vs. Echinops
Here’s a non-handicap one where Kata_web, ranked 10k at the time (!) played near-perfect against me from start to finish: Freundschaftsspiel
It makes me wonder if, perhaps, there’s a pool of players who have learned – intentionally or not – how to manipulate these bots into situations where they play poorly? I’m guessing this is a known thing.
Edit, to add another point that’s been on my mind: Assuming bots don’t actually change their playing strength over time (ex. by storing game history or refining based on that?), I naively wish they would just have an established rating that didn’t change over time. Of course that wouldn’t work because then a slightly stronger player could “farm” win off of them almost indefinitely… Could players have an individually calculated RD against each bot they play, or something? That seems like the kind of thing that would just make the database explode in size, but maybe someone cleverer than me knows a way to accomplish it…
IMO, when handicap is larger than 3, bot games should be unranked. Most bots have been trained with even games. Low handicap games are not very different from even games, but bot may make unexpected moves in high handicap games.
Exactly, as a Dan player would not lose against a sandbagger with a fake 20 Kyu rank and lose 100 rating points. They suffer less from this issue.
I do and many others do too. Well, not that I am actually suffering but it is a bit silly.
we ll never get the opposite happening, unexpectedly winning against a dan and gain 100 points, so mid SDK to mid ddk ranks will deflate more than dan ranks. Like a slow leak.
Many people I have been playing correspondence games with over the years went from 5 Kyu to say 9 Kyu or so. I mean not just a few here and there, no, many of those who have been playing for years see their trending going downwards while not losing skills.
…then thought more about it after posting. If OGS popularity were growing, and stronger players were being attracted, that could also explain why sub-dans would be slowly trending down in a relative sense, while not losing absolute skill. It’s all very complicated; I doff my hat to those figuring it out.
I disagree, it’s not unexpected for amateur players to get weaker as they get older. It happens even if you play regularly, and especially if the hobby goes on the back-burner. If you make it so that every amateur always keeps the highest rank they achieved on an honorary basis, you get hyperinflation and the ranking system becomes meaningless.
I was randomly thinking about the bot ranks yesterday before sleep and I came up with an idea that might help. Maybe this idea is already in place, but as far as I know currently: a) playing with a bot opponent is vague, since their rank is easily swayed and you cannot be certain that you picked the correct bot for your strength/rank and b) People might use bots to manipulate their rank.
Since there is already the functionality where the website is counting how many games you have played against an opponent, like this:
The proposal is simple: a) Make the bot ranks totally fixed and representing the rank that they have been programmed to play, so that anyone challenging them has total clarity of the bot’s strength. b) Make the bots award or reduce ranking points only if the win/loss counter is within a plus-minus 3. For example:
Case 1: If you have won 25 times against a bot and lost 24 times, then in your next win or loss, you will lose ranking normally. Case 2: If you have 25 times against a bot and lost 18 times, then in your next win you will not get any points, but if you lose, then you will lose ranking normally. Case 3: If you have 25 times against a bot and lost 29 times, then in your next win you will get points normally, but if you lose, then you will not lose any ranking points.
This will create a staple of ranking in the bot section and reduce any big fluctuations in the overall OGS rankings that might be caused by people overplaying against bots.
If rank deflation occurs in the dan range, then deflation ripples through the kyu ranks, and vice-versa. So I think any post related to rank deflation in general is on-topic.
Some people use bots to inflate their rank, so the effect is that bot ranks decrease, making it harder for other people to win against those bots… I don’t know what the net effect is on the whole rating system.
Before writing this I checked and I had an earlier post in this topic about some relevant suggestion. I do not like to clutter the main page of the forum with new topics just for a suggestion, so I put it here since bots and the overall rank inflation/deflation has also been discussed in this topic as well, so I do not really think that it is really off-topic. I could be wrong though, so if it is, feel free to call a moderator to move it to the appropriate place.
That’s not my point though. In OGS there are bots for all strengths, so it is a general issue for any rank:
This one ranges from 6k to almost 3d but what is its actual/real rank?
The bot doesn’t improve or degrade, so there is no real reason for its rank to fluctuate.
I simply get confused because I don’t see where is the relationship?
Too many hypothesis around the bots, used by low ranked players with the reverse effect of what is supposed to be.
What is pointed here is getting a too high ranking by manipulating, which is the reverse as what OP wants. It would make more sense to me if dans players were manipulating to get some lower ranks, kind of sandbagging but which doesn’t seem to be the concern.
If OGS takes some decision against getting over ranked by playing and winning multiple times against a bot, then( if it is related to any kind of level) this would make the situation even worse as it stands
But if you think all this being fruitful, I ll be waiting for some coherent arguments related to the topic.
