Welcoming beginners and OGS rating system (A compendium)

Humble rating? Maybe it’s working like that altough that’s not what beginners reported.

That reddit thread makes quite clear how an absurd solution is given to a self generated problem. I mean you don’t propose a match with a 6k to a beginner when the goal is to avoid a 6k sandbagger to get that match. Absurd.

Just one more voice.

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That Reddit post, if we’re talking about the one just linked, is somebody complaining that they have to play [?] ranked players.

No matter where you put a singular entry point somebody will have to play these [?] ranked players in order to rank them in the global pool, and likely somebody will complain that they don’t want to play these players.

I think the solution is just don’t play them if you don’t want to, but if you want to help the odd player get a rank sometime then do play them and thanks :slight_smile:

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It has been demonstrated that we don’t need a unique entrance point for the adjustement to work.

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— partly for me becuase I’d like to be able to find these again at some point :slight_smile:

Generally reading this post in regards to what’s wanted for a rating system to do on OGS is quite interesting.

Re:

I don’t think it’s been demonstrated sufficiently if I’m honest.

It was discussed here

and @Vsotvep did some simulations

but I wouldn’t call that sufficient to say how a system of millions of players might behave when only simulating the ratings of about 5, even if one “player” doing something like rating reseating etc might simulate many different players.

I mean it’s probably true that the individual ratings adjustments might not care at what rank people enter at, if we focus on that point, but think of the system of a whole - what problem would you want to address and what does adding many entry points solve?

For instance if we have one set of 12kyu players that dislike playing [?] ranked players, imagine we had entry points of 1d, 5k, 10k, 15k, 20k and 25k for example, we will now likely have 6 different sets of people that will make Reddit posts saying that they don’t like playing with new players that have chosen their ranks at these entry points.

That doesn’t solve the recent Reddit post problem I don’t think for instance.

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Well i am mainly concerned by the entrance (welcoming) of beginners.
So i don’t have big opinion for other levels as there could be much more debates (and OT anyway)

One answer to them is play unrated. Well that’s what i advise when they come to ask here what to do. But that’s a mere solution as this is not the usual way, even beginners expect a rating system to work in their interest.
Should i remind that even if they restrict their ranks, rated games with other beginners will be denied as being too far from the entrance point?? How incredible.

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I’m also interested in beginners, but my opinion is that the current system isn’t that bad

It feels like experienced players believe that the new player experience is bad, and maybe since I don’t read reddit that much maybe there’s more beginners there saying that they don’t like the rating system or something (or maybe they don’t like the scoring or other separate issues). I don’t think the system isn’t working however.

It feels like you just have a warped view of how you think things are, as opposed to how they actually are?

^^ here’s a new player, beginner, they lost their first game to a 12kyu, they could match with a 22kyu on their second game and 25kyu on their third for example, and then they started winning games after that too. It wasn’t that bad of an experience from talking to that user.

Similarly

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Not an old thread, it’s been posted today.

The issue here is having a single entry point, which means that if you happen to be at this rank you get faced with the entire pool of [?] players. You will likely either roll over your opponent or get rolled over, in any case not a pleasant experience for those involved, and the main solution proposed is to get better so you can escape the trap that is your current rank.

Of course if people were able to set their rank (or at least had several options), this would improve this issue by (i) splitting the pool of [?] players, and (ii) ensuring that most [?] players you face are not too far off your own level (there will of course be exceptions with people purposefully or not choosing the wrong entry point, but still better than all of them being forced to pick wrong).

A new entry for the compedium, interesting because i missed anoek position on this matter.

Well i am happy to see that quick correct rating by glicko, i hope it happens more often now. I still would favor a special entry point for beginners so that they dont walk through a discouraging experience. 3 games is still too much crushes for someone discovering.

You need a strong mindset and interest to stay playing when what you need is simply have fun and enjoy some fair games. Once in real life i crushed on even a chess player on even then he finally accepted 4 stones and then 9. He never came back.

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I mean that was one of the reddit solutions…

I don’t think that’s a solution even, it’s just saying that you might avoid this when you move upward.

There are threads of discussions about avoiding [?] players

and I agree with the sentiment of

Whether we should have a button that allows you to turn off match ups against [?] ranked players I don’t know. It might be better for the people that just get their games cancelled, and for the people cancelling the games. However what if a large fraction of people around the entry point turn this setting on and new players just can’t really get games because no established players want to play them?

The thing is though, there’s not guarantee at all that anyone knows how to set their own rank correctly.

Realistically people will either choose some rank they have on another sever, maybe they’ll pick 5d from a fox rating, or 10kyu from a pandanet rating which probably won’t correspond well to OGS ranks, or, and I imagine more likely, they’ll tend to underpick their actual rating - The logic being that you don’t know exactly what your rating is on this server compared to another, and if you underestimate you’ll get some easier games and rank up, while if you overestimate it might not be a whole lot of fun on the journey down.

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I can understand this perspective of course, but even if you had the ideal first five games, whatever that looks like, we’d still have large dropoff. I think Go and these types of abstract games in general probably just aren’t for everyone as much as we’d like it to be. People try it and then they move on and maybe they find other types of board games, multiplayer ones, or dice ones, or card based ones that they like better, or they find some other hobbies :slight_smile:

I think actually finding an equal matchup between two new players, complete beginners, would be very difficult in reality. If you had two new people turn up at a go club, I wouldn’t necessarily expect them to be evenly match, one might beat the other 100% of the time. One new player might be say immediately at the OGS 25kyu level, because surrounding and capturing and things make sense, while another might be more at the 30+kyu OGS level.

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And when you want to sandbag some “?” players for fun, they’re nowhere to be seen. What be cool to have restriction by deviation or at least some script to notify me when there’s “?” offer so we can make a team of beginner hunters.

That’s what I always recommend. Lots of problems with pointless invasions, bad manners, scoring mistakes can be solved by just getting good. Except for cheating.

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Sure, i got that too. And most clubs have a limited amount of players to chose to play with.

But that’s not a reason to not have a system trying to bring the most fair possible matching and instead to bring a systematic deny of it.

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I’m not sure I would say anyone is systematically denying it.

You can’t know how good a player is until they play a game, they can’t play a game until you pair them with someone, and you can’t know if it was “fair” unless they either get an established rating (by playing more games), or they play the same person over and over and see if they were equally likely to win or lose.

Let’s park the idea of multiple entry points for the moment, because I’m not sure that actually solves any problems, and doesn’t make more and even similar problems.

If everyone comes in at a single entry point the people at that rating are always going to be the ones with an issue on average I would believe. You don’t want the [?] would be 1d’s playing people too low, and you don’t want the [?] would be 25kyu’s playing people too high, so it makes sense to me that the starting point should be somewhere in the middle. if 1d is about 1900 and 25kyu is about 600 say, then the “middle” is about 1250. Now we agree that 1500/6kyu seems a bit too high, but these new players can play as though they entered a good bit lower, since they’re supposed to be treated as 11.9kyu/ 1150.

So this seems to make sense to me, it’s somewhere in the middle, sure we could shift it up or down a bit, but I don’t think it would make a big difference to how it “feels”.

Still this entry point issue is not unique to Go, I’ve seen it in rts games on pc too, with an elo system that ends up being very volatile around the entry point, and I’ve seen it in other modified elo systems in other abstract games on other servers where there’s ranges of ratings, where, if you’re in there it’ll be hard to get an even/fair game, but much easier once you get out of that range.

Even with Fox server having multiple entry points there’s still big issues I would argue, since if you’re 3dan, the highest entry point say, you don’t know whether you’ll be playing a real 3dan that ranked up and stays at that level, or a pro player or some sandbagger or someone that’s doing a ranking up to 8/9dan challenge with a new account :slight_smile: So I’m pretty sure even the 3dan range would be very volatile and hard to get even games at on Fox, unless you’re very picky (reject new players or players on win streaks, which I’ve seen people do), but that’s not that different to what’s being discussed here.

Anyway the good thing with glicko2 + humble rank, (aside from other concerns), is that it can adjust fast. You can be at 6kyu/11.9kyu and play against 25kyus after only a couple (two!) of games, and you could equally be provisionally seen as 2kyu after a few games which was kind of one of the points being made here

I’m not sure I see that as a bad thing?

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I’ve not followed everything but it seems to be that the problem is less about about the new players experience but rather that of the established players around the entry point.

What if ? players were specifically not matched with people near the entry point?

So if the entry point matching is usually 12k then ? players are preferentially matched with 16 to 14k and 10 to 8k - i.e. more than two stones away from the entry point. Then rather than poor established 12k players having to face all the ? players, the ranges either side of that face half the ? each. And presumably raw beginners will still lose and stronger players new to OGS will still win so the new player experience shouldn’t be so very different from what it is now.

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Sorry your last answer is mostly off topic. We are talking about welcoming beginners.

Anyone? Guess you misunderstood, i mean the OGS system. Systematically, OGS will deny you to play an even rated game with another beginner. Until you get crushed a few times.

My view is not warped. I answered lost beginners here and in the main chat explaining how to proceed using unrated option.
The fact is that i never recommended OGS for all the beginners i took into the game anf i won’t until this warped system will change.

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A couple of thoughts about this: aren’t raw beginners going to get crushed pretty much whoever they play? And how can a raw beginner tell the difference between “getting crushed” and “just losing”? I suspect they can’t really.

I also think that if you are new to go and expecting that you can sign up, play a game and win that first game then probably go is not for you.

So if the solution is to have an entry point at around 20k, then I guess beginners still get crushed and new players who know what they are doing crush established players around that rank (which seems to be the complaint in the Reddit post - “I’m always getting beaten by ? players”)

So multiple entry points? Compulsory bot games? Just remove the +9/-9 ranking game limit? What are the options we can consider?

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I strongly disagree. There is no warning (or good ways to warn) that you will lose. I’m quite a “gamer” and in most cases i won’t do so badly as i did with go in my very beginning. So yes i could have think that i could win my first game afterall, why not? To give yourself a chance to win your first game is not a sign that you should give up at all.

I think even if you don’t meet a full beginner to play with, your experience will be very different if you play someone not so far away as a sdk. There is a real fun side, exitement and chance to win there, experimentation and grabbing the basics that both are sharing at the same time. We got very strong AIs but we don’t have real good weak bots, sharing the same thirst of understanding and commiting the same popular mistakes, there is no other alternatives.

It’s very simple. Each time a new account is created, ask first if you are a beginner. Keep today’s system if not, give a different entry point if you are (23, 25, i dunno exactly)

For sandbagger (against low ddk) detection, that system could help too. No way that there is no intention of sandbagging if you declared yourself as a beginner. A automated statistic tool could even be added to warn the mods (see that beginner winning all… )

Just make sure that there will be no confusion between newcomers and beginners.

Enumerate cases like
You have a rating somewhere else under 20k
You played very few games before
You never played a game
You never heard about ko and seki.
You still need most of the time some help to finish the game
(…)

In short, are you a beginner? Yes No

Disclaimer: welcome to OGS, making your first experience here more enjoyable for everyone is our goal. If you doubt to be a beginner, please use the NO answer.

Another thing is that we could have a welcome to beginners page after that, with appropriate links to OGS tutorial maybe some forum threads and few more very basic puzzles, and the go resources page. A present yourself link to the chat or in the forum. A feedback link. A link to chat with the mod who is online (List not exhaustive)

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Not at all, back in my day when OGS started us at the bottom it was completely possible to win your first game.

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No. If they play each other they can’t both lose.

Here’s my first games on KGS as a 30k, I won some.
https://www.gokgs.com/gameArchives.jsp?user=uberdude&year=2005&month=8

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Ok so the problem is initial matchmaking rather than the rating system necessarily. As per

If it were possible to match beginners only with each other (assuming there are enough of them ofc but I guess it’s a virtuous circle) regardless of nominal rating we’d get this result with no change to the rating system.

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