Welcoming beginners and OGS rating system (A compendium)

[shinuito]

@Groin

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.

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 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

A small experiment on OGS new player ranking

I have seen various threads and people complaining about OGS ranking problems for newbies (especially @Uberdude 's compelling arguments on that issue ) and a lot of people posting a vast array of numbers on the issue and, I will be honest, I never really much cared about the whole thing since it is an executive decision that I couldn’t really go back and test and have an opinion on. However, after seeing that Baduk miracle exam I kind of wondered if I could have passed that exams and that maybe…

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

[teapoweredrobot]

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.

[Groin]

@Groin

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)

@shinuito

You can’t know how good a player is (…)

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

@shinuito

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

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.

@shinuito

@Groin

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.

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

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.

[teapoweredrobot]

@Groin

Systematically, OGS will deny you to play an even rated game with another beginner. Until you get crushed a few times.

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?

[Groin]

@teapoweredrobot

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.

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.

@teapoweredrobot

What are the options we can consider?

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)

[Allerleirauh]

@teapoweredrobot

aren’t raw beginners going to get crushed pretty much whoever they play?

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

[Uberdude]

@teapoweredrobot

A couple of thoughts about this: aren’t raw beginners going to get crushed pretty much whoever they play?

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

[teapoweredrobot]

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

Glicko-2 does not require accounts to start at 12 kyu. So why do we do that?

If match making is the problem, why fiddle with the ranking system? Glicko has no restrictions for match making.

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.

[stone.defender]

I suggested ability to cosmetically choose rank for new users
it will be technically [?], but will be shown as [20k?] or [2d?] to others
and if someone restricts rank of opponent to 20k-10k , then [2d?] wouldn’t be able to accept.

[KAOSkonfused]

@shinuito

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.

Exactly. And total beginners might even pick complete nonsense rank (even with an explanation next to the ranks). Btw, when I created an OGS account after not playing Go for 8 years(!), I though I must be weaker than I was before that long break, so if you would have presented me with ranks like 10k, 15k, 20k to choose from, I would have chosen 20k - honestly thinking that this would be closest to my “real” rank. But it then turned out that I actually was stronger than I had been before - more like 12 or 13k (before the big ranking “promotion”) - so I would have picked a wrong rank with the best intentions. And I don’t think I would be the only one with such a problem.

@shinuito

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.

This.

@Groin

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)

That is a cool idea, I like it!