It’s in Game Information
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Amazing! I’m gonna clear out some reviews with this super secret delete feature! I would never have found that, thank you!
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Re: Review Culture again
One thing I feel KGS also does well is it broadcasts reviews of games. It can clone a review of a live game (like OGS can), but, with the difference that it can show up in the KGS rooms that its in, but even more interestingly also in the active games list.
I know OGS has a notification banner thats fine to link to reviews too, but imagine if important reviews showed up in a place like the Games page. Imagine if Michael Redmond or Yeonwoo, or any of the European Pros were doing a review or lecture and it would show up in a specific place, and would focus people towards the review/demo boards feature (assuming the reviewers wanted that to happen/show up of course). KGS does have a fairly regular schedule of lectures from pros, which get broadcast to the active games page.
At the moment, and for the next 7 weeks I believe, the Irish Top 8 tournament will be broadcast on KGS. The games are being played in the Ireland room, but the review is being Broadcast is in the active games list for everyone to watch and comment.
I don’t think the reviewer is showing variations (or planning to) but just kibitzing and encouraging commentary.
I’m sure something like that would also work fine on OGS, just chatting and even sharing variations in the game chat of course, but it doesn’t really encourage the review features in any way (I guess we’re trying to find out how to do that 
).
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Hey speaking of broadcasting, I didn’t even notice this Q&A on a demo board/review that was being bannered 
It seems like a cool idea to do regularly
This move would have given even Shusaku red ears. 
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I play mostly against the top-rated bot now, because it is kind of fun to know that no matter what I do I will lose and because when I return to playing games with people having the same rank I usually win my first game or two
By the way, I like 9x9 games because they fit into a busy schedule. The standard 9x9 komis for bots are sometimes/frequently messed up, so I force playing as white to give myself a slight edge due to the incorrect default komi values for 9x9. This also works nicely against human 9x9 players.
Also, black doesn’t really have much of an advantage for moving first on 9x9, remembering that the perfect winning strategy for 9x9 is still unknown. People assume that playing on the center intersection is best, due to the symmetry, but we don’t know that for sure, and I have doubts. Anyway, giving white a large compensation on 9x9 is really unjustified, in my experience (it is undoubtedly justified at the higher dan and professional rankings). That is, unless white always plays the second move on a 1-1 point, for some reason. Then the komi is more than fair.
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LOL - you could search the forums for this debate, and find people with the strong opposite view.
These opposing views seem to balance out, telling us that it is about right.
If you see someone doing that, please report it. It is not allowed (rank manipuilation). Similarly early passes to “even things up” are not allowed.
Just to chime in (maybe a poll would be appropriate?): I play bots because I don’t get other live games at my rank. No other reason.
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the perfect winning strategy for 9x9 is still unknown. People assume that playing on the center intersection is best, due to the symmetry, but we don’t know that for sure
This is an interesting point. The largest board that I’m aware has been (weakly) solved is 7x7, but I can only find English-language information about solutions up to 5x5. Tengen is known to be one of the optimal moves on this board (see gif below showing a perfect game, ie. that there is no way for White to live).
However, bots – iirc – consider that tengen openings lose one or two points on the 19x19 board, So this suggests that tengen becomes a suboptimal move somewhere between 8x8 and 19x19, but we have no way of saying exactly when.
My bet would be that tengen is an optimal move on 9x9 but not the only one. The more interesting question to me is whether it’s still optimal on 13x13, where my suspicion would be that it isn’t.
This whole discussion has made me wonder how the 11x11 board plays.
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I remember playing and reviewing more on KGS back when there was that Review Culture, and I tried paying attention to what feels so different about the chat after a game on OGS. Regardless of more and better features, there’s something subtle about the social aspect that’s different. So I recently ended a game and looked to the side, and noticed that the default browser view doesn’t list the users “present” so it wasn’t so clear that my opponent was still “there”. So there’s less emphasis on player and spectator presence.
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Playing the second move at the 1-1 point is not rank manipulation. It is an attempt to give the black player a handicap. Anyway, it was a joke that you didn’t get.
Whenever there is a controversy about an issue, it shows that the issue is not simple and that there are two sides to consider thoughtfully.
Doesn’t it show the number of players beside the chat? Or do you mean that somebody could just have the window still open but not paying attention?
You can see if you’re opponent is still there by checking the green light on their profile icon at the top of the game, but again I suppose they could be in another tab or doing something else away from the computer.
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Bugcat, thank you for your interesting and thoughtful contribution. As AI methods continue to improve, I believe that proving the winning strategies for larger boards will eventually become practical. AI is needed since an exhaustive branching search even at very high speeds would take more than all the time in the Universe.
If current speculations are correct, a quantum mechanical computer might be capable of doing such a proof quickly. But it would also factor large primes quickly, eroding much of the encryption that makes our Internet a bit secure. So I, like some others, choose to believe that such predictions will never happen, that there will be severe and unanticipated problems with such speculation. We shall see; it should only take a few more years to find out.
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Doesn’t it show the number of players beside the chat?
Yes, it shows the number of players, but not who they are, so you don’t know who the spectators/kibitzers are at a glance, or even if the player is still in the room. On KGS it listed the names, and that simple thing made it feel like there was more of a “presence” of the other user(s). It felt more like a virtual room.
Oh I see what you mean by default view now, that it is closed rather than open. You can just click it to open it though, and it’ll show the names and ranks etc.
Maybe that could be a feature request to have it open by default.
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The correct way to give a person a handicap is via the handicap system or custom komi.
We encounter players doing this (passing or playing passing moves) enough for it to be not a joke: where it’s suggested, we need to point out that it is not welcome.
It is rank manipulation: it is an action that deceives the ranking system, and thus other players, about a player’s rank. That is why it is not welcome.
Yes, definitely! This one has amazingly persuasive looking arguments for both sides!
Here is the debate that has raged since 2014 - happy reading & considering
Eugene The attitude that passing or playing on a 1-1 point to give a handicap point to the opponent is illegal or unethical or whatever is very unfortunate, since here on OGS it is sometimes needed. I have played games where my opponent forgot to or didn’t know to select a komi or a handicap, and I had no easy way to correct the situation but to do one of these two actions. My memory is not good enough to reconstruct the occasions when I’ve been forced to do this, but I assure you that nothing unethical was intended.
As for what constitutes a fair komi: no general rule can possibly be correct because, in my experience, it depends on the rankings of the two players and the size of the board in ways that appear very difficult to analyze. Certainly any simple rule having to do with the number of intersections on the board, or similar, will be incorrect. At my poor ranking, playing someone of similar ranking, I need the komi to be 4.5 or so. I imagine that a professional 8 dan playing another will need about 8.5, as a guess. I’m very much in favor of automatic komi, but only if it can be computed fairly for both players.
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I second your posting! I think that everyone interested in komi at OGS should read Komi needs correction on 9 x 9 . The statements made in that posting are in accord with my experience playing many 9x9 games here with automatic or standard komi, whatever it is called. It is far easier to win as white, which is unfortunate for all the beginners who feel more comfortable as black, thinking that moving first gives them an advantage!
In that case, it’s great that you raised it and I had the opportunity to point out that it is not welcome here.
If you have realised the game settings are not appropriate at the commencement of the game, you simply cancel it - that is in fact what the initial time is for: to review that the opponent and overall settings are indeed OK.
You can cancel without penalty, and set up a correct one.
Passing or passing moves amount to sandbagging (pretending you are weaker than you are), which is second only to escaping as the most complained about thing.
Hmm - I wonder whether you only read the original post, and not the discussion that follows?
As you and I agreed - it is a complex issue that needs to be considered thoughtfully.
My experience of that thread is that I read the original post and thought “wow that person nailed it” then watched in amazement as I was persuaded of the opposite opinion by the following discussion.
In particular, the maths in the initial post is refuted.
Further discussion on that topic should go in that thread.
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I admit that sometimes I’ll take a rated 9x9 game against, say, a 15k and offer to pass a couple of times. I only play 9x9 perhaps ten times a month so it doesn’t seem like significant corruption of the rank system.
I see “rank manipulation” as a matter of intent, the intention to lose rank by some strategy. I don’t think that to “even the game” should be interpreted as a method of intentional rank loss.
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