Why does "restrict rank" allow ? players?

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83

Wouldn’t the rating pool drift down until it’s centered around this fixed lower bound? In my understanding it would develop to a point where the now decided lowest entry rating takes over the position the 1500 has now. (-> nothing changed in the long run)

We are already in the driftless state. Since the rating difference between players is fixed, any driftless state for the same pool should be indistinguishable from another, if we adjust for the overall rating offset.

So the question is, what are the choices for initial rating, which don’t introduce drift.

right now the entry point is 6k, well in the middle of the SDK ranks :wink:

Besides sandbagging, there is the tendency of humans to not like to loose, so users will more often than not chose a rank lower than their true rank. (We can account for this to some extent, but word of mouth will lead new accounts to declare lower and lower ranks. Besides many would complain OGS set their rank not to the selected one)
I’m quite sure I choose the lower bound of my self estimation myself.

My major concern is most users just sticking with the default. “I just want to check this out.”, “I don’t care right now”, …

84

Fair question :slightly_smiling_face: The answer is this: Assuming new accounts choose an initial rank closer to their true strength than 1500, then this will have reduced impact on their opponents’ ratings compared to starting them at 1500. Less impact on opponents’ ratings = improved rating system stability.

But how does that compare to their true strength? Maybe most new accounts are genuine beginners.

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That plot does not show that the average true strength of new accounts is close to 1500. Of course the average rating of new accounts is close to 1500, since we start them at 1500. Those plots show the peak true strength is at more like 17-18 kyu (although it’s a bit hard to see - would be nice to see the histograms after X number of games each on separate plots so the scale is adjusted and the peaks can be seen more clearly). This is not really comparable to the present day as the system has changed significantly.

Also, the plots further down in that topic:

show the 50th percentile is around 16 kyu for September and 17-18 kyu for last year. So not 1500 = 6 kyu.

As @Vsotvep says, do not do this.

While this may be possible in theory in an extreme example, in practice it won’t work like this. While there may be a small downward drift due to an overall average of under-declared rank (e.g. true strength = 16 kyu, declares are 18 kyu), the effect will be small due to some cancellation with over-declared initial ranks (so the net is only slightly in favour of under-declared), and the fact that the under-declaration is only slight (a couple of ranks). Plus, there is still anchoring against other servers / associations, just with an offset. So we may drift to a point where X rank OGS ~ (X + 2) rank from other servers / associations. But that is OK. They’re all slightly different anyway (Rank - worldwide comparison at Sensei's Library) so these differences will also cancel out to some extent.

In the extreme scenario of every new account choosing 30 kyu, then in theory this would happen. But that’s just never going to happen in reality. We need to trust that most people will try to choose the correct rank. We can encourage this with suitable guidance information. Worst case scenario is that there is a benefit for those who choose the correct initial rank in the short term, and in the long term we end up no worse than we are now. But like I say, that is the extreme worst case. Reality will be much better than that.

This is covered by the options suggested previously (emphasis added):

and this would just revert to current behaviour, i.e. stick them in at 1500.

Would it? Where’s the evidence of that?

Would they? We cannot know either way. That’s just speculation.

That’s just anecdotal evidence. You would choose lower bound, I would chose best guess of my true rank, next person might choose upper bound. Everyone’s different so these effects will approximately cancel out on average.

As @Vsotvep has said:

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85

What I meant to say is that we can call 1500 10k or we can call it 1k or 15k, it doesn’t really matter. Once you fix one kyu / dan rank to rating, the rest does indeed follow from handicap requirements.

As long as the starting rating stays fixed, and beginners will be able to select, say, 1000 as lowest rating and 2000 as highest rating, we can always shift the label of what kyu / dan ranks these are to keep the comparison with external ranks as it is currently.

I’m not sure why it would centre around the lower bound, but I can’t immediately say it wouldn’t, either. In my example, it seems to centre around 900 rating points. I should test this by simulating a combination of sand- and airbagging at different playing strengths, but I don’t have time today.

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86

To be precise, I expect the persistent sandbagger to enforce his entry-level to be equal to his true strength. The whole pool gets pushed down each time he enters with a rating lower than his should be rating.
Only if he enters the pool at the position he ought to be, he doesn’t remove point from the rating pool anymore.

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87

You quoted my own plots. The ranks on the axes are calculated with the previous rating → rank conversation formula, with an entry point of 1500=12.3k. 16k there is just 4 ranks below entry-level, which is now more like 9k.
New accounts (staying on OGS long enough) have a higher rating that I’d expect then.

88

  1. You can compare that rank distribution with the current one and the current influx.

  2. A more fancy way would be to use a faster adjusting rating system, like the current glicko, and compare the both distributions.

In the case of 1) we see a somewhat bell like shape for the current player distribution and influx, which is rather different from the exponential distribution we see in the historic case.
Either
a) The rank distribution change drastically over the years, with the early players barely knowing how to play the game as a whole,
b) A 30k than equal a 1d now, which would mean over the half of the bell curve got cut off, accumulating all lower than average players at 30k
c) both plots show totally different things. As both claim to show the strength distribution of players on OGS, I would at least expect both to be about the same shape class,
d) a slow changing rating algorithm kept one of them closer to the initial ratings than the other
e) the difference are just a fluke of chance

who knows

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89

Two years of “my rating dropped by 5 points after I won a game” gave a preview of it. If it is an obvious bug like “I selected 12k, but my rank got initialized at 7k” is obvious and worth reporting.

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90

That was a bug, now fixed. :neutral_face:

That would be a bug. We would want people to report that. :slightly_smiling_face:

Assuming declared rank was implemented without bugs, OGS would set the rank to the selected one, so no one would complain :face_with_raised_eyebrow: I’m not sure what point is being made here :thinking:

There is no “removal of points from the rating pool” in Glicko. The deviation and volitality make sure of that :wink: For example:

  • Sandbagger, true strength 1d, creates new account at 30k. Deviation is high because new account.

  • They win against a bunch of established SDKs. Sandbagger rank increases a lot because SDK deviation is low. SDK rank only decreases slightly because sandbagger deviation is high.

  • Sandbagger reaches 1d so they start to lose on purpose. Deviation is still high because rank has been changing a lot. And now, because they have gone from winning all the time to losing all the time, volatility is also high.

  • Sandbagger loses to established SDKs on purpose. Sandbagger rank decreases very fast because SDK deviation is low and sandbagger volatility is high. SDK rank only increases slightly because sandbagger deviation high.

Net result is SDKs lost a tiny bit of rank and then some other SDKs gained a tiny bit of rank. Both so small that it gets lost in the noise of ratings changes from other opponents and dominated by changes due to opponents with low deviation (i.e. established and consistent accounts). Sandbagger rank is all over the place so deviation and volatility remain high. No net removal of points from the ratings pool. :sunglasses:

I don’t think it is meaningful or helpful to compare to the historic case. As noted, there are many possible explanations and finding the truth is difficult, if not impossible.

But I just don’t buy the argument that an overwhelming majority of new accounts would declare an initial rank of 30 kyu to the extent that the rating system breaks. Declared initial rank is used on DGS and it works great. If the above claim was true, DGS ranks would be broken but they are working nicely.

Simple guidance is all that is needed. From the DGS sign up page:

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And when you go to your profile to set your initial rank, there is an association / server drop down and an optional rank converter, plus this guidance:

And there’s plenty more on the DGS FAQs (too long to quote).

I’m not saying their guidance is perfect, but it does the job.

Remember, the whole point of this is to avoid the frequently reported problems with [?] accounts, from both the new player and their opponent, in getting unfair match-ups. This is simply not a thing on DGS. So OGS should learn from them and do declared initial rank. (Incidentally, I always though DGS was using Elo, but now I look closer I think they are actually using Glicko as well :sweat_smile: Further evidence that IT’S FINE!)

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91

Yeah I don’t think so. DGS said they use the EGF rating system, but I’m very certain they mean the old EGF system E.G.D. - European Go Database | EGF ratings system which is like a modified Elo system.

The Egf changed their rating system recently (like this year or something) and recalculated the ratings.

I doubt DGS also did the exact same recalculation of all the ratings to make that statement still true in the FAQ :slight_smile:

92

Ah, yeah, ok. That’s probably why I thought it was Elo then.

Although, Glicko is modified Elo…? :wink: :laughing:

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93

The EGF system is still a modified Elo system. In fact it did not change all that much. The update only tweaked some parameters, such as the (implied) Elo to rank conversion function, the K factor function and the bonus function.

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94

Alt sandbaggers almost never do this. When an account reaches within about 2 stones of their real rank, they abandon it and simply create a new provisional account.

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95

OK, thanks for the correction :+1: So then there is a very small removal of points from the pool per sandbagger. However, this will be cancelled out to some extent by intentional and unintentional airbaggers so the final net result summed over all accounts will be very very small. Plus, sandbaggers are a minority of accounts so the impact on the system as a whole will be negligible. Again, a s Vostvep says, “the effect of choosing your own starting rank will be negligible compared to the other factors”

96

when 2 of main problems of OGS collide:

Usually with higher rank you meet wrong opponents less often.
But OGS drops too fresh accounts to anyone.
if you cancel, [?] may become unhappy
(you may become unhappy too, because you cancelled someone)
if don’t cancel, you may become unhappy
So current system creates situation where someone inevitably becomes unhappy
if we wish more dans to stay on OGS, they should have option to not let this situation to happen - filter too fresh accounts
if we wish more beginners to stay on OGS, they should have option to not let this situation to happen - filter dans without knowing what “dan” is, there should be easy looking [beginner mode] choice when creating new account

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97

Cheats will score cheat. That is not a problem of a counting phase that needs fixing. I believe some other servers also allow manual marking of stones to correct the preliminary score. That is necessary until a perfect autoscore system is available. Quest, at least when I played there, has no scoring phase because it ends games peremptorily based on a bot evaluation. This does have the added advantage of preventing stalling, which is especially important when using absolute time, as they do.

It is true that score cheating is primarily a problem at the DDK and weaker SDK levels. However, there are two regular trolls, manic score cheaters, who are about 2 dan in strength.

It is difficult to save a game from a score cheater based on a report, because there is such a small window of time to do it. I would guess that I saved only about half that were reported, despite the fact that I always gave such reports immediate attention.

The only way to save a significant number of score-cheated games is to patrol the current games (filtering out bot games) by using the overview. I used to do that because I enjoy watching games, especially 9x9, where most of the cheating is. I estimate that I saved about 200 games using this technique as a moderator, and commend it to the attention of the current moderators.

As a civilian again, I still enjoy watching games, and I report all cheating that I see. If more players reported cheating (vast numbers don’t!), then the cheaters would get weeded out more substantially, and the site would have less score cheating. So, players who neglect to report cheating are a big part of the problem.

FYI for those who don’t know: a score-cheated game that ends cannot be reversed, only annulled. When I speak of “saving” games, I mean stopping the cheating by deciding the winner before the scoring phase times out.

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98

This should have been asked many times maybe but i can’t ask myself moderators to have a so vigilant activity so why
1 moderators cannot give a win instead of only a cancellation (guess what, It’s going to break the system ??)
2 a game could be frozen when a player call a moderator.
My thanks for the hard work indeed

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99

About your questions:

Years ago I heard it said that reversing a result would cause too many ripples through the ranking system. Why annulling was not comparable, I don’t know. It is reasonable to wonder whether the recent overhaul of the ranking system might invalidate this explanation (if it was even accurate to begin with). Only anoek or maybe a techie can answer this.

I agree that freezing a game when a moderator is called is desirable. This has been debated in the past here in the Forums. The downside is that cheats might call a moderator to get extra thinking time when in a tight spot. Answer: such people could be treated like any other cheats, warned and then banned if they repeat. Another problem might be that it would cause a logjam. Lots of players play huge numbers of games very quickly, and this would jam up their schedule by preventing them from moving easily to another game, especially if few moderators were available at the time.

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100

True

Not so sure about this though - see below

True. DGS for example.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… Scoring phase should be turn based. This will make it harder for score cheats to cheat.

Example:

  • Black passes

  • White passes

  • Black marks the dead stones, dame, teire

  • White can accept Black’s analysis and the game is scored like that, or change any bits they don’t agree with (hopefully with a chat message to explain, although that is not required)

  • If White makes changes, Black can accept White’s analysis and the game is scored like that, or Black can request to resume and White plays first (there may be some finer details to sort out here Re how to resume, e.g. Japanese rules, but you get the general idea!)

This avoids people changing the score at the last minute so the opponent accidentally accepts the wrong score, and stops people repeatedly changing the score in a silly fight of who can click the fastest. It does not avoid people repeatedly resuming but at least it prevents some types of score cheating.

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101

To me the original quote implied that marking of stones should not be done at all by players. That would be better characterized as a change, rather than a “fix.” That was what I was responding to.