Keep in mind the people you're playing also see their ranks shifting. So it's not just a matter of basing progress on a comparison of two single numbers.

I like to compare it to trust. Difficult to gain, easy to lose.

yes this

in my opinion there really isn't that much of a difference between a 1 stone rank anyway.



what you're arguing here is preference, which is fine
like i said earlier, thats why there are plenty of other go servers with different methodologies. if they are what you like, so be it. i'm ok with how KGS does things.

that's why i don't think the tagline of this thread is valid (calling it bs)

i personally, can't say that if i beat 3 (1d) ranks in KGS that i would say "well make me 2d".

That doesn't make any sense, how do you have more range between ranks than other systems and also have those ranks similarly populated from 9d down to 30k?

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

There is a considerable difference in a 1 stone difference, in one case I have komi, in the other I don't.
Also, you entirely missed his point, this would suggest a large difference between KGS ranks, not a small one.



I'm not just arguing for my preference (although, you should really try it, it can do wonders for your advancement), your rank is not as stable as you think it is, and it's inaccurate to fix it so tightly.

But also, you're not the only user of KGS, my preferences are valid concerns.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

Yes, this is a big difference between KGS and other rating systems. If you have a sustained win rate of 60% in even games (at the dan level), the KGS rating system will never promote you. In some other rating systems (IGS in particular), a sustained win rate over 50% will eventually get you promoted.

Please make the proposal and argument for a different ranking system then.

From your posts this is what i've read into it:



This seems to be an issue for a player by player basis. Couldn't the argument be made that if a player sees his rank fluctuate wildly he gets frustrated and never knows how strong he is? Also, this is supposing that playing on KGS you wouldn't interact with a variety of styles at your given rank.



This is (possibly incorrectly interpreted) like saying that winning isn't reward enough.

I still don't see why being a 6k is a bigger reward than being a 7k. You're saying that there will be bigger challenges and different play styles, which i would argue against. A person who might be 6k will still receive certain challenges playing people at a 7k rank if they were "incorrectly" given a 7k rank.

Also, as to your point of "more challenges" there would be no merit to most players playing people 1 level below their rank if we took your thought process. If you're a 5d and can win 80% of the time against a 4d, the problem might be that you're higher than a 5d instead.

Perhaps I missed Mef's point, but let's talk about this quote also:



This is depending on the level. I feel that if you pit two 5 kyus against each other the komi would rarely come into a deciding factor. I think for the most part komi is something only the stronger go players really have to worry and factor into, for the rest of us it is something to take into account at the counting process at the end of the game. If you can show me a kyu game where they actively figured the komi into their play style i'd be impressed.


All in all, yes it comes down to preference and yes the dissenting opinions should have their say. I feel that most people are arguing over something really inconsequential and that most of these people who are arguing over something like this don't even play enough for it to matter anyway.
If you're saying its an issue of challenge I think you're missing the point as there will always be a challenge in Go. The person who argues the ranking system and says "i'm so bored of winning all the time and my rank never goes up" probably forgot all the other times he loses to people of that rank.

In fact, i urge most people to check out the KGS analytics site: http://kgs.gosquares.net/ Most of the time you're winning and losing 50% of your games anyway. If that figure were to ever be "incorrect" then of course the ranking system wouldn't be doing its job. But since it is typically 50% for almost everybody then it -is- doing its job.

The conflict between these two statements is my personal source of struggle with the KGS system. I looked myself up on kgs.gosquares.net and I have over a 65% win rate over the last two months (20+ games played per month), but my rank hasn't increased. This is troubling for me - I consistently feel that I'm playing at a level above my rank indicates, and the statistics reflect this, but the KGS ranking system does not... In fact, it took multiple months of win rates greater than 70% for me to achieve my last rank promotion (which was then mercilessly taken away from me during the recent anchor shift in late December).

I know KGS's algorithm involves a lot more than simple win/loss ratios, but... From a psychological standpoint, it's disheartening to me that winning two games for every game I lose only results in stagnation of my rank, not growth. Even though I know there are other factors, this doesn't sit particularly well with me. On the other hand, though, it does make every promotion that much more sweeter since it was so much more difficult to attain.

Already did, I pointed out that I was a fan of Tygem's approach. I'm also a fan of IGS and WBaduk's ranking systems. The single reason I stay with KGS is that it is a community hub for North American go players.



I think that's fairly unlikely, I don't think anyone would have an issue saying "I range between 4d and 6d"



Winning is definitely not enough of a reward. I play go to develop a better understanding for the game, a win is just a sign that I'm walking that path correctly. But if I'm stuck playing the same kind of games over and over again, it's possible that I can muddle by with the same understanding that I have. When you vary the difficulty of the game, you are adapting to a players understanding, and giving them room to learn new techniques.

KGS is extremely slow at noticing differences in understanding and offering new challenges, and it's detrimental to a large portion of their player base (At least the ones that don't make a new account every 4-6 months).



It's not about being a 6k, or a 1d, or a 5d. It's about playing the hardest game you can handle.



I'm afraid I don't see what you're getting at, most ranking systems have ranks separated by ~66% win rate. Yes, my preferred system uses a lower percentage win rate for a shorter period of time before handicapping becomes involved... and?



Even if I didn't notice komi, it doesn't mean it doesn't have a large impact on the game. If I suddenly take an even match and then give one side an advantage, I will skew the results.

They don't even need to know how to count for komi to play a role.



It's not really that inconsequential, KGS has an absurd system, under which "The more you play, the less you move".

It is one of the only servers which I have ever heard publicly advocate for not playing on their site for a bit if your rank is changing. That's silly. Especially since, during periods of heavy game play, your rank is likely to change the most.


[/quote]

I've seen people stuck with 60% win rate on KGS analytics never moving at all. And if Mef is correct, that's by design.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

If by "range" you mean winning percentage per rank difference, the answer is simple: you compress the kyu levels and stretch the dan levels. At the dan level, a one-stone rank difference corresponds to a 79% win rate, while at the kyu level, a one-stone rank difference corresponds to a 70% win rate. (See "KGS Rating Math" at Sensei's Library.) That actually makes some sense if you think about it -- the stronger you get, the more likely it is that an extra handicap stone will affect the game result.

I have no idea what sort of predispositions you have toward other rating systems. I simply know what KGS assumes for a 1 stone difference, and how well it would appear to assess that difference.

If you are trying to claim that other rating systems do a poor job of spacing their ratings, I will not try to argue with you.

Don't the EGF and AGA rating systems basically work similarly to KGS? Looking at the EGF Rating page at SL, it seems even more severe in the expected winning percentage against people rated half a stone (50 points) weaker. Where are all the complaints about those systems?

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

Given that nobody has addressed what to me is a key issue here, I'll leave this note: ranks, as people think of them in go, establish a strength difference between people of different ranks through handicap games. 2 stone difference* means 50% win probability when the opponent has 2 stones on the board, 3 stones mean 50% when they have 3 stones on the board and so on. We never talk about win probability against people of the previous rank in even games. It quickly follows that no ranking system is good if players only play against people of the same rank, as it quickly stops being connected to stone differences.

I don't have a practical remark from this note other than that if even games were forbidden the ranking would be a lot more accurate.

* ignore all the half stone mambo jambo due to no komi not meaning symmetry.

The British Go Journal and gotalk mailing list.

But the EGF rating system is quite different to KGS in that it is essentially ELO so your rank is purely a function of yor last rank and the results of your last set of games from a tournament, rather than constantly recalculating based on past opponents' current ranks as in KGS. EGF ranks have zero inertia; if you go on a win streak your rank goes up quite fast.

KGS rankings are continuous, are they not? With a 65% winning percentage, you should been 7.7 dan or something like that according to the rank graph, which is better than 7 dan (if you were 7 dan at the beginning of those two months). You may have felt underrated because KGS rounds down all displayed ranks, but you were probably properly rated according to your raw rank.

What does it mean to be playing at a level above your KGS rank when 8 dan level means winning more than 70% of your games at 7 dan?

That said, I do prefer something like the Tygem system, as it is simple and allows a player to experience discrete variations in rank more frequently (adding variety/spice to life). I would agree with the general sentiment in this thread that the KGS ranking system is not as fun as it could/should be, but it is by no means bs. It's just different.

Actually KGS ranks are not continuous, only the ratings are. In the end isn't the KGS rating system working just as advertised? However, the KGS ranking system and the KGS pairing system (based on the ranking system rather than the rating system) are the culprits, aren't they? According to their rating, as someone approaches promotion (e.g. their rating is 1.99, just short of jumping to 2d) they are systematically over-handicapped (receiving too much) against the average stronger player and under-handicapped (giving too little) against the average weaker player. That is why they need to win at very high rates in order to jump to the next level (and when they fail will join in the chorus here on how unfair KGS is). Once they make it over the hump to a 2.01 rating and are ranked as 2d they will switch to being systematically under-handicapped (receiving too little) against stronger players and over-handicapped (giving too much) against weaker players. As a result, they can survive at 2d despite losing half their games but they are unlikely to feel that they deserve it. Both situations are depressing.

This use of ranks rather than ratings for pairings was a conscious choice that wms has commented on previously. However, it seems to me that it is the main cause of the perceived 'stickiness' of ranks. The use of 'neutral' komi (i.e. with 50% chance of winning) would seem to offer relief from the problem. DGS does this with its 'proper' setting. WING used to do it by default when I played on it years ago. Such an approach does benefit in terms of transparency from an extra step to inform the players of the prospective komi/handicap in a game under negotiation. That is what WING used to do. Will it help? Well, at least it might change the repeated threads here from being complaints about sticky ranks to being complaints about Mickey Mouse komi so that we could enjoy a little variety.

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

Hi Dave, does this also happen on IGS ? Is this part of the reason
that they introduced the finer divisions within each rank (e.g. 1k and 1k+), to try to reduce both the over-handicaps and under-handicaps ?

I have a pet belief that we should play with 1-2 stone reduced handicaps on go servers. I do not know whether it would actually help people move up more quickly in ranks (my intuition is that it ought to, but I have never sat down to figure out the exact ratings math), however it would certainly give you a range of opponents to play against, addressing shapenaji's concern.

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Occupy Babel!

Isn't the same true for many rating systems?

In the EGF rating system, if you have a rating of 1649 (strong 5k) and you play 60% against people with an average rating of 1600 (average 5k), your rating will not shift one bit. At 49 rating difference (almost half a stone), you are expected to win that much. If you were 2449 (strong 4d) and got 60% against 2400 (average 4d), your rating would actually drop, because the EGF system expect stronger players to play more consistently and expects a 65% win rate at that level.

At tygem you need 67%, 70% or 75% depending on your rank, if you consistently remain between 55% and 65%, you will never promote either.

Of course you can quibble about what percentage represents a rank difference, but there will always be some percentage higher than 50% at which you will not be promoted. And most servers do seem to agree that 60% is too low to represent a full rank difference.

It IGS, they underhandicap you and compensate with komi. They work with half ranks and at 1 rank difference you play even but black receives a reverse komi of 5.5, they only start placing handicap stones from 1.5 ranks difference (2 stones, 0.5 komi at that point).

Isn't the issue in the EGF system at least that if you don't know the list of past opponents that someone's win rate is fairly meaningless? There's an expected win rate for a certain GoR difference but that's calculated on a game by game basis and has no relationship to someone's EGF rank really.