Okay, so a lot of people here seem to think OGS is a good server. I decided to try it. My first impressions are very negative.

It does not have a user friendly interface at all and is far inferior to DGS for turn-based and to KGS for live games. When I play a move in one turn-based game I have to navigate to my game list to see any other game. All other features also seem far inferior to the other servers.

Almost no one seems to put up handicap games and no one seems to accept the games I put up, probably because I have too high a rank.

Somehow I got a rank of 5d, which seems way out of line, but I have no idea what the ranking system there is so maybe it is okay. Apparently I created an account there at some point in the past (I have no idea when) and I must have said I was AGA 5d.

The PLAY screen has some odd grid at the top which takes up most of the screen and requires me to hover over squares to see the game instead of presenting me with a list of game. If this ugly feature is to be present then it should be an option at the bottom of the page.

OGS does not work on my favorite browser and forces me to open Firefox to run it. That is very annoying.

Maybe there is a way to figure out who is online so that I can invite them to a game but if so I cannot figure out how. All I can see is a list of people in chat room.

If someone can give me a good reason to pursue this server I would like to hear it.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Understandable! What's your favorite browser, by the way?

Opera.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

First of all, ogs *does* work on opera for me.

Now, a more detailed answer:


I am very sorry that you had a negative experience because it would be a pleasure to have you on ogs where I play most of my games. I will comment on your different points for information only. If you dislike ogs and love kgs and dgs there is really no decision.



After you play move in a turn-based game you can click the black circle in the upper right (that gives the number of games with moves to be played) to get to another game to be played. You can also choose the option that this happens automatically after a move in your settings.

Since you didn't list the other inferior features, I wonder if it is also a case of a lack of knowledge (which might be of course an issue of lacking documentation, I don't remember how I learned about all these things). I can just say that I am annoyed that kgs doesn't have the features I want (for example, looking at different moves while following a review, having more than one game/review open), but for all I know, it does have them, too, and I just don't know.



It is true that people play a lot of even games whereas on kgs handicap games are the norm. However, I do play handicap games, too, and they are quickly accepted (at 7 kyu). So, yes, this might be due to your rank, but also due to the fact that you are still provisional. Since there are not so many EGF 5 dan players, a lot of the 5d? accounts are beginners who misunderstood the ranking system.

However, it is also true that most high dan players know each other and probably don't get their matches via the challenge interface but via direct invitation in the chat or with their friends list.



If you want to change your rank, you can simply ask a moderator to change it which is usually promptly done whether you ask in chat or with the moderator call button in the right side menu. Ogs ranks correspond more to EGF ranks than to AGA ranks.



No argument here. I dislike the grid and I always immediately scroll to the games list. I get my games by putting up challenges and creating my own tournaments, so I actually almost never open this page at all and let other people look at the ugly grid while accepting my games.




If you are talking about Opera it works perfectly for me (just checked again and successfully played a move), so it is hard to say what went wrong for you without further information.



There isn't such a list and if someone wants to be invited by strangers they should open a tab with the English chat. However, you can friend people and then you have a friends list that you can pop down on every page from the green thing in the upper right corner and see if people are here and invite them.



Obviously, the good reason is that I would love to have you there and I am certainly not the only one. I am sure that you would have a better experience if you posted problems immediately in chat.

Apart from that, I know perfectly that first impressions count for a lot. The day I decided to play go I went to kgs first because I disliked the "best go server" self-description of ogs in my google search. My first experience on kgs was people talking unopposed about women's go abilities in a way that made me leave immediately and while I have played games in kgs in the meantime I will never feel that it is "my" go server. On the other hand, my first experiences on ogs were very positive. Everything worked fine and I always got matched up immediately as a beginner. So, I tolerated later negative experiences more easily. (There are annoyances that you did not list here at all because you have not yet encountered them. )

Here is a comparison (which is just based on my experience and priorities) ( I can't comment on dgs and would be happy with more information on it.)

Some pros of ogs versus kgs (some of which might be due to my lack of knowledge about kgs):
* Works well across devices
* It is much easier to get even games against people with different rank
* Position search in all games/your games
* You can do your own sequences while someone else is controlling the review, lack of ownership just means that your sequences are only visible to you
* active developers who remove bugs and react to problems
* Much more beginners, so from 25k to 10k EGF it is very hard to get good (i.e. with people whose rank is correct) even games on kgs but easy on ogs
* One is not obligated to view the chat so if people say sexist things one is not forced to look at the chat while looking at the challenges
* Reactive moderations to trolls and people who try to sabotage the end of a game while kgs tolerates escapers
* If you set a challenge you don't have to check whether the person who *accepted* your challenge actually totally changed your parameters.
* You have your live games and turn-based games on the same browser, so you can play some moves while waiting for someone to accept your live challenge.
* I prefer the rank calculation of ogs which corresponds to EGF practices where you predict the rank change from the current rank for the two players. There is no problem with being stuck at a rank because you have played a lot at a lower rank.
* Malkovich logs.

Some pros of kgs versus ogs
* Less memory use than the PC browser version of ogs
* It is much easier to get handicap games
* More dan players, so it is easier to get games there for dan players
* Automatch is usually very fast

Gotraskhalana, thanks for the detailed reply. I will not answer everything you said, but I will look around for some of the tips you mention. It seems there are some things on KGS you don't understand, just like I am with OGS. That's why I asked, of course.

Several of the features of OGS which you mention are things I am not interested in and so they are clutter to me:

* Works well across devices >> I only have one device.

* It is much easier to get even games against people with different rank >> why would anyone want to play even when it is the wrong handicap.

* Position search in all games/your games >> No interest to me.

* You can do your own sequences while someone else is controlling the review, lack of ownership just means that your sequences are only visible to you >> I don't review unless I am teaching.

* active developers who remove bugs and react to problems >> that is a big plus, I agree.

* Much more beginners, so from 25k to 10k EGF it is very hard to get good (i.e. with people whose rank is correct) even games on kgs but easy on ogs >> Again, of no interest to me.

* One is not obligated to view the chat so if people say sexist things one is not forced to look at the chat while looking at the challenges >> The same is true of KGS so this is not an issue.

* Reactive moderations to trolls and people who try to sabotage the end of a game while kgs tolerates escapers >> This is good.

* If you set a challenge you don't have to check whether the person who *accepted* your challenge actually totally changed your parameters. >> I've never had this happen on KGS.

* You have your live games and turn-based games on the same browser, so you can play some moves while waiting for someone to accept your live challenge. >> Not a big deal to me.

* I prefer the rank calculation of ogs which corresponds to EGF practices where you predict the rank change from the current rank for the two players. There is no problem with being stuck at a rank because you have played a lot at a lower rank. >> Again, not a big deal to me.

* Malkovich logs. >> Don't even know what this means.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

I am quite aware that you are not interested in most of these features.

Malkovich logs are places where players can write down thoughts and store variations for each move before they play it without the other player being able to see it during the game, so after the game you can compare your thoughts. I find the occasional Malkovich game good for learning. For example, it shows that a big issue at my level is that both players will envision variation where they play weak moves for the opponent. So yes, again not very interesting for you.

I fully agree with DrStraw here. I also tried OGS, multiple times, and each time I was unhappy about the interface. To me, it is just generally very unfriendly to the point of unusable. I just don't like it very much. I don't mind "clean and minimalistic" in general, but OGS just does not work for me. Stuff like looking for games, looking for people, chatting, all the fluff, I dunno... nothing really specific which is a deal-breaker, just the overall feel - not my thing.

I guess my main complaints are that settings do not seem to persist (like I set my game list to display max games and next time I log in it is down to default) and that everything has to be in different window/tab (I am in chat room, and I am bugged by challenges, I accept challenge and I am not in chat room anymore, ghrrr!...) - stuff like that. Plus, it would be nice to see all people at a glance, all games at a glance, etc...

Might be old-timers vs younglings thing, since I hear many people love OGS, and probably rightly so. Its just not for me. Unless things change, I don't think I will be playing there much.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

Well, I'm going to give it a try. But if it doesn't grow on me after a dozen games I will abandon it.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

I don't like OGS either for reasons related to the playing culture. I prefer IGS the best because of the general attitude of players there and I learned to play in Japan. I think the IGS players are most genuine in terms of playing to enjoy the game rather than playing to win. I have to pay for access to IGS though or use a VPN, so I don't play there. KGS is therefore the next best alternative for me. Players are generally quite friendly and it is never hard to get a reasonable game there. I am very excited for the new KGS browser/Chrome based interface and hopefully more will be developed in the future.

Just to add something to this thread about OGS, I never review on OGS. I actually hate it. I don't know why I have so much trouble with the review interface, but often I find that when I am reviewing and other people are reviewing at the same time, everything keeps jumping around. It is very hard to review there I found. I much prefer just reviewing offline or on KGS where a single player has clear control over the review at one time.

edit: If there were ladder system for real-time games, I might find OGS much more attractive. I don't play many correspondence games because people always seem to quit playing rather than resigning, which I find annoying.

If things jump around, you are not reviewing, you are viewing a review and are not in control. There is no simultaneous review.

Talking about reviews, I just started another game and the line "Opponent [2k]: Review: /review/123456" popped up in the chat window (I've changed the name and number). What does that mean?

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Gotcha. That is still a problem then. Because then there is no way for me to move back and forward in the game while watching someone else's review. If I am watching a game in KGS I can always just go back and review the last few moves.


I think it means that your opponent opened the game in a new window or something so they can "cheat."

As it happens, I cannot do that on kgs at all.



Nonsense, it means that they mistakenly clicked on review on the side menu, very likely while trying to use the score estimator.

PS: I looked up the game and I take this back. While true for my opponents, this person certainly used the review to cheat.

How can you possibly know why they opened the game in a new window? Could be that it is a mistake, could also be that they want to review their own game.

I could be mistaken about KGS reviews. I don't watch them that often. I usually just watch people's games. If it is turned off on KGS, then it is a better system still. Allowing me to manipulate the board while "watching a review" done by someone else, then having it jump around is silly. I think the problem is that I don't even realize I am watching a review from someone else. It should be turned off completely if that functionality does not exist. The interface is just not clear regardless.

Don't get me wrong. I hate Java interface for KGS, so I am not in a love fest. I just don't see why the love fest is there for OGS. There are a lot of issues with OGS and I think the player culture is not to my taste.

I am sorry, I was wrong and I edited my post to add this rectification. Many of my opponents have opened reviews by accident without making a single move, not a single one opened it to cheat. This player obviously opened it to cheat.



So because you don't like the way it works, it should be turned off for everyone? The reason it "jumps back" is that you jump back to viewing when you go to the green position that is the current position of the reviewer. This is not a good design, there should be a separate button of course, and there is an item in the uservoice log to change this in a future version. No reason to demand that it should have less functionality in the mean time, you can simply not use it if you dislike it instead of demanding it to be disabled.




If you see a "love fest" for ogs here, you are reading a different thread. I am certainly the only one here who plays at ogs voluntarily. So don't pretend that you are arguing against a love fest. You are arguing together with a group of like-minded players against a single person who simply tries to clear up factual misunderstandings.

If you simply want to bash ogs together with like-minded people while pretending to argue against a "love fest", tell me so and I will bow out of this thread.

As it happens, I would have loved to play a game with Dr. Straw and now I see that it will not be happening.

I don't know DrStraw outside of this forum, but perhaps if you ask nicely, he or she would play you.

Fairly recently I had a problem where I could not play a move. I would click multiple times but nothing would show up. To me, that's a showstopper. That was with the latest Chrome on Windows. And I was still able to chat with the opponent so it was not a network problem.

I remember the same problem from the Nova days, so it gave me the impression that OGS hadn't improved since then. Perhaps that's a harsh judgement.

Has anybody seen that problem?

Whom are you referring to here? Is it the person I am playing and for whom I stated that he started a review? If so, how do you know he actually cheated and not just started it accidentally? And was there any way to prevent it in the game settings?

Oh, and by the way, I am DrStraw, not Dr. Straw. He is a different guy at the university I teach at (and it is his real name, unlike my moniker).

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

What I know:
The game settings show deactivated in-game analysis. However, your opponent started the review, and in the review, they played out some sequences of your game because they are still publicly visible there.

What I don't know:
If your opponent played this sequence before or after the relevant part of your game was played. In both cases, it is still against the spirit of a game with deactivated analysis.

You couldn't have prevented this in the settings, but it is a lame way to cheat because it is so highly visible. It is also certainly possible that they did this out of ignorance. The fact that they did not delete the sequences after looking at them does not imply a lot of cheating intent.

Thanks. I guess it is not a big deal. DGS provides the capability also and it cannot be prevented their either. It cannot even be identified there as far as I know.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).