i want to know how the players in delta experience their class, so please do that here:)

i do not play in delta this month so i can only listen to what everyone actually playing in delta have to say about it and what they think should or should not be done to make the experience better for everyone.

i know a lot of L19 players signed up this month so i expect a lot of "experiences"

it's a bit early in the month but i think formulating early and looking back later on what you thought a few weeks ago could be ineteresting.

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admin of the ASR league and KGS admin

I like this month's delta class , as I can always find an opponent whenever I want to play; even though it did cause some problem at the beginning when I tried to put everyone into buddy list and make distinction btw classmates and my friends .

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求而不得
舍而不能

ok thats good, but is there still competition in it for you?

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admin of the ASR league and KGS admin

Stalkor, I clicked on the link in your signature in order to find out about the ASR, but the link leads to a non-existing page.

fixed it:)

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admin of the ASR league and KGS admin

competition?

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求而不得
舍而不能

I am enjoying the ease of getting games. No more need to complain about time zones etc. I've played both stronger and weaker players, and have ended almost all games with a good review. I'd like to see the other divisions beefed up as well.

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Patience, grasshopper.

I like the new delta class system better. Now i can play almost always.

Each room should be 32 players large ^^

edit: or bigger. i like that idea too.

The large room system definitely makes it much easier to get games; generally I get a response in about 5-10 minutes when I put a game up. I've been in the ASR league for 19 months, and this month already I have played more than any other month - 20 games so far. I will probably end up at about three times my previous monthly average, which was 8.5 games/month. Oddly, all but one game have been with stronger players. The 9k and weaker people seem to be a bit reluctant to challenge when I have an offer up, and rarely seem to put up offers of their own. Perhaps they just need an invitation by private message. I have not noticed games being rushed, even with the people who are playing several games per day. Reviews are usually offered.

A side effect of being able to get games easily, is that if you can play a bit less than one game per day, you will be guaranteed to promote, regardless of your number of wins.

In some ways the large group size is a bit cumbersome. 178 columns on the web site make it rather awkward to see the Win/Loss column - it usually requires carefully lining up someone's row near the top or bottom of the browser window, and jump scrolling over to the right side. Putting everyone in the KGS buddy list (and removing them at the end of the month...) is time-consuming. I use the Notes field in the buddy list to identify ASR people.

It is possible that we could maintain the big positive, that being the ease of getting games, and alleviate some of the cumbersome aspects, by going to a small number of relatively large groups. For example, starting with three groups of about 40 this month, we would now be at close to 60 per group. Perhaps that would make the web site and buddy list a bit easier to use.

I would also second the suggestion to increase the size of the groups in the other divisions as well, at least Gamma, anyways. Beta doesn't seem to have much of a problem this month with people not playing, but Gamma does have the usual 25% or so who don't manage to get games in.

We should exaggerate neither the activity of Delta nor the inactivity of Gamma. The 10th player in the Gamma divisions has played somewhere between 4 and 8 games; the 90th player in Delta has played 4 games. Scaled to the size of the divisions, this is the same result. The people who are most active in Delta are, understandably, very pleased with the new system because they've played a huge number of games, but that's actually a rather shallow phenomena. Once you get out of the top 20, the huge numbers of games flatten out.

It's still an accomplishment, of course. In the past Delta had a lower level of activity than Gamma. But we can't nontuple the size of Gamma, and even if we could it's unclear whether that would suffice to raise activity above the level it currently attains.

Finding some way to work on the number of inactive players might be a more effective way to increase activity in the upper divisions. This might be difficult in Alpha and Beta - it takes a while to get from Delta to Beta, so if you decide to be inactive that really must show that you've lost interest in the league. But in Gamma, there's currently no difference between being demoted for inactivity and being demoted on points, so we might be able to do something there. Would it be really logistically difficult to have inactive Gammas start the next month in Delta with -4 points, or something like that?

--- We might also publicize the vacation policy. As it stands most people probably think that if they're not sure if they have time for the ASR League, "I might as well stay in the league - if I can play four games that's great, if not, well, nothing bad happened." I know that's what I've thought in the past, and as a result there were at least two months when there was an inactive player in a division.

I support a combined delta league.

The large Delta league gave me many opportunities to play higher ranked players. Even better, they helped me review my games and showed me how to improve my game.

I had some anxiety over playing ranked games, where my rank was on the line. In ASR, I could freely play with the pressure removed.

I only like delta to be this size but maybe not other layers.

Or put it in this way, I prefer either have a huge amount of classmates i.e. 100+ (easy to get games)or a small class (easy to get promote). A class of 30 ,40 or 50 seems to be the last thing I want.

I feel the current structure is perfect.

WayneC: I do opposit way. I put a note of my friends and add asr classmate with a blank note, so i don't need to copy paste notes

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求而不得
舍而不能

it was interesting experience and i wanna take my chances in december again :)

huge-Delta system give some good thing to league: now (maybe in 2-3 month) only really active players in gamma

but for me personally i see couple of bugs:

1. too many ppl, i can't add everybody to my buddy-list :). so no more 'classmates' and atmosphere of the league is more-less gone;
2. i have to play ≈15 games to get promotion and it's too much for me

i think about conception of hybrid-Delta: one big group and couple of classic-small for 'slow' players (maybe with kinda allowed DGS-like 'correspondence' games). what do you think, stalkor? (yeah it will be a bit additional headache for admins, sorry :)

Why not. It took me about 15 minutes to add everybody. Alternatively or additionally you can make a sorted excel list where you maintain which player is in the league and how often you have already played him. Took me two minutes to create that.

You only need four games to stay in the league. Do you really have a need to promote? I am already considering to avoid promotion to Gamma since it is much easier to get opponents in Delta (unless the Gamma class will be boosted as well).


Indeed. Good for the gamma league


Not a good idea. I am a slow player and enjoy the ease of getting opponents. Otherwise I would probably not have joined. Also I don't play correspondence games on DGS/OGS any more (unless challenged/invited by someone I know), because this is a completely different thing (which was responsible for my go related burnout the last 18 months btw).

Huh, interesting. This actually seems to me to be about the right level to get a promotion, but it is a little odd that it takes 23.5 points to promote from Delta to Gamma and 12-20 points to promote from Gamma to Beta. I suggest that we wait a month or two to see if this sorts itself out, but if it doesn't, the simplest solution would be to demote two more Gamma's every month. This month, that would have lowered the cut-off to 19 points, which is as few as 10 games.

yep. but it's booooring :) and overkill for me: i can play ≈10 games. so i will not meet 140 others ppl in this month anyway. and no problems with finding opponents. it's too easy now :) 4-5 players are always online



ok. big part of hybrid-Delta for you :) for example: 100 players is enough, right?
('slow' means 'players who don't have enough time for 15-20 league games per month')

so my conlusion is: huge Delta is funny but i don't wanna stay here for a long time :)

i think the league should always keep the same class sizes across a layer because there is an easy way to abuse it and i feel i should treat everyone the same way (yes, i know the high dan seeding in gamma is not treating everyone the same but there is a thought process behind it).

of course a concept we try out like one big delta has flaws but that doesnt mean it has only a negative impact. i think its very positive that you can say it's a good idea to have a big class but you dont want to stay there for long, this is actually VERY good because this is suddenly an incentive to get promoted and that is one of the ideas why we implemented this big delta and also why we chose to change the prize system.

we will see how this format picks up, last month was about the same or slightly better in delta and we will have to see if this keeps up.

keep posting your experiences, i think its nice to hear different stories, both positive an negative, thanks!

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admin of the ASR league and KGS admin

Actually more than 40 were promoted out of delta. The green zone on the results page is not a complete indicator. I went up to gamma with only 19 points. Sadly I am in gamma IV, team name "The Slackers", with a total of 4 games played in our class after five days. I don't think it will take 19 points to get promo'd out of G IV.

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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