Hey everyone, I'm new here.

Out of curiosity, I decided to create a poll to see how long it usually takes Go players to rank up, and what people's main strategies are for improvement.

Here's the poll, if you don't mind taking a couple minutes to fill it out:

Poll: Go Ranking & Improvement

I'll share the results in a few days here in the forum! I'm also posting on the r/baduk subreddit and OGS forum.

I'm a little too weak to be of much statistical value to your survey (3 months of playing of mostly correspondence games, 25 to 20kyu), but I'm interested to see the results!

The poll ended.
Can you give us a summary?

And please, do not refer to the Google document: those pie charts are terrible and not always the most appropriate.

The average time from total beginner to SDK is somewhere around 6-12 months.
And to 1k, 12-18 months. Even getting to dan level in 1-6 months is not unheard of.

Am I a hopeless case and wasting my time with this game, or maybe people are not reporting their progress accurately?

I think that there is a selection effect. People who answered the poll are probably better than average. When I was 2 kyu a friend took me to the Kitani Dojo. Kitani Reiko asked me how long I had been playing. When I told her a little over a year, she was quite impressed.

The real question is, do you enjoy the game? If so, it is not a waste of time.

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Everything with love. Stay safe.

Having played you, I don't think you are wasting your time

That said, one issue might also be the differences in the ranking systems. (See http://senseis.xmp.net/?RankWorldwideComparison, for example.) Someone playing on KGS would report making SDK much faster than someone playing on IGS.

Are you sure you interpreted the results correctly? I suspect the correct statement would be more precisely worded "(For this sample) Of players who have got to 1k or stronger, they took an average of 12-18 months.". That is very different to saying a random person will on average take 12-18 months to get to 1k as many will not. Of people who have won the Ing cup, they took an average of ~20 years of playing Go to do so. However, not many people who have been playing Go for 20 years can expect to win the Ing cup.

You're right, Uberdude.
For people who are 1 kyu or more, the average time is 12-18 month. But what about people who are NOT 1 kyu or more ? Some, like me, will stay forever below this level.