player seems to change ranks on go servers

[Pejogo]

Hello,
I have a quick question that may be nothing. I just started playing on OGS, and I'm probably something like 18-19 kyu, but I've never used these online servers before. I was trying to find someone quite a bit better than me to play so I accepted a challenge from someone ranked as 11 kyu. When we started playing, I realized the game he set up was for him to begin with 2 black stones (so I had the handicap and was playing white). This is because I don't understand the notations on OGS for setting up games so I didn't realize he would get 2 stones, or I might not have taken that game). Then as soon as the game started, he was suddenly ranked as 19 kyu. Is this just a computer mistake, or is it possible that ranks can change like this? I mostly ask because he seems better than 19 kyu, but I really have very little experience playing other people.
Thank you

[Gojira]

thats really strange. did you ask him why this happend? you can ask people in the chat on OGS i guess you find someone who know about this problem

[LocoRon]

I haven't played on OGS in ages, but as I recall, it allows you to set your rank freely.

My guess for what is happening is that person has a "default rank" somewhere around 10k (at this moment, it is 9k). When someone challenges him, he goes into his settings, significantly drops his rank, then in the challenge tab, either accepts and lets the system set up a handicap for his new rank, or manually sets it as an "appropriate" handicap for the challenger's rank and his new rank, and then after the game starts, goes back into his settings and restores his rank to around 10k.

(Oh, and after typing all that, his rank is now 8k....)

Update:

Apparently users can't set their ranks anymore. The wide rank disparity may have had to do with the different time settings.

[Bonobo]

Hello Pejogo,

it’s this game, right?

And I see that your opponent began the game as 19k and now they are 8k … AFAIK this can only happen by a moderator action, so maybe you want to talk to an OGS moderator there, and perhaps also create a thread in the OGS forum https://forums.online-go.com

Regards, Tom

[Bonobo]

FYI, Pejogo, since I don't have the time to take care about this myself I just notified the moderator colleagues of this incident.

[Bonobo]

Forgive me for replying to myself so often here, but I want to make sure it’s not getting overlooked which can happen when I just edit my former post(s).

Pejogo, I wrote you a private chat message on OGS, explaining this. Apparently, your opponent registered with a wrong rank estimation, and this has been corrected by a fellow moderator. The result of the game you’re talking about will now have no effect on your rank since your opponent’s rank has been set to provisional, meaning that they have to play a few more games until it’s “fixed”.

HTH, Tom

[Bantari]

Still, it is weird.

The opponent is listed as 19k for the game, but the system says it is 11k inside the game chat. And when you check the opponent's actual rank in his info it is 8k.

I can see where an admin can change the rank to "proper" 8k after the game due to registering mistake of the player, but I still do not understand how can he be 11k inside the chat (and for the challenge, I assume) and 19k for the actual game at the same time. Does the system have 2 ranks going on at the same time for this player? For any player?

[yoyoma]

It's hard to figure out what happened in cases like this, because OGS has 4 separate ratings -- blitz, normal, correspondence, and an overall. Also when you look at old game records, it will show the players' current rating, not their rating at the time of that game. Users cannot change their own ratings but admins can.

[Uberdude]

Also when you look at old game records, it will show the players' current rating, not their rating at the time of that game.

That doesn't seem good to me; pretty sure old OGS showed the historical rating. After all if you do that and you want the current you can just click on the user (or mouse over -> move -> click or whatever weird UI nova OGS does) to get it, but if you show current there's no easy way to get the old one. Old OGS's past games list used to show rating changes from each game so you could have figured it out, but I don't think nova OGS even gives you that any more?

[joellercoaster]

In the game list it shows your current rank (weirdly, your present overall rank, not even your rank in the time settings of the game) but when you look at the actual game record, it shows your historical rank.

This is probably not ideal.

[Pejogo]

Okay, thank you all, especially Bonobo. My opponent very patiently dealt with a lot of my clueless questions about how to play games that lasted over a period of many days so I didn't want to complain, but I just thought it was weird.

[Joelnelsonb]

Whenever you see soemone's name on the server, it will show their overall rank. When you see their name within a game, it will show their ranking for that particular type of game. So for instance, if you were playing live then perhaps your opponent plays mostly correspondence giving him a better overall rank, however, within the game itself, it would show that he isn't nearly as good at live games. I'm a poor correspondence player so my overall ranking is always 10-14 kyu however my correspondence ranking is around 18 or 19 kyu.