About done with IGS

[Justin2013]

I do find as someone mentioned that you will play someone who has 15000 games. Of course this has to be a Go Salon or school account in Japan.[/auote]
I personally know people who have like 10000 or 12000 games played with a single account, and they are not a school or salon. So maybe 15000 is not such a stretch. I am not sure you can "obviously" assume that they are school or something.

Usually the accounts that had that many games has been around 17k. I would assume after that many games that there would be some improvement. That's what I get for assuming.

It is interesting that someone could have that many games. If you are on the same server account for four years and played 10 games a day, it would be possible to have 15000 game .

[Bantari]

I do find as someone mentioned that you will play someone who has 15000 games. Of course this has to be a Go Salon or school account in Japan.[/auote]
I personally know people who have like 10000 or 12000 games played with a single account, and they are not a school or salon. So maybe 15000 is not such a stretch. I am not sure you can "obviously" assume that they are school or something.

Usually the accounts that had that many games has been around 17k. I would assume after that many games that there would be some improvement. That's what I get for assuming.

It is interesting that someone could have that many games. If you are on the same server account for four years and played 10 games a day, it would be possible to have 15000 game .

Truth be told, most of the players I know with such high numbers play a lot of 9x9 games, so that's why. It is yeast to squish 10,20, even 30 small board games a day. They are also usually stronger than 17k, but not always.

[oren]

Usually the accounts that had that many games has been around 17k. I would assume after that many games that there would be some improvement. That's what I get for assuming.

Many of the opponents that I play on igs seem to play very quickly, and I expect have less interest in improving. Many people are just playing for fun and not for trying to get to higher ranks.

[mitsun]

The main problem I see is that they demand so many games to be played for rating to change....

This is a common complaint about KGS, but not about IGS. Promotion in IGS should be quite rapid at low ranks, but does become more difficult at higher ranks. At a rank of {16K, 1D, 8D} it should take roughly {10, 27, 55} wins to be promoted.

IGS ratings are more predictable than KGS ratings. In IGS, you can track your (win-loss) difference and watch your rating respond directly to this difference. If you are so inclined, you can determine ahead of time how many more wins you need for promotion. KGS on the other hand bases promotion on a complicated algorithm which has more to do with win/loss ratio than win-loss difference.

[Shoreline]

The main problem I see is that they demand so many games to be played for rating to change....

This is a common complaint about KGS, but not about IGS. Promotion in IGS should be quite rapid at low ranks, but does become more difficult at higher ranks. At a rank of {16K, 1D, 8D} it should take roughly {10, 27, 55} wins to be promoted.

IGS ratings are more predictable than KGS ratings. In IGS, you can track your (win-loss) difference and watch your rating respond directly to this difference. If you are so inclined, you can determine ahead of time how many more wins you need for promotion. KGS on the other hand bases promotion on a complicated algorithm which has more to do with win/loss ratio than win-loss difference.

I have just started out at IGS with 2 wins at 16 kyu provisional rank. If IGS requires 10 wins to be promoted to a higher rank,
this would let me re-think about whether it is worth investing that much time on IGS to get correct rank.

I used to spend lots of time at KGS to get rank to 7 kyu last year, then let the account idle for couple of months. Then after I re-login to KGS and found that I was de-ranked down to provisional rank and basically lost my rank there. I kind of gave up on KGS because of huge commitment required to maintain a rank at KGS.

The best ranking system seems to be DGS. There is a large amount robots there from dan level to kyu level to allow a fast rank adjustment. I would say probably 2 wins will allow a user to be promoted to a higher rank and there is no provisional rank at DGS. By playing with robots at DGS, I would say only a week is needed to get proper ranking at DGS. But DGS does not offer live games and players need to go elsewhere for that.

OGS ranking is OK for me but not ideal. It appears to be slower than DGS to get proper higher rank for me there. But still OGS ranking definitely does not requires 10 wins to have higher rank. maybe 3 to 4 wins to get 1 stone higher rank. I think OGS rank will not be forfeited even if I am inactive for couple of months. OGS has its problems too with confusing 4 different kind of ranking: overall, bliz, live, correspondence. This is confusing and bad. OGS ranking will be significantly improved if they only offer 2 kinds of ranking: correspondence and live rankins by merging bliz with live and eliminate the overall rankings.

[Shoreline]

I actually like what I see on IGS for the automatch feature and the 5 minutes 25 moves setting, much better than OGS time settings.

But the commitment required to get rank promoted at IGS feels too much. Maybe that is why there is so much sandbaggers at IGS claimed by others, IGS people gave up on proper ranking and just play at improper kyu level. It may be the fault of slow ranking adjustment rather than the sandbaggers themselves.

[daal]

I actually like what I see on IGS for the automatch feature and the 5 minutes 25 moves setting, much better than OGS time settings.

OGS also has the option to use Canadian time. When you are creating a game, you can choose to make a custom game, and pick the time control that you want (you can also choose Fisher...).

[BlindGroup]

Maybe that is why there is so much sandbaggers at IGS claimed by others, IGS people gave up on proper ranking and just play at improper kyu level. It may be the fault of slow ranking adjustment rather than the sandbaggers themselves.

IGS ranks actually respond a bit more quickly than has been described here. In the first 20 games, your rank is provisional, and it adjusts every 5 games. After that, your rank increases (decreases) a half rank for every 5 net wins (losses) between 17k and 12k. So, if you start out at 17k, wins 6 games and losses 1 (assuming properly handicapped games), your rank will go up to 17k+. Between 12k and 7k, it takes 6 net wins.

In my experience, slow adjustment does not explain the inconsistent ranks of opponents. I often check the rank histories of opponents, and it is fairly common for players to be playing 2-3 ranks below their highest ranks. Obviously, people's ranks fluctuate, but some of these patterns seem quite suspicious. See here for a particularly egregious example: viewtopic.php?p=216570#p216570.

Plus, I'm sure that anyone who plays on IGS has experienced players who resign after having just been matched, having just played the minimum 2 moves necessary to establish a game as official, or having achieved a decisive lead. When someone resigns an auto-matched game, the system penalizes the player with half the value of a loss. So, if one wants to lower his rank by a half-rank, one simply needs to resign 10-12 games immediately after being matched. During a busy period, that would not take very long.

I really enjoy playing on IGS, but this is the one problem that I wish they would fix.

EDIT: In fairness to the IGS staff, I should also note that it is not at all obvious to me how one could easily fix this issue. Even a policy like removing accounts that clearly manipulate their rank wouldn't work because banned users can easily just create new accounts.

[Shoreline]

IGS ranks actually respond a bit more quickly than has been described here. In the first 20 games, your rank is provisional, and it adjusts every 5 games. After that, your rank increases (decreases) a half rank for every 5 net wins (losses) between 17k and 12k. So, if you start out at 17k, wins 6 games and losses 1 (assuming properly handicapped games), your rank will go up to 17k+. Between 12k and 7k, it takes 6 net wins.

In my experience, slow adjustment does not explain the inconsistent ranks of opponents. I often check the rank histories of opponents, and it is fairly common for players to be playing 2-3 ranks below their highest ranks. Obviously, people's ranks fluctuate, but some of these patterns seem quite suspicious. See here for a particularly egregious example: http://www.lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.ph ... 70#p216570.

Plus, I'm sure that anyone who plays on IGS has experienced players who resign after having just been matched, having just played the minimum 2 moves necessary to establish a game as official, or having achieved a decisive lead. When someone resigns an auto-matched game, the system penalizes the player with half the value of a loss. So, if one wants to lower his rank by a half-rank, one simply needs to resign 10-12 games immediately after being matched. During a busy period, that would not take very long.

I really enjoy playing on IGS, but this is the one problem that I wish they would fix.

EDIT: In fairness to the IGS staff, I should also note that it is not at all obvious to me how one could easily fix this issue. Even a policy like removing accounts that clearly manipulate their rank wouldn't work because banned users can easily just create new accounts.

5 to 6 net wins for half stone rank promotion from 17k to 7k range is still same as one said, 10 net wins for 1 stone rank increase. That is very slow.

In DGS, I actually scored 2 kyu promotion from 11 kyu to 9 kyu recently by one handicap game win against a robot. DGS ranking has its problem, volatility, a player can easily +- 1 kyu within one week, sometimes up or down 2 kyu level within just several games loss or win. But still, a trend usually form on DGS rank and it is accurate and up to date.

I am actually at loss on IGS for recent 2 games. I basically slaughtered 7 kyu+ and 15 kyu established ranked players on proper handicap. Based on the game record, I would say 7 kyu at IGS is only equivalent of teen digit kyu at DGS, say 15 kyu, the 15 kyu IGS player was beginner, maybe 23 kyu at DGS know very little concept of influence or Fuseki. At OGS on live or bliz, I was at much tougher time on 7 kyu or 15 kyu players there. Not sure why people are claiming sandbaggers at IGS. I saw the players rank at IGS at kyu level was inflated.

[Shoreline]

Played a few bliz game at OGS, got bliz rank bumped from 17kyu to 16kyu with only 4 games, 3 wins, 1 loss.
OGS require 120 points for each kyu rank, one game loss or win is about 40 points. I think net win requirement to be promoted at OGS is only at 3 games.

This is a lot quicker than IGS. I think I am going to stick with OGS, I am not going to play at IGS that much, mainly because of this ranking requirement burden.

I believe sandbagger issue at IGS can be explained partially by the ranking system. Lots of people like me won't treat IGS account seriously, maybe couple of times a year to play at IGS for a few games at 16 kyu to 18 kyu. From other players points view, that would be sandbaggers. It is not intentional, mainly because
of unwillingness to invest efforts to get proper rank.

[Shoreline]

I actually like what I see on IGS for the automatch feature and the 5 minutes 25 moves setting, much better than OGS time settings.

OGS also has the option to use Canadian time. When you are creating a game, you can choose to make a custom game, and pick the time control that you want (you can also choose Fisher...).

Thanks for the info. Never realized this is same as Canadian time control set.

Just checked, the Canadian rule for blitz game at OGS is not that attractive, I will stick with Fischer rule. OGS live game custom Canadian rule setting is quite similar to IGS, something that I will try out in the future for live games.