Poll: Go Ranking & Improvement

[zendo]

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.

[FuriousGeorge]

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!

[sybob]

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.

[Tapani]

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?

[Bill Spight]

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.

[BlindGroup]

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?

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.

[Uberdude]

The average time from total beginner to SDK is somewhere around 6-12 months.
And to 1k, 12-18 months.

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.

[Pio2001]

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.